One Cold Month

February is in the books! It was a crazy month. I had a big DNF at the Frozen Heart 50k, the kids missed 8 days of school for snow, and I think I busted something in my hip. Here's the final tally:

Swim: 17,950 yards, 6 practices
Bike: 23 miles, 2 rides
Run: 84 miles, 9 runs, 1 DNF, 2 runs after the 15th
Strength: 7 times
Yoga: 13 times

Swimming went great until the city closed down pools for snow on the roads (which is the right call). I've been doing more cycling lately to try and vary my cross training and strengthen the quads some. Lots of squats, lots of core and lower back work. I was also hitting the arms/shoulders/chest pretty hard to since the pools were closed. Hopefully this will make me a stronger swimmer!

This hip thing. I've been avoiding addressing it for a while now. After the DNF in Maryland, I went for an easy 5 miles on the treadmill the following thursday. Now giving 4 days of recovery after an 8 mile run in the snow normally wouldn't be required. But by friday, I could barely stand up. It feels like the problem is either in the hip flexor tendon or the muscle directly beside that tendon. Not a bone problem, definitely not an IT Band problem. There are some deep glute muscles (piriformis anyone?) that may be involved. So the best response to the problem is to take a few weeks off from running, get in some regular yoga, and up the strength training game to specifically work abs, glutes, lower back, adductors, abbductors, and squats. I'm also using the time to bike more and swim more. If this is an overuse pain, the likely cause is that I'm not balancing the leg muscles used in biking. and, you know, crystal meth junkies losing their teeth is also an overuse problem. hopefully this hip thing will go away soon.

The snow days continue getting me into trouble. I have added some other races to the schedule. And as scary as it is to add more marathons to the year while nursing hip pain, I have picked another race to get Maryland knocked off of the list. The Potomac River Marathon is on the MD side of DC, so I get to visit lots of family and friends while I'm in the area for the weekend. That's going to be a blast, and it looks like a really fun November marathon. I'm also diving in to the Belmead Trail Fest, finally stretching my trail legs to the 50 mile distance in Virginia in October. This should be pretty amazing, it's a 10 mile loop we run 5 times.

Swimming races have also been in the registration docket. Locally, I signed up for the Jordan Lake Open Water Challenge and the Big Deuce again this year, for 2.4 and 2 miles respectively. These are lead up races to the big dog, the 12 mile Swim Around Charleston. This will be my first time swimming longer than 10k. It is an epic achievement, and there may be some other swimmers from my team coming down to swim it as well.

I can't wait. Since I'm not running right now, and likely will only run sporadically through the summer, I'll be swimming a lot. My goal is to get up to 5 team practices every week (that's about 15,000 yards every week) which would be really high volume. I want to put in the work to get faster in the water. This will also help prepare me for the fall marathons by staying in incredible shape throughout the summer.

The snow days had other casualties too. Kelley decided we needed to play around my hair since I actually have some now. I think the result came out really well, and it's going to be a nice fresh look for spring!

insane. It's crazy hair! Actually the name is called the Messy Slickback. And I'm so glad this snow has finally melted.

Tomorrow I'm going to find a winner for my SaltStick giveaway! get in there.