RRRR!

Rest, don't push it, listen to your body... I was getting that advice from nearly everyone, runners, shop keepers and even a physiotherapist who had suffered shin splints. I had been feeling increasing pains in both my inner lower shin and outer shin lately and felt my legs were heavy and tired all the time. I was really spooked by my possible 'anterior compartment syndrome' and even more by the possible 'tibia stress fracture'. So I took a whole week off, no running.

Ruby provided a way to keep my mind at least a bit focused on running after that. I made a beginning to write an application that can read my exercise data from my Nike+ipod. The app is not finished yet, only the parser part is. I still need to finish the part that gets the data from the database and shows you some nice trends. I'll put the code on github when I have that part running.

Reading 'Ruby in Practice', which I've won, gave me inspiration for my app. However, I did not even finish the first chapter or two other books were in my mailbox! Off course I started to read those, 'The Manga Guide To Databases' and 'Grey Hat Python' as well. To add to the book frenzy, I just found out I also won the ebook version of the ultimate Ruby bible: 'Programming Ruby 1.9: The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide'! So yeah, get ready for some reviews ;-)



Running put the great week to a fantastic end. I have been feeling a bit jumpy the whole week, I really missed the running already. I guess it's quite addictive. Anyway, I did some googling and asked a physiotherapist I know about some stretch exercises for my shins. Yesterday I found the following stretches and they had an immediate effect:




Seated shin stretch
More shin stretches
'Swan lake stretch'

That last one did it for me so I decided to call it the 'swan lake'...

Ok...after that I decided to wear my new black-tech-ninja long-sleeve running shirt and go at it. This time however I really took time to do a proper warm-up. First a fast paced 1k walk, after that a 1k run. After that some stretches. Then I went off, I felt the inner shin hurting again quite soon. But then I saw a horse track, a sand path. When I went running on that, I felt nothing. The rest of the run was mostly a struggle because I had not ran for a whole week and was eating pizza and other badness while doing my geek things. However, when I got home I was pleasantly surprised by my stats: I passed 4K, nearly got to 5, RRRR!!

New gear and new books!

I've bought some running clothes yesterday: a shortsleeve, a longsleeve, a short and a rainjacket with zippable arms as Montechristo advised. All made from reflective dryfit material, nothing too tight. The kind shop lady added a reflective jacket on the house. We had a short chat on my progress and I mentioned the pain and kramps in my shins. She gave me three tips:

1) take it easy, take some extra rest!
2) whilst taking a shower after a run, run some cold water on the legs for some time. After that run some hot water on them. Change again by cold water. Change three times minimum and always end with the cold. This is uncomfortable but one of the best things to do.
3) apply an ice pack.

After I told her I did not know what that was, she got one, gave a demo and putted it in my bag :)


Speaking of new stuff, the inner geek will soon be nurtured with some new books. First, I won 'Ruby in practice' by asking a few questions to Jeremy McAnally and Assaf Arkin, authors of the book. After that I got an e-mail from NoStarch press to do a review on some books, 'Greyhat Python' and 'The Manga Guide to Databases' to be exact. Pretty sweet! I'm quite curious about these books but first need to finish my current book 'learn to program'. I hope I get enough time over the long weekend to finish it. Lucky for me I'll do some more traveling soon and get to eat some books on the way :D

I just came back from a training with two four minute and one five minute and some lesser minute runs. The beginning, as always, was the hardest. As soon as I'm properly warmed up and into my rhythm all is fine, except for the shins offcourse.


I took on the short sleeved Adidas 'adizero' shirt. I found it to be a very nice shirt. At first I was affraid it would be cold but it kept me warm and mostly dry. Though having a soaked shirt from the effort had it's charm, it's just too uncomfortable. The new shirt is definatively better.

Anyway, here are the stats. No significant improvement yet, but apart from the shins, the workout felt a bit too lite allready. I guess that if my legs would have some proper recovery, I would do much better than these stats:



Time to eat and apply my new ice-pack!

King of the hill

Reading MonteChristo's blogpost on 'heavy stuff', reminded me of my difficult last few runs. I also realised my geographical location and the metereological lookout proved to complicate runs further.

With a mercury meltdown in the afternoons, and a busy schedule, it was a question of choosing the lesser evil. Either a run in the night in a world capital where I don't know my way around and some insomnia from the post-run rush. Or a run in the early morning... Or no run. After last nights terrible and overly fat Paella that last one was no option.

Considering I allready woke up at 6 in the morning that day, just doing it again made some strange illogical sense. But living long and prosper does require it's sacrifices, so running at 6 it was.

But where? After doing some Googling, Madrid's Retiro park was the obvious choice. However, I was not sure if I'd find a safe park with open gates at 6. Also, the Retiro was a bit out of my way. I found a few parks nearby the Palacio Royal. One of them had an interresting Egyptian Temple which I wanted to see and I had been doing some sightseeing near the Palacio before. So I knew how to get there.

It was still dark when I passed the Cathedral next to the Palacio to start my run at Campo del Moro. The Campo del Moro is a park at the foot of a hill. On this hill the Moors who had occupied large parts of the iberian peninsula had built a fort known as the Alcázar. After the Spaniards reconquered the hill, the Moors tried to recapture it and layed siege on the citadel. Hence the name, 'encampement of the moors'. The area around the hill, named 'Mayrit' by the Moors, grew to become Madrid. And the Alcázar was replaced by the Royal Palace.

Unfortunately, the park was closed. So I just ran on the Paseo del Virgen del Puerto, the road next to the park. Long name, short run. Unfortunately, I could not figure out how to get to the Egyptian temple site. Quite dissapointing, but I was quick to decide running around the Royal palace would have it's charms too.



However, I was at the base of the hill. And I had a steep path ahead. I attacked the hill with a steady relentless pace. This was very hard work, but I was rewarded after I conquered the hill. It was truly magnificent to run beside the beautifull palace and it's gardens with the dawn breaking and an overview of the valley where Madrid was waking up.

After I passed the palace, I took a left turn and ran straight to the Plaza Mayor where my session ended.

The stats are pretty much like those from my previous run. But taking lack of sleep and the hilly terrain in consideration and knowing the Nike+ sensor can't register if you are climbing mountains, I'm very hapy with these results!