A Record-Breaking and Painful Few Days

Last Thursday, I broke my all time speed record for cycling in Prospect Park for my 20-mile route: 19.8 mph. What makes this even more astonishing is that it was just about a year ago I was proud to be able to do the same route at about 18.3mph.

At one point, I joined a group of three other riders and drafted behind the lead man. We formed a 2-2 formation and were blowing through the road. I managed to keep up with them for quite a while until they veered off. I immediately felt the power of drafting and am more confident than ever that I can participate in a high-speed road race down the line.

My enthusiasm was short lived. On Saturday, I decided to run 16-miles into Manhattan to take advantage of the Summer Streets program. The route I mapped out took me from my house, over the Brooklyn Bridge, up Lafayette Street to 4th Ave. and then on to Park Ave. According to my measure, 55th street was the eight-mile halfway point.

As soon as I started, I began to feel a strain in my right calf. However, I have found that once I get running the strain goes away. So, I really did not pay much attention to it.

Until somewhere around mile nine (roughly 34th street on the way back). The pain in my calf was becoming excruciating and a new pain was forming along the top of my foot, right along the dorsalis pedis artery and the trans crural ligament which crosses over the foot.

I tried dealing with the calf muscle by stretching. This worked temporarily and I seriously considered abandoning the run (something I had never done up until this point). By the time I got to Soho, I could not run and was walking, trying to think of a solution. I walked and tried running a bit but as soon as I started to lean forward, the artery pain on the top of my foot kicked in.

I sat down and did some stretching at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge on the Manhattan side. Sitting still seemed to work. I fought my way through the pain and ran across the Bridge to Brooklyn.

I needed to use a bathroom so I stopped in a Starbucks on Smith Street. I finished and started running again, only to be crushed by more pain on the top of my foot. I walked some more, finally stopping on Union Street and 2nd Ave.

For the first time in my running career, I simply sat down on the pavement. I was beaten and did not know what to do. The stretching was ineffective, the pain was mounting and I was afraid of doing some kind of permanent damage to my foot. There was nothing visible on the surface of the foot so I knew that it had to be a strain of some sort.

After sitting for a few minutes trying to work things out in my head, I lifted myself up and fought through the pain again. This time, I knew that if I stopped, I would never get going. So I just ran home.

Two major mistakes then followed:
1) I did not ice my leg
2) I did not have a high-protein recovery meal

The whole 16-mile run lasted 3:09:38. I ended up burning more than 2,200 calories. And while the outbound run took about 1 hour and 18 minutes, the return trip took 1 hour and 51 minutes.

Not a pleasant experience.

I began to feel better quite soon afterwards but the rest of the day was spent trying to figure out what happened and how to prevent it in the future. More to come on that.