Injury update

Its been a little while since I last posted. I kind of had my head in the ditch lately, as you might have noticed from the end of my last post. To start with the good news. The foot issue seems as though it was just some bad luck. It went away after a few days of rest and I was back running again. Bad news is I am basically back to square one, volume and intensity wise. I'm pretty sure a good portion of my fitness is still there but my knee has now been giving me more trouble on my bike and swim and none on my run. That being said toady will be my 5th day off in a row, as the chiropractor suggested, and tomorrow I'm going to start off with an easy 10-15mins run.

From here on out is basically going to be training based on feel. Unfortunately, I don't think I will be able to do any real workouts for the remainder of the summer.  I might race the Timmins Triathlon and use it as a little warm up and race it easy, but I still plan on racing in the Toronto Triathlon Festival since I've already signed up. I'm not sure my fitness will qualify me for world's in Edmonton next year, but I'm definitely going to give it my best shot. The rest of the summer will probably be spent just building a proper base. Being that I've more or less dropped my expectations for this season I should have plenty of time to get things right this year. It's extremely early to be building a base, but who knows, maybe I will make a breakthrough come Indoor Track season and I will be able to race for Western. Highly doubtful though considering I hardly even did track in high school. Speaking of Western, I spoke with Guy Schultz about the standards they look for when making the cross country team and I will be no where near those standards come September so I am going to have to push my cross country goals back another year.

Work has been going alright so far, but I've definitely decided that the mining industry isn't for me. All the general skills and knowledge I'm gaining this summer will come in handy later, but something about mining just seems to put me to sleep.

Until next time,
Matt Mahaffy

More problems....

So this week I took it easy. My knee was definitely tender from the work done at the chiropractor's. I did 1500m easy swim on Wednesday, 1000m easy swim and biked to and from the pool on Friday and today (Sunday) I went for a 20min easy jog. My knee bothered me a little during the swims and yesterday during the day, but today during the run it felt good and nothing really noticeable after the run so far. The thing concerning me the most right now is my foot. During my run, at the 10min mark, the ball of my foot started to hurt, kind of like I had a rock in it. I thought maybe it was just cramping or something so I stopped for a second, but it didn't seem to go away so I made sure to tread lightly and run on the soft stuff on the way back. It has only gotten worse since the run and it is kind of scaring me because I know a lot of people end up getting diagnosed with stress fractures or something similar when they have foot problems. Luckily I have a chiro appointment tomorrow so hopefully he could see if anything is wrong. Why can't my body just cooperate. All I want to do is race.

Until next time,
Matt Mahaffy

Chiropractor appointment

I had a chiro appointment today just after work. I actually had to leave about 30mins early. I went to Timmins Chiropractic and seen Dr. Michael Popovic (I hope I spelled that right) and it was great. He seemed to narrow it down to a muscle strain (I believe he called it tendinopathy) where it attaches to the tendon. He got to work right away, no messing around, and he seemed determined to get me back to training/racing ASAP. For now he said to start off with some easy in the pool just to get moving and then see if I can do some easy running. I didn't think to ask about the biking because I didn't realize he hadn't mentioned anything about biking until I got home. I made another appointment for Monday so hopefully things go well and I can be racing by the end of the month! Not going to get my hopes up though. I realistically think I probably won't race until Timmins, which is really cutting it close for Toronto. I may decide to do some sort of time trial. Maybe take a trip down to Sudbury. More info to come.

Until next time,
Matt Mahaffy

Making waves

I wasn't planning on making a post today, but my swim went so well I had to share. I got in around 3:30, as usual, since I work until 3. I was able to get in about 1100m warmup before starting the main set. The main set was 10x50/5x100/2x200/1x400/rest 2min/1x400/2x200/5x100/10x50 on :45 base. I've been waiting for a set like this for a while, but lately we've only been doing speed work in the pool. Going into the set I felt like I was ready to nail it, but that quickly turned around. I started off by holding 40s on the 50m, 1:20s on the 100m, 2:45s on the 200m and 5:35 on the 400m. I was killing the set, but I was beginning to realize that keeping the same effort level was starting to mean holding slower times. I tried ramping up the effort as much as I could, but I knew I still had half the set to go. Of course I was slower for the second half, but not as bad as I expected. I went 5:40 on the second 400, which was really tough and from then on it became about how determined I was to finish this set. I knew if I could get through this set that I was in good shape for the summer so I really gave everything today. The second set of 200m were 2:50, and the 100m 1:25. I had the hardest part done, now it was just a matter of finishing strong. The 50m were so short that counting down was enough to keep me going strong until the end. I held around 41s for the last set of 50m and boy was my body burning up. My head is still warm as I type this. Fair enough to say, finishing a 3600m set on 45s base felt great. I am now confident that I can reach the goals that I set out in terms of swimming for the summer so now it's just a matter of keeping that swim fitness and getting my legs back to 100% so I can focus on my bike run which still require loads of work. That's all for today, but I will be back tomorrow with updates from the chiropractor.

Until next time,
Matt Mahaffy

Takin' it easy

Like I said in my previous post, I took it easy this weekend due to my knee injury acting up again. It rained all weekend so I did my bike inside on the trainer. I biked for an hour instead of two and around the 45mins mark my knee started bothering me but I switched down a gear and was able to get through the last 15mins. Afterwards it felt alright but I wrapped it for a short period of time. This morning my knee felt ok and since I really wasn't in the mood to run on the treadmill I decided to go out in the rain. I'm glad I did because it felt good and although I didn't bring my Garmin I felt like the pace was pretty solid and felt fairly easy. I only ran for 30mins as opposed to 1hour, but my knee didn't bother me at all and felt pretty good after the run. I still iced it and wrapped it just to make sure. I'm looking forward to my appointment on Tuesday and to hearing what the chiro has to say. I'm hoping he thinks I can get back to it quickly as I was looking to race in 2 or 3 weeks, but if not I will just have to be patient. Toronto isn't for another 6 weeks and I want to be healthy come cross country season so that I have a chance of making the team. My next post will be after my appointment.

Until next time,
Matt Mahaffy