RTTC #231 Proof of Time Half Marathon Training Weeks 5 and 6

In this episode of Running to the Castle, Dr. Ali gets real about what happens when life completely derails your training plan and why that's okay.

She walks through a chaotic few weeks of new-build home repairs, including a major shower overhaul, a family health scare, and a weeks-long air conditioning nightmare that left her with almost zero workouts.

Along the way, Dr. Ali shares her honest take on what missing two weeks of training actually does (and doesn't do) to your fitness, and how to ease back in without setting yourself up for injury or burnout.

If you've ever had to hit pause on your training, this episode is the reassurance you didn't know you needed.

Learn more about Stronger. Faster. Finisher. !

Ready to cross the finish line stronger, faster, and prouder at your next runDisney race? 

Get personalized support, smarter training, and strategies designed specifically for slow, back-of-the-pack runners who want to build a bigger buffer ahead of the balloon ladies, have time for character photos and energy to enjoy the Disney Parks. Learn more about the Stronger. Faster. Finisher. Program today and be the first to know when doors open!

Free Resources

• Follow me on Instagram @rundisneydpt
• Join the Facebook Community to get training support
• Check out FREE training plans for injury-prone runDisney runners on my website. 
• Book a Free 30 minute Call with me if you're wondering how you should train and if working together makes sense.
  
  Hi, I'm Dr. Ali
  I've been running for 15+ years and been in the rehab space since 2012 when I earned my Doctor of Physical Therapy Degree. I get injury prone runDisney runners across the finish line without feeling broken.

