The returning runner…

Act 70 – My in-progress cross training experiment

I sucked at swimming. Although I had managed a swimming pool for the City of San Diego as a 20-something, I struggled compared to the “real” swimmers on staff. They glided. I thrashed. My legs sank. They slipped through the water like seals – seemingly effortlessly. But here I was. Gasping through lap after lap with my sloppy attempts at flip-turns at each end. I had no choice. A half-year earlier I had smoked a 17:47 5k a few months after my 60th birthday. Now plantar fasciitis nearly crippled me. I had to grab furniture just to navigate through a room. Well…doing the swimming should keep my cardio up. I shouldn’t lose too much off my running “edge”, right? Wrong. With some great PT I clawed out of my worst bout with planter fasciitis but found I was scarcely a runner any more. My first races “back” I ran like a kinda fit old guy with no special ability for running at all.

Well…so clearly cross-training didn’t work? But then came Pilates. I had all the biases of most men (no real strength work). Yeah right, my screaming abs after the first round of Pilates quickly told me how wrong I was about that. And, I seemed to magically gain some speed in the shorter races. After luring me into Pilates, my wife’s newest plan was water aerobics.  Come on! Seriously!? Water aerobics…geez.

“Let’s do high knees on three, two, one!!!!!!!”, the instructor yelled out. Aurabella was rumored to be only 16 but she commanded the pool. I was gasping for air as I labored through our 3rd set. Ok, I could get a workout doing water aerobics…

The results

Hmmm… my resting pulse seems to have dropped from the mid- to low-40s. So, the cardio resulting from the water aerobics seems to be a positive. And, I’ve already mentioned the increased strength from the Pilates (plus improved flexibility). But, am I running faster? Well, no. Not yet. But, I’ve been training through everything and that’s the plan until a track meet in San Diego in late September and then maybe the US Masters 5k Championships in October. So…The jury is “out” for now. I’ll keep you posted ;O)

Photo: Mark Gookin, Allied Gardens Swimming Pool Manager and lame-o swimmer…