Date: 4/21/22
Training Day: 137
Miles: 4.7 (hill repeats, treadmill)
Time: 65 min
Shoes: Xero HFS
Activity: Max Strength

How It Felt: The hill repeats felt amazing, and they really got the heart rate up. The strength workout felt pretty good, and I upped my deadlift max weight!

Commentary: I’m definitely getting way more smarter in programming my hill repeat workouts. Since each “hill” was a two-minute interval, I lowered the speed to a reasonable 5.5 mph. Then I gave myself a whooping four minutes for recovery at a mere 3.5 mph. This was actually enough time for my heart rate to get back down into Zone 1, the recovery zone, for about a minute before the next interval started. Afterwards my right calf was abnormally tight and a little sore.

When I went into the private patient room to wait for my PT doc, they had a nice welcome message on the board for me. It’s the little things make a patient feel special. My appointment was with the same guy I did my gait analysis with. I assumed he remembered or wrote down what he discovered during my gait analysis even though we didn’t specifically talk about what we discussed the last time I saw him. He did say we were going to work on preventative stuff for my running and my hip.

After a ten-minute warmup on the treadmill we got to work. The exercises he had me do were basically the same ones I did for ITBS when I first went to PT. Hmmm… While I was doing one of the exercises he mentioned focusing on moving my leg straight because we wanted good form for good running mechanics. But does this have anything to do with my right glute not engaging and being weaker than my left one?

During the second exercise I felt a burn in my left hip, but when I did the other side I felt it in my right calf. I assumed this was because my right calf was already wonky from the hill repeats, so I told my PT doc. He had me stop the exercises on that side and move to a new exercise. The third exercise did the same thing, so he called it for the day.

Even though I discussed it with him during the gait analysis, I reminded him that I thought the problems on my right side all started with my right ankle back in 2011. He agreed that was probably it and said he wanted to focus on my right ankle in the next session. A step in the right direction? Anyway, I had high hopes for this PT doc, but now I’m not so sure. Next session I plan to remind him about my glute problem and see what happens.

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