Ryan Bickerstaff

All of that swimming caught up with me a bit.  After the short speed workout on Tuesday, I did aerobic swims on Wednesday and Thursday.  I planned on doing 5×300 at 1500m pace on Friday, but I felt absolutely terrible.  Normally if I do a straight swim, I average around 7:00-7:20 per 500.  During the 1200m warmup, I was barely able to hang on to 7:30-35 pace.  It was a pretty easy decision not to do the workout after that.  Although swimming more than usual was likely a contributing factor, I think the 10:30am swim with nothing to eat but a Powerbar Nut Naturals bar in the previous 12 hours was a larger factor.

I’m into a rhythm with running now, going every other day and increasing by 1:40 each run - I was up to 25:00 yesterday.  There is a high school about a mile from where I live, and they have an astroturf field that I’m going to start running on for short amounts of time.  I’m convinced that the permanent solution to preventing new foot injuries is to strengthen my ankles and feet.  I read that if you are a forefoot runner, any instability in the ankles causing more pronation can cause much more force to be placed on parts of the foot that are not designed for that large of load factor.  So, there are a few things I’m doing.

1.  Gradually moving to minimalist shoes.  I’ve tried this in the past, but I either transitioned too fast or didn’t have the ankle stability to sustain it.  The beginning of this process includes barefoot running on the astroturf and walking around in Nike Frees occasionally.
2.  Strengthening ankles and feet.  I have some 5 or 10 pound ankle weights that I can strap onto my feet and then I just move my ankles around in various directions until fatigue sets in.  And then repeat.  I should also buy some marbles and practice picking them up with my toes, but I haven’t done that yet.
3.  Increasing hip stability.  Often times, the source of an injury can be far away from where the symptoms are.  So, while I’m increasing ankle and feet strength, I’m also doing some more hip exercises, namely side leg raises and front and back circles with the leg raises.  I noticed in some race photos that it looked like my hips were collapsing, so hopefully these exercises will increase my overall leg-foot-toe stability.

Knowing that I’d be swimming a bit less this week (~20,000m), I planned on trying to bike more.  I didn’t do as much as I thought I might, but I still managed a little more than 6 hours, including a speed and race pace workout.  I did a 30 minute ride on Tuesday, 1:30 on Wednesday (speed workout), 3:00 on Saturday (race pace), and around 1:15 easy today with a friend from school.  She’s going through the job interview process, and I’m happy I’m not having to deal with that right now.  With all the investment banks going under or cutting costs, apparently there is not nearly as much hiring and all the potential I-bankers are applying for consulting jobs.  I heard that McKinsey had like 1,000 applicants between undergrads and grads for the on campus interviews at Stanford…all for 10 or so final offers.

The joke at work is that everyone’s 401k’s have turned into 201k’s.  Personally, I wouldn’t mind having a 201k but the stock market has caused a little bit of stress lately since I’ve been saving and investing the past few years so that I could potentially survive as a professional triathlete without living race to race.  At Intuit, where I work, they’ve layed off more than 10% of the workforce so far this year.  Luckily, I’m in one of the fastest growing divisions, and I’m in a role that is pretty important for part of that growth.  I had thought about stopping work this year to pursue triathlons, but since now is a good time to earn money and reinvest for the long term, and my foot issue hasn’t completely been resolved, I plan on continuing to work for now.  My current job is really flexible, though, so I think I still have some more time I can play with to increase training while still recovering.

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