By National Masters News Publisher Amanda Scotti
We never know until we try. We masters runners often surprise ourselves either after trying a new event – a new distance or field event…..or after returning to a favorite one after doctors tell us our running days are over. Stories of transitions, comebacks and overcoming obstacles inspire us.
NMN columnist Cathy Utzschneider has one such story. Coach, middle distance runner (seven time national age-group champion), Cathy has written for over 10 years about others’ transitions. “Masters runners are inspiring – determined and ever-optimistic,” she said.
The short version of her story is this. Wanting a new athletic challenge, she added swimming to her training and entered the 2014 National Aquathlon Championships, a mile swim followed by a 10K run. A few months before it intense pain in her left knee (what turned out to be Grade 4 arthritis, multiple tears including an anterior cruciate ligament tear, a Bakers Cyst, quadriceps tendinosis etc.) she abandoned that plan. She stopped running for a year, advised to do so by several orthopedists. Then, after experimenting with treatments, she began adding a little running back into her training at the end of last year.
With some months of every other day running behind her, this past October she entered the 2016 National Aquathlon Championships in Santa Cruz. The results were beyond surprising. Placing second in her age group (W60 – 64) behind the age-group world champion, she qualified for Team USA for the 2017 World Championships in British Columbia. “It seems kind of crazy,” she said.
Here are highlights of what she learned along the way.
1. While swimming started out as work, it has become more and more fun – despite the hassles of hair, the cold, and the driving time to the pool. “I had been a swim instructor when young but that was decades ago and a lot has changed,” she said. Cathy found a masters swim coach at Boston College to work on drills. For the past two years she has swum every other day, taking lessons regularly and attending masters swim sessions occasionally. “I enjoy focusing on technique – the focus on different drills like the catch-up, early vertical forearm, the ‘11 and 1’, and the finger tip drag drill. In swimming skill is almost at least as important as fitness.”
She has enrolled in coaching classes also, certified now as a masters swim coach. In August she attended a week-long US Masters Swimming High Performance Swim Camp with 3.5 hours of swimming dialing, and 6 hours of lecture daily. “I’m also learning about the parallels between swimming and running, which is fun.”
2. Pool swimming is very different from lake swimming that’s very different from ocean swimming. Since she started, she has entered three different events. In 2015 she entered her first event, a 200 yard race in the Connecticut Masters Swim Championships. This past summer she trained with her athletes at in Walden Pond and in Maine ocean water. She entered two open water mile swims. The first was in the lake. That took 31:59. “The water was calm, the day perfect,” she said. Her second mile swim a few months later in Salem Harbor took 34 minutes “and something”. “I got slower,” she said. “There were 17 mile per hour winds and an incoming tide both working against me.”
3. Experimenting with treatments has been worth it. In 2015 she had two series of weekly injections of synovial fluid in her knee. Expensive and not covered by insurance, they worked for four or five months, allowing a few miles of running every other day. Instead of a third series of injections she ordered a pill that includes synovial fluid. Cathy has taken that pill since March of this year. “It is noninvasive, inexpensive, without known side effects (so far, at least), and it works as well as the injections. I can run a few miles every other day without pain. You need a prescription from your doctor to obtain these pills.”
4. Cathy agrees with doctors who say “Treat the pain, not the MRI.” Her NMN articles this year have included interviews with doctors who say that. Other doctors believe in treating the MRI. “I can’t predict the future – I may eventually need a knee replacement but I’m willing to risk that. For the moment I have no pain so I’m enjoying a little running. I want to live in the present on this issue.”
5. Sometimes it’s not worth setting a running goal – an interesting comment from an adjunct professor of high performance at Boston College and founder of MOVE!, an athletic coaching practice which stresses goal achievement.
“With so little running – with a base of just 15, not 50 miles a week – and not knowing how to think about a 10K (which I hadn’t raced for 11 years) after a mile swim, I just wanted to enjoy the run and do my best. In fact, I gave my husband my watch beforehand. A running goal was pointless.”
Her goal was 100% focused on the swim. “I had two swim goals, the main one being to stay calm. There were more than 100 women at the start, most of us were wearing full-length wetsuits (and I wore a neoprene cap underneath my bathing cap) because the water was cold – about 59 degrees. I wasn’t bothered by the announcement that we might find sea lions and sea otters nearby. We did. They were hanging out by the pier around which we swam. My second swim goal was to break 30:00.”
She was happy with the results. She swam the mile in 26:55 and felt lucky to run the 10K in 48:55, the fastest in her age group. And she knows she has to work on the transition. “I was almost slowest in the age group.
The zipper got stuck under the Velcro and I was convoluted like a pretzel trying to get the wetsuit off.”
