Pain pays off

There were times during the first month of starting Pilates to rehab my adductor strain that I wondered whether I was actually a Pilates practitioner who happened to do a bit of running, rather than a runner using Pilates to recuperate.

It turns out neither is the case. Richard Rossiter, the man in charge at Pilates of Boulder, quickly caught on to the fact that I have running goals at the very limit of my capabilities, and started working on all my weak areas (and there are many!).

So I soon learnt not to schedule Pilates anywhere near running, and never the day before an hard run or time trial. That's not to say Pilates is always like this; I'm sure it isn't. I've chosen to push myself hard, and Richard, who has used the system to bring himself back from a series of body-wrecking accidents, including bicycle and motorbike wrecks, has the knowledge to aid and abet me.

They say that Joe Pilates promised students a new body in 10 weeks if they did what he said. It's taken a bit longer with me, even though I've opted for Richard's intense one-on-one instruction that sometimes leaves me sitting in the car waiting to be able to lift my arms high enough to get on the steering wheel. Which is OK, because that gave my legs time to stop shaking.

Bobby McGee wanted to start us milers on circuit training a couple of weeks ago; I have been putting it off because I hurt my back, then I was too tired, then I didn't want to do it on the same day as a hard run, blah blah blah. Basically, I was a bit scared.

Well, the day after a hard Pilates session with Richard that we ran through in circuit training style, I felt so good when the aches wore off about 5pm the following night, I decided to go for a run, but we had 8 feet of snow, so I thought I'd do the circuits instead...indoors, in the living room and kitchen, and using the same three flights "course" that I use for my stair repeats with the cats.

The ease-into-it first batch of circuits are supposed to take 12 minutes. By now we should be up to session 5 and doing more exercises in 10 minutes. But I did a warm-up set in 7:30 and then started adding reps to many of the exercises. The second round I did in 8:30; still too easy, so I added more reps and did the last round in 8:50. Some of the exercises, particularly those involving the core, were ones I was struggling with at Drills last year. Now they are too easy! Unbelievable! The only hard ones for me were the "bunny hops" we do between two of the stations, which are always excrutiating.

Next "morning", inspired by too much reading of Percy Cerutty, I decide to ignore ths snow and blaze a 3-mile trail uphill from the front door to the nearest high point.
Despite the spikes of my Stabilicers, I fell a couple of times into deep soft powder.

Descending through a mini-blizzard on a 10% grade on a stretch of road on the way back, and trying to control the speed so I didn't smash my shins to pieces or lose control, I felt a weird sensation in my lower abdomen. It was as if a button had been pressed on a very expensive machine, causing exquisitely engineered components to slide and then lock into place...it was the feeling of my core automatically "locking" to stabilize me on the fast slope.

Whatever type of extra training you do as a runner, it's often difficult to see obvious benefits. It is SO good when you get in-your-face direct feedback like this.