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…Yet,…another banner day for our Tuesday, noon rides leaving Corpore Sano PT in Kenmore.
Three of us toured the hills of Lake Forest Park today and meandered the north-40 of Kenmore on our way back to Corpore Sano PT. All said, one hour of hills and head winds. We learned a little bit about counter steering, descending and a little bit of the eschelon.
Come join us next Tuesday!
The completion of Chilly Hilly heralds my “busy season”. These current three weeks have been no exception.
First there was Bike Swap. People were in the buying mood this year and we were able to effectively clean out our garage. We then went up to Vancouver to be with the “people” in the streets during the USA vs Canada hockey showdown. Large-loud-crowd 101 for our children.
Last Friday I was honored to give a presentation at Pacific Lutheran University’s Symposium on Sport and Recreation (www.PLU.edu). The next two days I hosted the Bronze-level course for my BikePT cirriculum. BikePT is a continuing education program that teaches Physical Therapists how to work effectively with the injured or painful bicyclist. www.BikePT.com
This coming weekend is the Greater Seattle Bicycle Expo as hosted by Cascade Bicycle Club. www.Cascade.org Cascade has moved the Expo this year to the Magnolia area. Please be advised. We will be there again this year! Please plan to stop by and say “Hi”. I will be doing a Bike Fit lecture on Sunday afternoon.
I will be at Everyday Athlete as a featured sports medicine professional consultant on the 1st and 3rd Wednesday of every month. These evenings run from 6:30-7:30pm. I will be providing complimentary 10-15 minute discussions with individuals about their activity related aches and pains. It is a great place to start with the discovery process of activity related aches and pains. “Should I really be worried about this hurt?” “Where do I start to help make the bad pain go away and get me back to my activity?”
Kirkland is lucky to have Lance, Len and Wade at Everyday Athlete!
Fun at Mt Bachelor
We had the good fortune of spending some time in Bend, Oregon last week during our childrens’ mid-winter break. Bend is awesome, hard to come back to work We had some great skiing and started making in-roads in discovering a vast network of mountain bike trails. This was our first skiing of the year (sadly). It reminded me of the importance of specific conditioning for a chosen activity if you plan to go all day. Proper conditioning/preparation for any sport will help decrease the risk of injury (acute and overuse), especially skiing.
Can’t wait to go back!
2010 seemed an eternity away. Here we are, Opening Ceremonies for the Vancouver Winter Olympics are tomorrow.
Word had it that the alpine practice sessions were cancelled yesterday due to conditions reminiscent of a typical Snoqualmie Pass day…..aka……sloppy, wet snow.
The winter Paralympics will start the week after the conclusion of the Olympics.
Both events will be spectacular in spite of weather challenges.
Amazing Awaits!
www.TeamUSA.org
www.USParalympics.org
Self portrait
Over 750 Physical Therapy professionals attended our Association’s ( www.PTWA.org ) Legislative Day. We are supporting a House Bill (HB) and a Senate Bill (SB) that would remove the ban on Physical Therapists performing spinal manipulation. Spinal manipulation is an effective treatment modality for sub-acute lowback and neck pain as demonstrated by many research papers (mostly authored by PTs). Washington state is one of only two states in the United States that does not allow Physical Therapists to perform spinal manipulation. The other state of distinction is Arkansas.
Physical Therapists are taught spinal manipulation techniques in our Washington PT schools (UW, EWU, and UPS) yet we are unable to perform them in our Washington state practice. The prime sponsor of our SB 5230 is Darlene Fairley. She is my district Senator. HB 1918 is also supported by a legislator of mine, Ruth Kagi.
My district (32nd) is well represented by Senator Fairley, Rep Kagi and Rep Chase. They do great work for us!
The first month of 2010 flew by quickly! It has also been one month since the onset of our weekly Tuesday-noon bicycle rides at Corpore Sano. Last week we had a record number of 7 participants! Three of us enjoyed the 50 degrees of sunshine today. We rode out to Woodinville and climbed up Hollywood hill. We also got to enjoy the new “Euro” round-abouts that Woodinville is putting in on Woodinville-Redmond Road. One month of weekly rides has made a significant difference for me with regards to tolerated speed on the flats, climbs, and metabolic management (meaning, I don’t “bonk” after 45 minutes of riding).