Transcript

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Hey, how's it going? Today I'm talking about proof-of-time half marathon training weeks five and six. This is Running to the Castle, a podcast for slow, back-of-the-pack Run Disney runners on a journey to running magical miles. Join me, Dr. Alley, as I share the secrets I've gathered as a runner, doctor of physical therapy, and coach. You'll learn the exact ways I get my clients to the castle strong, have a bigger buffer ahead of the balloon ladies, and have time to stop for character photos. Keep listening if your goal is to PR in fun, cross the finish line without feeling broken, and have energy to enjoy the Disney parks. So I had a little bit of a blunder. Um A, I meant to schedule podcast episodes for uh at the time of recording this, it was last week, but for two weeks ago at the time that this comes out. And whoopsie doodle, that did not happen. That's okay. Life happens. I had recorded two episodes, thought I had edited and scheduled them. That is not the case. That is not what happened. And this just goes to show that it's this stuff's not the end of the world, right? Same with running, not the end of the world if you miss a workout. And that's really what I'm gonna talk about this week on this episode. But um uh it just it didn't happen. And so I posted them last week and I just happened to miss a week of episodes. I'm so sorry for the um lack of episode because I do know that I have some very regular listeners. I greatly appreciate that. Thank you so much, and I'm so sorry that there was a mishap. I really did think that I had scheduled, edited and scheduled them. It didn't happen. Oh well, but this may give you some clarification on why that happened. So weeks five and six, I am doing these episodes together because they are going to be boring. Spoiler alert, I didn't work out at all in week five or in week six. It did not happen. Well, actually, no, that is a lie. I worked out one day in week six, and I'm gonna tell you all about it. So, week five, that was the week starting June 1st, Monday, June 1st. And this week, we had to have work done on our shower. So, for anybody who's new here, I moved into a new build home in October. Well, we closed in September, we moved in in October, we had some work done, like painting the house and just a few odds and ends done before we moved in. We moved in officially at the beginning of October. And the way a new build works is you have a one-year warranty on pretty much everything. I'm sure there's some kind of stipulation in there, but for all intents and purposes, everything. And so if anything comes up, you just contact the builder and they come and look at it. They see if they can fix it. And if they can, they will. If they can't, they won't. So, as an example, when we first moved in, the air conditioning in our primary bedroom did not work. They came out, they supposedly fixed it, and it seemed to work fine. I say supposedly because you'll hear part of that story. Fixed it, that was fine. Um, we had electrical outlets that weren't turned on. Um, before we moved in, they had forgot to put the backsplash in our kitchen, which we had bought and paid for. And luckily, they we noticed that on the last walkthrough. So they did that before we even moved in. But as part of that, they had to turn off the electrical outlets on that wall and did not turn them back on. So we found that out when we moved in and you call them and do this. So anyway, a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that in our primary bathroom, otherwise known as a master bathroom, I don't, I use primary bathroom, the main um bath that's attached to mine in Royal's bedroom. And so we have a stand-up shower. It has a ledge, they call it a curb, and then there's glass on top of that. And so at the corner of this curb, there is grout and tile meets together. So where that grout and that tile met was opening. It wasn't the tile was not broken. There actually was no crack in the grout, but it was separating. And it was very obvious to even me that it had not, either it hadn't cured properly or there was just a small, small gap when they put it in and water was getting in. And then expanding the wood that's underneath it and making this open up. The moment I noticed it, I put in a work order request and they were out within the week to come look at it. They came and looked at it on Friday. Then they had to order pieces, they had to order more tile because they had to take out all of that tile and they needed to order more. So that took about a week to come in. So then they were going to start on Monday, June 1st. Great, no problem. With this, if you've ever had work done on your house, it is constant bustle. People are going in and out. People are calling you constantly. You're trying to communicate with some people who don't speak the same language as you and you don't speak the same language as them. And this could be going for multiple languages amongst multiple people. This supposedly was such a big job that it required a customer service representative from our builder on site during this whole process. And thank God she was there. Jean was a godsend to us for this week. And she was very helpful. Um, at times I felt like she was pushing back on questions we had, but that is also her job where she has to make sure that she's doing right by the company and by us. I get it. Nobody was mean, nothing like that. But there were times where I was just like, mm-mm, don't tell me my opinion. Mm-mm. We don't do that. But for the most part, like, thank God she was there. And we have chairs in our in our bedroom. And so she just sat in those chairs all week with her iPad doing