Transitions in training are an ongoing challenge. The Worlds are a slightly different format: a 5K run, a 1000 meter swim, and a 5K run. There will be two transitions but no wetsuit because the swimming will be held in an inland lake during August.
NMN columnist Cathy Utzschneider has one such story. Coach, middle distance runner (seven time national age-group champion), Cathy has written for over 10 years about others’ transitions. “Masters runners are inspiring – determined and ever-optimistic,” she said.
The short version of her story is this. Wanting a new athletic challenge, she added swimming to her training and entered the 2014 National Aquathlon Championships, a mile swim followed by a 10K run. A few months before it intense pain in her left knee (what turned out to be Grade 4 arthritis, multiple tears including an anterior cruciate ligament tear, a Bakers Cyst, quadriceps tendinosis etc.) she abandoned that plan. She stopped running for a year, advised to do so by several orthopedists. Then, after experimenting with treatments, she began adding a little running back into her training at the end of last year.
With some months of every other day running behind her, this past October she entered the 2016 National Aquathlon Championships in Santa Cruz. The results were beyond surprising. Placing second in her age group (W60 – 64) behind the age-group world champion, she qualified for Team USA for the 2017 World Championships in British Columbia. “It seems kind of crazy,” she said.
Here are highlights of what she learned along the way.
1. While swimming started out as work, it has become more and more fun – despite the hassles of hair, the cold, and the driving time to the pool. “I had been a swim instructor when young but that was decades ago and a lot has changed,” she said. Cathy found a masters swim coach at Boston College to work on drills. For the past two years she has swum every other day, taking lessons regularly and attending masters swim sessions occasionally. “I enjoy focusing on technique – the focus on different drills like the catch-up, early vertical forearm, the ‘11 and 1’, and the finger tip drag drill. In swimming skill is almost at least as important as fitness.”
She has enrolled in coaching classes also, certified now as a masters swim coach. In August she attended a week-long US Masters Swimming High Performance Swim Camp with 3.5 hours of swimming dialing, and 6 hours of lecture daily. “I’m also learning about the parallels between swimming and running, which is fun.”
2. Pool swimming is very different from lake swimming that’s very different from ocean swimming. Since she started, she has entered three different events. In 2015 she entered her first event, a 200 yard race in the Connecticut Masters Swim Championships. This past summer she trained with her athletes at in Walden Pond and in Maine ocean water. She entered two open water mile swims. The first was in the lake. That took 31:59. “The water was calm, the day perfect,” she said. Her second mile swim a few months later in Salem Harbor took 34 minutes “and something”. “I got slower,” she said. “There were 17 mile per hour winds and an incoming tide both working against me.”
3. Experimenting with treatments has been worth it. In 2015 she had two series of weekly injections of synovial fluid in her knee. Expensive and not covered by insurance, they worked for four or five months, allowing a few miles of running every other day. Instead of a third series of injections she ordered a pill that includes synovial fluid. Cathy has taken that pill since March of this year. “It is noninvasive, inexpensive, without known side effects (so far, at least), and it works as well as the injections. I can run a few miles every other day without pain. You need a prescription from your doctor to obtain these pills.”
4. Cathy agrees with doctors who say “Treat the pain, not the MRI.” Her NMN articles this year have included interviews with doctors who say that. Other doctors believe in treating the MRI. “I can’t predict the future – I may eventually need a knee replacement but I’m willing to risk that. For the moment I have no pain so I’m enjoying a little running. I want to live in the present on this issue.”
5. Sometimes it’s not worth setting a running goal – an interesting comment from an adjunct professor of high performance at Boston College and founder of MOVE!, an athletic coaching practice which stresses goal achievement.
“With so little running – with a base of just 15, not 50 miles a week – and not knowing how to think about a 10K (which I hadn’t raced for 11 years) after a mile swim, I just wanted to enjoy the run and do my best. In fact, I gave my husband my watch beforehand. A running goal was pointless.”
Her goal was 100% focused on the swim. “I had two swim goals, the main one being to stay calm. There were more than 100 women at the start, most of us were wearing full-length wetsuits (and I wore a neoprene cap underneath my bathing cap) because the water was cold – about 59 degrees. I wasn’t bothered by the announcement that we might find sea lions and sea otters nearby. We did. They were hanging out by the pier around which we swam. My second swim goal was to break 30:00.”
She was happy with the results. She swam the mile in 26:55 and felt lucky to run the 10K in 48:55, the fastest in her age group. And she knows she has to work on the transition. “I was almost slowest in the age group.
The zipper got stuck under the Velcro and I was convoluted like a pretzel trying to get the wetsuit off.”
Transitions in training are an ongoing challenge. The Worlds are a slightly different format: a 5K run, a 1000 meter swim, and a 5K run. There will be two transitions but no wetsuit because the swimming will be held in an inland lake during August.