Post-workout soreness

Workout
Yesterday: 7.25 mile tempo run (3.75 miles at 7:04 pace), average 7:50 pace
Today: 7.45 mile recovery run, 8:39 pace

Yesterday I was VERY sore.  All over.  You may be surprised that running isn't the culprit.  Sometimes running makes me sore, although after about 13 years of it, my body is pretty accustomed to long runs so running soreness only occurs in isolated places.  This particular bout of soreness can only be attributed to flag football.

I play on a women's intramural flag football team at the University of Texas.  It is composed entirely of female graduate students, the majority of whom are chemical engineers, and we call ourselves the CHEetahs.  I talked a little bit about flag football in a previous post.  On Sunday, we had a regularly scheduled game, followed by a make-up game on Monday night.  For any given game, the total amount of active time is around 90 minutes.  We warm up for about 45 minutes before the game and then play for 45-55 minutes.  For someone accustomed to long runs, this is not a lot of time, but it is deceptively tiring!  The morning after a football game (or sometimes practice) I am often reminded of all the muscles I have in my body that do not get a workout when I run.  These were the muscles that were very achy yesterday; including but not limited to: my lower back, my shoulders, my neck, my butt, my outer thighs.  Additionally, on Monday night, we were down a player and I had to step into the role of rusher, a position I almost never play because...I am not fast.  I can run for a really, really long time, but my sprint leaves much to be desired.  Anyways, I gave it my best effort, and found myself repeatedly running at the quarterback, hand outstretched, grasping for her flag belt,  and slamming my thumb into something hard. I jammed my thumb pretty badly at least twice during the game such that on Tuesday morning I could not grip anything.  This made pipetting, an integral part of my research oriented days, quite difficult.

The action of pipetting, used to accurately
aliquot small volumes of liquid.  Notice the
 importance of the thumb.

On the upside, my body feels much better today!  My thumb has returned to a normal size and the majority of the pain has subsided.  The aforementioned sore muscles are hardly noticeable now.  Time really does heal all wounds.  So, this experience begs the question, how do we handle post-workout soreness*?  I have some rules of thumb that I apply to my own running lifestyle that have served me well over the years.  First, you can almost always push through muscles soreness and do not need to be concerned.  Muscle soreness is caused by micro-tears in the muscle fibers, which the body repairs using amino acids found in nutrients (or synthesized).  Additionally, a build-up of by-products, including lactic acid, can contribute to muscle soreness.  Muscles soreness often occurs after a hard effort, and its generally good to follow any hard effort with a leisurely recovery run, cross training or a rest day, giving the muscles time to repair.  Second, pay attention to all joint/bone pain.  While muscle soreness is a normal side effect of exertion, joint or bone pain is not and could indicate something more serious.  If you are unable to keep a normal stride, stop running.  If the pain does not alter your stride, back off and monitor how it affects you.  Is it pronounced on the uphills? downhills? hard efforts? when not running? when walking downstairs? when applying pressure?  This can help you identify what the source of the pain is and will be useful if it escalates to the point that need to see a doctor.  Third, light aerobic activity can alleviate soreness.  After two days of flag football, I was feeling pretty sore and the idea of a hard tempo run seemed awfully painful.  However, getting out for that run definitely sped up my recovery by improving my circulation, flushing by-products from my muscles, and stretching out my leg muscles.  I often find that a recovery workout is more useful than a complete rest day.  Swimming has the same effect for me.  Finally, embrace the ice bath.  It's not just folklore people, an ice bath after a hard workout really speeds up recovery.  Soaking the muscles in cold water reduces swelling and increases circulation of the blood to extremities (to keep you warm).  This means freshly oxygenated and nutrient rich blood is sent throughout your muscles, flushing the oxygen and nutrient poor blood back towards the core, where by-products can be removed. While it might be uncomfortable sitting in a tub of ice, I like to think of it as a badge of honor.  For example, you can brag to your friends about how tough you are.  Not only did you run 20 miles before 10am, but you sat in a tub of ice for 10 min naked!

So I'm hoping to be back to my limber self for tomorrow's anticipated hill workout.  I have a little break from flag football until Sunday's practice.  We are now in the post-season because we made it to the playoffs!  In case you were wondering, we lost on Sunday night but came back strong for a 34-0 win on Monday.

*Disclaimer: I am not a doctor or a physical therapist.  I have no expertise in this area, only personal experience.

Cooler weather & some flag football

Workout
Today: 6 leisurely morning miles; 8:18 pace
Yesterday: 2 hours of flag football (more on this below!)

So the cooler weather has finally made its way to Austin.  This week has been amazing, with morning temps in the low 60s and daytime highs around mid 80s.  Running in this cooler weather has been awesome!  On Monday I had a great run in the dark/dawn light.  I was watching my friend's dog Ike who is an amazing running partner.  He is some kind of catahoula/boxer mix, but ultimately one of the fastest dogs I know and he has lots of endurance.  He loves running with me, so I took him for a 6 miler along the Shoal Creek Trail, so he was off leash most of the time.  Ike is a very unique dog; for example, he likes fishing for rocks.  Check out this video:

This morning I could not run with Ike, instead I ran on my own; 6 miles with two loops around Mueller Lake, which is just east of I-35.  I enjoyed the run because it was cool out and I started just as the sun was coming up.  But, my legs were pretty tired.  That is because I played two hours of flag football last night.

As I mentioned in my first post, I am a ChemE grad student at UT Austin.  For the past 6+ years, the ladies in my department have maintained an all girls IM flag football team called the CHEetahs (get the pun?).  This is my third year on the team and because a lot of the older girls have graduated in four years, it also makes me the most experienced girl on the team.  For this reason, I inherited the captain duties, which include recruiting new people to join, holding practices, teaching the new people the rules, registering our team, and sadly playing the quarterback position.  See out previous captain was very athletic and motivated and could throw well.  Because of her, we went to the Women's finals the last two years and because much more competitive and organized.  But, she graduated this summer and because she can't play anymore we needed a new quarterback.  No one else really wanted to do it, which left me.  Having never played any competitive ball sports except soccer (in which throwing the ball is almost always illegal), I was not well equipped to QB.

Our first game was on Sept 12, and we got creamed, 19-0.  Granted, the team we played against was very good and athletic and experienced (I recognized almost everyone from previous seasons), it was demoralizing for me.  I wasn't able to move the ball up field efficiently at all, and we only got 2 first downs.  I did notice massive improvements in our defense from the first to second half, though.  All of the other teams TDs were in the first half, none in the second.

Our second game was last night and in between the two we have been practicing twice a week and working through the kinks.  We are a relatively young team, with only 3 experienced players.  In IM football, there are 7 girls on the field at once. With only a 9 person team, scrimmaging at practice has been a real challenge.  We try to drag guy friends out to play with us, but it can be hit or miss.  Fortunately, my patient boyfriend is willing to throw the football around for hours with me and my range and accuracy are getting better.  And while determination/practice have led to significant improvements, I still feel quite limited in my abilities. 

Last night's game was a relative success, we won 24-0.  Granted, the team we played was much less skilled than our first opponent, but they weren't terrible.   Two of the TDs were running plays with the running back, one was a pick-6, and one was run in by me!  Overall, the throwing game wasn't great, I still need to work on that, but it was a big morale boast for me and my teammates to have a successful game.  We of course celebrated with a trip to Amy's ice cream, where I had a delicious fruit smoothie (I hadn't eaten dinner yet!)