whatever kind of work that she needed to do. But she kept on top of the people who were there. And she made sure people were coming in and out and they were doing what they needed to do. And so this was just constant bustle from 8 a.m. to it was supposed to be 4 p.m. But most days everybody stayed later than that. And Jean could not stay later than that. She was not approved to stay past four. So we had to, you know, kind of monitor how things were going. So I was trying to manage new stronger faster finisher member signups. And I had already planned a large gap between stronger faster finisher signups and when the program officially starts. And it may seem weird to sign up for a program and then have to wait three weeks because that's about how long they had to wait. I per I do it that way for the sole reason that it takes me, historically, it takes me six to eight hours to program per person that signs up. And that's that is, you know, a good average. Some people actually take longer and some people it goes faster. So it takes a long time to program. And I'm so happy to do it. I'm so happy to do it because I I love like getting somebody on the right program for what they need to do for their training. But it does take a long time. So that's why it's three weeks because I anticipated I would have about 15 people sign up for Stronger Faster Finisher. Spoiler alert, 34 new people signed up. Okay, I'm interrupting the episode for a second because I am recording this in two parts by by accident, not planned. Like it's not really an accident, but I had to do it. So if you're watching this on YouTube, you can see it's a different day. I am wearing different clothes, my hair is done differently. It's different. So while I was recording this podcast episode, I got a phone call from Royal. And I even thought, you know what? I'm I'm just gonna let this ring and I'll call him back after. But something told me to pause and answer. And I did. And I ended up spending the rest of the day taking him to the doctor and to get an x ray of his hand. He fell, and I was not with him at the time. So I had to go get him. Luckily, he did not hit his head. He's a little bruised up, a little sore. We did get an x-ray of his hand and his wrist. The results still aren't in. And it's a little confusing because we we went to, I called his doctor and I said, Should we come see you or should we go to urgent care? And he said, Come see me. I can order the x ray. You can go do a walk-in x ray at such and such facility, do the walk-in x ray, and then come see me later today and we should have the results and I'll be able to read it and we can go from there. Well, by the time it was all said and done, he didn't have the results. And we really thought that he would have. He didn't. We still don't have the results, and it's a couple of days later. And so what we think something got screwed up because we were a walk-in and they told us that there would be a wait. Well, we waited two hours. And you probably just gasped at that because maybe we shouldn't have waited two hours and we shouldn't have. So here's the thing because it wasn't urgent care, it was just an imaging center. X-rays, MRIs, CT, mammogram, like they do all sorts of imaging there. And they had told us since you're a walk in, it's gonna be a wait. Have a seat, we'll we'll get to you when we get to you, essentially. And so we had no idea what a wait would mean. Is that 30 minutes? Is it an hour? So finally, two hours went by. And the the waiting room was packed. Like there was barely anywhere to sit. At first, Royal and I couldn't both sit. And then finally, like some space cleared out. We went and sat. And we plan to be there for a while because we knew we would have to wait. So I had crochet, he had his phone, he's just watching it. He's in a lot of pain and we're just waiting. So then finally, at the two-hour mark, I went up to the front desk and I was like, Do we have an update on um walk-in x-rays? We've been here, we checked in at this time, and now it's this time. The look on the lady's face was like, oh shoot, we forgot about you. That kind of look. And she she was like, We're gonna get you right back. And so she did. And the x-ray tech was like, I am so sorry. I can't believe, like, I don't know what happened. And turns out there was some kind of glitch in the check-in system. And he never got pushed forward in the system. Like we checked in, we handed back the paperwork, but the next step never happened. And so he didn't get pushed through that he was ready to be seen. So we shouldn't have waited two hours. Should I have gone up sooner? Maybe, but it was so busy in there that there almost was no time to go up to the desk and ask that question. And other people had been going up and asking. And I will say the receptionist there was not nice. The one that was fielding the question most of the time was like, we'll get to you when we get to you, kind of response. And so didn't really invite me to go up. But should I have checked in before two hours? Yeah, probably. Um, you live and you learn. It was better than having to go to an urgent care because at least these people aren't actively sick, right? Like they don't have a cold, the flu, COVID, whatever. Like my my husband is immunocompromised. He takes medications, so his immune system is wiped out. We did not want to have to go and sit in a scenario like that. So at least sitting and waiting in a standard outpatient imaging only center where people are less likely to be contagious was a win for us. And we understand that like this kind of stuff happens. There's waits, like it's walk-in. We we get it. So should we have waited two hours? No, because the x-ray tech was like