Please come join me on the Tuesday rides from Corpore Sano in Kenmore at noon! I have not had a full-on rainy day yet (hope this doesn’t jinx it!). We typically ride for about 1 hour.
At the beginning of every season I look at what I can do in my training to get faster. Add different speedwork in my running, do more hill repeats on my bike, swim more often. And every year I do see minor improvements, but they could be bigger. What I always forget about training is my brain. It’s already hard enough to fit in everything – work, family, workouts. Taking time to just sit there and visualize? Forget it, I can’t even fit in the stretching I’m supposed to do! My form of visualization is when I’m lying in bed the night before a race, having trouble falling asleep because I’ve gone to bed so early, I start thinking about the race the next day. Unfortunately that just causes me a bunch of anxiety, making sleep impossible. So then I try not to think about the race.
This year I am working on my brain. I had read that professional athletes credit visualization as part of the reason for their success, but I was skeptical. How much of a difference could it really make? But at the Seattle Half Marathon last fall, I had an experience that made me realize it was worth looking into. Here’s the long version of the story. I started consistently running in 1999, and that fall I did the Seattle Half in 2:03. I didn’t do it again because of two knee surgeries over the next 5 years. Once those were healed, I started running consistently again in 2006. I did an half marathon in 2007 with a time of 2:25. I did the Seattle Half in 2008 with a time of 2:18. I was not really surprised my times were slower because I was running slow and working on building my running base. Plus I was almost 10 years older! In 2009 I worked with a coach who felt it was time to add speed work back into my running. That was tough! The plan was to do the Seattle Half again. I did some 5K’s and 10K’s leading up to the race, and saw a lot of time improvement in those races compared to the previous years. Knowing those times and what training I had been doing, my coach set my goal time for the half to be under 2 hours. Under two hours? I was incredulous. She has got to be kidding, I thought. No way can I do that – I’ve never run under two hours, and that would be a 15 minute improvement over last year! Impossible. Not only that, I was really tired, my back hurt, blah, blah, blah.
Now you see how I set myself up for failure! I ran the race exactly according to my race plan. Start out slow, build, don’t kill myself on the hills, go all out the last 3 miles. And you know what, I did it in 2:01. To my surprise I beat my 1999 time, a half marathon PR! And as excited as I was about that, I had the nagging thought that I actually could have ran it under 2 hours. Shame on me for not believing in myself. Shame on me for telling myself I could not do it. Allowing negative thoughts to influence me.
Now I am reading and learning about what I can mentally do to train myself. I’m setting time up every day to mentally train. I’m working on relaxing, visualizing, developing positive words and phrases to use when things get difficult in my workouts. And because I am working on this everyday, I’ll be prepared in the days leading up to a big race. I won’t get anxious, I’ll have gone over the course in my head, I’ll have felt the success of crossing the finish line with a great time. I’ll be totally prepared!
Dutch licorice, the salty kind, is the candy of the day. Takes a while for this hard candy to dissolve. A good treat to keep you “nose breathing” for your endurance ride, an intensity governor of sorts and a reminder of my northern European roots.
Tuesday’s ride was great! It stopped raining 2 minutes before the ride and was no rain the entire ride. It started to rain 20 minutes after I was done with the ride. I ran into my friends Stacy Wingard and JoAnn Sittig on the Sammamish trail. They were doing a taper run as they are planning on knocking out the Rock and Roll Arizona Marathon this coming weekend. Go get’em ladies!
The Argosy Christmas boats came to visit on December 18th. Kenmore is one of Argosy’s many stops for the Christmas boats. It is incredible to watch the ships come floating up the lake in their holiday lights. As the boats got closer the Christmas music got louder. The boats stopped just outside our office at about 7pm. The main Argosy boat broadcasts via loudspeaker a Christmas concert from a local vocal group. The Combrio (sp?) Womens Choir was the performer this night. I made myself comfortable on our deck at work and enjoyed this 20 minute concert. What a way to celebrate the Holiday season!
We are hoping to have a Christmas cruise party at the office in 2010 so that you may enjoy this annual concert visitation and the season!
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