Whatever works

Wow, has it really been more than a week since I updated this blog? Long weekends mess with my head. Luckily, this last one didn’t mess with my training schedule too much. I completed all of my runs last week, including the five miler on Sunday. I must say, I’m quite proud of myself — five miles is a new Hippo record! I managed to complete it in just under an hour as well, putting me around a 12 minute per mile pace for my longer runs.

One of the other things I noticed this week is that the soreness in my legs has disappeared. For the first two and a half weeks I felt like my legs were going to fall off the day after I ran any sort of distance. Now, in the middle of week four, my legs rarely feel sore the next day.

I wish this lack of soreness was a result of my increasing athletic prowess, but I think that is only a small part of it. I now have a post-run ritual involving a protein bar (or protein shake) and a rolling pin that is probably deserves most of the credit.

Let me back up for a moment.

About a week ago I came home from a run and found my husband, who is training for a full marathon, camped out in front of the television with a half-eaten protein bar running my rolling pin up and down his legs. This type of behavior is often par for the course around our house, as my handy-around-the-house husband often commandeers my kitchen utensils for some purpose or another. In the years we’ve been together, he’s turned my wooden spoon into a temporary fix for a running toilet, my plastic pitcher into a paint bucket and a stock pot, two stainless steel mixing bowls and a metal spoon into a modified pooper scooper. He calls it “innovation.” I call it “irritating.”

Needless to say, none of the above items ever re-entered my kitchen once released from his servitude. But given his track record, it was no great surprise to see the rolling pin being used for rolling something besides dough. My husband swore that eating some protein shortly after a run and using the rolling pin along his leg muscles helped with soreness the next day, so I decided to give it a shot. Guess what?

He was right. (Yes, write that one down my dear.)

At first I thought it was because all of that rolling helped break up the lactic acid built up in the leg muscles. But it seems it has been awhile since my last biology class. Apparently, lactic acid is no longer the scapegoat for exercise-related muscle soreness anymore. Amby Burfoot, a writer for Runner’s World, does a good job of explaining where our thought processes went wrong in the article, “Is Lactic Acid Really Such a Bad Thing?”

Sidenote: Props to Burfoot for using descriptors such as, “Demon Lactic Acid” and “the Darth Vader of Metabolism.” I have serious word envy.

Now I’m not exactly sure how all this protein and rolling pin business helps with soreness, but it seems to work. Have any thoughts, readers?

In the meantime, whatever works, right?