essentially, I'm bored back here. Everybody else, it seems like was doing MRIs, CTs, and stuff like that. But you live and you learn. Next time I will go up sooner. Anyway. Well, I hope there's not a next time. Oh gosh. He m I've been joking all week. Royal, you you must have been thinking, I am just bored. Allie is bored. She's not busy enough. Let's, let's mix it up a little bit. I jest. He knows I'm kidding. We we joke about these kinds of things. Um overall, we think he, I don't know. He's he's overall doing okay. We don't know if it's broken, but since there was this glitch in the system, they actually canceled his appointment. So now he's getting emails, text messages, phone calls saying, hey, it's time to schedule your x-ray. We already did it. So we're worried that it didn't get pushed down the line to get read. So now we have to call. And there just have been no minutes in the day this week. This is, you know, these past three weeks have been hectic for us with the shower and the AC unit. And I will talk about that in a second. And then now this, it's been hectic. So when we saw the doctor, he was like, okay, well, I don't think it's broken. And I, this is gonna sound weird. I do trust the doctor's opinion, like as a whole. But in this specific instance, the reason he says it's not broken, I have pause with because he said, because I can touch it, it's not broken. And people with high pain tolerances walk on broken bones in their feet all of the time. They use broken hands all of the time. Royal won't let me touch it, but he did let the doctor touch it. And I could see him wincing through the pain and being like, yeah, it's fine, it's fine. And me being having been with him for 14 years, married, next week, it will be 10 years. I know the man. He is not fine. So maybe it's not broken, but something more than just like a minor muscle pull or bump on the wrist, I do believe is going on. And I have experience with this as a physical therapist. I know what it looks like. I not to toot my own horn, I have caught many things. I have caught broken bones on people before. I have caught ligament tears on people before. I have caught muscle tears on people before. I have caught a brain tumor in somebody, and I have caught somebody actively having a stroke. I I don't think that this is as minor as they're letting on. And maybe it's it's only because Royal's body has no system to fight, even a minor injury. So if it happened to me, it would be a minor injury, but for him, it's not. So anyway, the pain, it's been a couple of days. The pain has not gotten better. The pain is still bad in the middle of the night, which orthopedic injuries, both broken bone, muscle strains, tears, ligament sprains, tears, those get worse in the middle of the night. We're gonna keep an eye on it. We're gonna finally get these x-ray results read, but he still has decreased range of motion. He still can't put full weight through it. He still is just so ginger with it. Even like drying himself off with a towel, out of the shower, putting on lotion, he will hold that hand still and rub it with his other hand or like washing his hand. It's he's keeping that hand still and like using his other hand to wash it, but not actively using that hand. So there's avoidance techniques here. Anyway, that's a lot of information to say this is why this is a two-part episode. So please forgive the interruption and the lack of cohesive coherence to this episode. I'm gonna try and pick up where I left off. And I basically was saying that I have all these new Stronger Faster Finisher members. And if you join Stronger Faster Finisher, thank you so much. Welcome. There is a large gap between when you signed up and when you start because it takes me so long to program for everybody. And it is going faster because I have implemented some new changes, but it it takes me six to eight hours per person to program. And that's if I have all of the information. And so that's why there's a like a three-week gap between when you sign up and when stronger, faster finisher actually starts. And so I was doing that. Plus, I was dealing with the shower during week four. And so I just I got zero workouts done. Is it the end of the world? No, it's not the end of the world. It's not even close. Not even close. I made every day a rest day and I made the long run be a D-load week. So normally I recommend a D-load week every five to six weeks. That's how it's built into the training plan. But you can move them to whenever they need to be. So this week, week four, week five, I mean, was not supposed to be a D-load week. It was supposed to be another week. Next week, actually week six. I just bumped it up a week and I that's okay. And now in my stronger faster finisher group, it automatically updates. So if you choose D-Load week in your training schedule, it will automatically update your next forever weeks of training. So I don't have to go in there and be like, okay, well, they made this week a D-Load week. So that means I need to adjust next week's training. Because if you've been listening for any length of time, you know there is no makeup miles and you don't just skip that week of running, right? If you are following the 10% rule, we can't just go from five miles one week, have a D-load week, you know, instead of doing five and a half miles, which would be the 10% increase, let's say that five and a half miles we were supposed to change and now it's a D-load week. Well, we can't go from five miles, do a D-load week, or skip the week, and then go to six miles, because that one mile difference, that's more than 10%. But when we go from five to five and a half to six, and it would technically be like six point oh five miles, right? If we're doing 10%, because 10% of five miles is half mile. So that's 5.5. 10% of that is 0.55. So five and a half plus 0.55 is 6.05, right? But going from five to 6.05, yeah, maybe we can do that one time. But if you keep going on that 10% trajectory in that order, it's going to catch up with you. And it usually catches up with you by week five or six, which is time for another G-load week. But now you've been adding on, yes, week after week, you've technically been adding on 10% after the 6.05, but you had that sudden increase before that. So you've overloaded at the top, and then it's still overloaded because you started at the wrong number. Okay. So now, or what used to happen is uh an SFF runner would say, Hey, I missed a week. What should I do next week? And I would have to go in and change all of the long runs. Now I now I don't do that. You just choose D load week and it automatically adjusts, even if you have to do two D load weeks in a row, like I had to do. And so on average, running more and more with from starting at the wrong one or not following the 10% rule, that I said six weeks earlier, but it's like a six to eight week time frame, which is why I do six weeks as the D-load week, it's you're going to notice it. So I made this week a week five a D-load week. I should have done 6.2 miles for the wrong long run. The plan, I have it written here. I said I'll do that next week and then just continue following the plan from there. It it's fine, right? Like I can't make every week be like that, right? But every once in a while, a couple of weeks in a row, it's fine. So then week six ended up being shot to you know what as well. Because while we were waiting for this shower to be fixed, so they had to tear out our entire shower. They had to tear out the curb, they had to tear out the pan, they had to re-mud it, they had to re-level it, they had to put in water barrier and build it all back up. So we couldn't use the shower, obviously. Because of that, we used our guest room shower. We still slept in our bedroom, but we used the guest shower and we noticed how hot it was. And this week, week six of my training, it was 104 degrees most days at its hottest. And so it was toasty in there. So Royal ended up buying one of these readers to see what temperature it was blowing out of the air conditioning. And I put a thermometer in the room. And it was like 20 to 25 degrees hotter in that room than it was in our great room. And it did not make sense because when we moved into this house, it was supposed to be the great room is right next to the guest bedroom. And so that thermostat for there was supposed to handle that room. And we had it blasting and nothing was happening. So called, had HVAC come out, checked it out. When they were there, they saw that the units had been installed backwards. We have two air conditioning units. One is a bigger unit, one is a smaller unit, depending on what part of the house it's going to. So they were installed backwards. So the smaller unit was going to the bigger part of the house, and the bigger unit was going to the smaller part of the house. In the ceiling, in the attic, they also swapped the coils. I don't know what those are, but they said they swapped the coils. They were going to the wrong units. Those are the things I think that connect to the thermostat. So we weren't actually controlling the correct units there either. And on top of all of that, there was a leak in the HVAC system. The Freon was leaking out somewhere toward the end of the unit near where the units are in our yard, in our side yard. So they had to come back because they couldn't do the work on the day that they found it out because it was going to be a whole day's worth of work. Well, we also had to go out of town. We travel out of town for my husband's health care. We go to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and it was time to go for some tests. And he gets Botox for migraines. So off we went. The guest room was going to be used by our guest, our dog sitter. So we told her we were like, if it gets too hot, that is an emergency. Like if it's stifling and you can't handle it, the great room AC does work. So you can sleep there or call us and we will put in an emergency call. I could not stress enough how much of an emergency it being too hot would be for her. And to just blast the AC if she had to or call us. I I think I spent 10 minutes talking to her about this. I think I freaked her out. But to me, it is an emergency. I have no idea what her situation is. Can she control her own temperature? Like, can she regulate? I don't, I don't know, right? And it's a it's an emergency with it being this hot. So I was like, we do what you need to do on the air to make it so that you're cold. Sleep where you need to sleep and call me if you need it. And she she made it work. We had lots of fans. Um, she they hung out in the great room most of the day. She kind of just followed wherever Levi went. If Levi left the bedroom, she was like, I left the bedroom because he clearly was going to seek out where it was cooler. And so we did that. And then when we came back, they came, they were supposed to come on Wednesday to come fix the AC. And we got a call. Oh no, they did come on Wednesday and they were supposed to do the test and they were supposed to swap the AC units. So they came, they were supposed to be done by 4 p.m. Well, 5 p.m. rolls around and they're just finishing up. And they were like, okay, well, we'll be back at 8 a.m. tomorrow. So we were like, oh my God, like it's still not fixed. They had swapped the AC units, they hadn't found the leak yet, and they hadn't finished switching the coils. They'd done a lot of the work, but hadn't finished. So we were like, okay, see you at 8 a.m. tomorrow. Like, this is not ideal, but what else are we gonna do? Well, at eight o'clock the next day, we get a phone call. Hey, other emergencies came up. We aren't gonna be able to come out today. Earliest is tomorrow, friend. I was livid. I was so mad. I was so mad, I was shaking. This has gone on for so long. And I got on the phone and I said, You're telling me that new emergencies have popped up, and you're telling me that my emergency is no longer an emergency, even though you caused it nine months ago when you built this house. This is not something that we did and you started to fix it, and now you're just gonna leave in the middle of it. And she was like, I know, I understand. It's just they they they've already put out crews for the other stuff and there's nobody else. And I said, Well, and then Royal took the phone and he goes, Okay, that's fine. That's fine. Um, we're just we're gonna call another um AC company and and we'll just send you guys the bill. That's fine. We'll talk to you later. And she goes, No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, whoa, whoa, whoa, don't do that. And lo and behold, they could be there within half an hour. So they came on Thursday and they finished up switching the coils and then they're searching for the leak. Well, then we hear that they need to cut into our stucco to search for the leak because it's going to be in the wall right near the AC units that are outside. And we're like, no, nope, nope. Can't you go from the inside? Because fixing drywall is a lot easier than going through the stucco and the chicken wire and then getting people back in to fix it and stucco it again and get the colors to match in 105 degree heat. So Royal said, Can't we just do it from the inside? And they were like, Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're okay doing that. And we said yes. So we have an IKEA closet and it's it's in, it's it's set up in our closet, and that's where the AC units are on the other side of. So we had to pull out two units, they had to cut this big hole in it. It was a big production. Where do you think they found the leak? If you follow me on Instagram, you already know the answer. The leak was found outside because they opened up our wall and couldn't find a leak. So they went back outside, sprayed their special soapy soap, and found that the leak was outside the whole time. And walls did not need to be cut into. They did come the next day to fix the drywall and patch it up, and we're like, fine, whatever. So now it's been another whole week of no workouts for me. I couldn't do my long run on Friday like I had planned. It's just been stressful. So instead of doing the long run on, I think this was Friday, I decided, okay, you know what? I am just, I am gonna do a walk. I'm I'm gonna do a 45-minute walk, and I did, but I procrastinated it and I was annoyed and and and and and excuse after excuse, whatever. I had 15 minutes, then I had to have a phone call with Royal with somebody. So 15 minutes, and then right after that, I went back out and I finished up the last 30 minutes. So you can split up your workouts every once in a while to make it work for you. That worked out fine for me. That's what I needed to do to get it done. Overall, is missing two weeks of workouts going to make or break me? Absolutely not. Especially because I didn't get out of shape, right? Like after my last race, I took the normal rest and recovery weeks that I should. That does not take you out of shape. And then I got right back into it. And I was quote unquote recycling miles. If you've been following along, you know that means like I'm not starting all the way back at zero. Um, I can start back at 3.1. I don't have to follow the 10% rule because it's not new miles. I had trained up for the 10 miler at Run Disney. And so then I just dropped back down to, you know, 3.4, excuse me, yeah, 3.1 or four miles. And then I just increased from there. So that's one of the benefits of never taking too long of a break, not taking more than two or three weeks. Three weeks is pushing it. That really will need some adjustments to the long run. But about two weeks, you're not gonna have to make major adjustments. You're you're going to adjust your speed workouts, your first speed workout back, you're gonna adjust your first run back to just like get in the groove of it again instead of like going all out and sprinting. And I'll talk about that for next week on how I adjusted for coming back from it. But it's not gonna make or break me. My body won't really notice that much of a difference. So if you've missed a couple of weeks, take a deep breath. It's not the end of the world. Start getting back with the way that you can. If that means 45 minute easy runs, if that means 30-minute easy runs, maybe it just means a 45 minute walk. Do something that's relatively light to jump back into it and get back into it. And if you're in stronger, faster, finisher, just make sure that those weeks that you missed, your long run is marked as D load for the weeks that you missed, because that will adjust your long runs automatically. So then you can be sure that it is a safe amount for you to be running. Thank you so much for listening to this wild adventure of mine with these new build woes. It is very much first world problems. I understand that, but in my life, it has become a problem. But please know that if you have to miss workouts, it's not the end of the world. Do something relatively easy and light for you to get back into it. So then you don't feel excessively sore, excessively tired during those first couple of days once you do get back into your routine.