I need pool running inspiration.

I feel you--pool running really, really sucks. I know of only a few people that were able to stick with a pool running regimen for an extended period but they were all successful.

First of all, it's not a miracle activity. None of these guys were running PRs right after they got out of the pool. However, none of these guys were running way off of their PRs either. Basically, the few guys I've known who really stuck with it were able to come back next season and run really well. The guys who didn't stick with it were coming back next year.

Try some mantras/self hypnosis for inspiration:

- "Everyone gets injured sometime. Everyone ELSE loses fitness. I am the only one strong enough to be here everyday. The hardest interval or race is not as hard as this. When I am sprinting with 300 to go next spring the pain will be welcome because I will be doing something fun. My will is stronger than my emotions. I don't just work hard when it's fun."

milers left out wrote:

Does anyone have any positive experience with using pool running as a way of come back fit from an injury? I'm on a long stint of mind-numbing, spirit-crushing, tedious pool running (60-120 mins a day) due to an AT injury that took me out just when I was running massive PRs. I'm usually not one for insirational stories, but this is getting pretty close to breaking me. And I certainly don't want to wind up on the couch watching my base just disappear.

I feel your pain. I've been exclusively pool running for about 3 weeks now as I recover from a stress fracture. Biking and other cross training activities were putting too much pressure on the fracture, so I've been stuck in the pool. Not much you can do to get over the tedium. 120 mins seems on the high side if you are actually working hard in the pool- are you doing intervals or just getting a steady effort in? I would try implementing intervals to break it up. Also, are you using an aqua jogger or not? If you haven't been, then try doing it without the jogger and you will get a much better workout. It might take a few days to get adjusted and comfortable.

Good luck and hang in there.

Listen, been there. Doing long steady eforts in the pool really sucks so try mixing it up a bit with some interval type training. 1min-2-3-4-3-2-1 efforts with 1min rest, say 3-4 times. It's still boring but at least your heart rate stays up. Too easy to flake out in the pool and just tread water for an hour with no training effect. It's not the miracle cure but at least you will hold onto some of your conditioning.

i am doing the same thing, also from AT, also just as I was running really well....

i'm finding that lots of intervals, ladders, pyramids are much more bearable than long steady stuff, but i'm only doing about an hour/day at the moment. 120 mins of anything will suck. i should be there in a few weeks.

i'm in my own pool, so i can play music, which helps. if you're in a public pool, some sort of ipod in a plastic bag will help. Usually the kids are also jumping aropund teh pool at the same time, which is annoying, but at least it is a distraction.

I always have a beer afterwards.

sorry, not very inspiring

attach long rubber bands to the side of the pool and grab them. Use these as resistance and you will really get your heart rate up!

Mark Spits in the pool wrote:

try mixing it up a bit with some interval type training. 1min-2-3-4-3-2-1 efforts with 1min rest, say 3-4 times. .

Agreed. Use hard intervals, almost exclusively, and wear the aqua vest. You can get HR pretty high if you try. Another method is to swim hard for a few minutes, then run, then swim, etc. Use the 'transition' btwn swimming & running (while putting on vest) for rest.

Lots of mind games you can play to make the time go by.

Hang in there!

Here's my story. I was a 2:30 marathoner, always getting injured. Eventually, I started doing pool-running -- really intense, gut-busting stuff. My next marathon was 2:23+, and I progressed in subsequent marathons to 2:20+, 2:19+, and 2:18+. I used pool-running throughout my career. I did almost no interval training, and no fartlek training. Pool-running was often my only really high-intensity training. I considered pool-running to be an important part of my training, and an important factor in my improvement.

To clarify my last post: When I said that I did almost no interval training, I meant that I did almost no interval training on land. I did a lot of intense interval training in the pool.

Avocados Number wrote:

Here's my story. I was a 2:30 marathoner, always getting injured. Eventually, I started doing pool-running -- really intense, gut-busting stuff. My next marathon was 2:23+, and I progressed in subsequent marathons to 2:20+, 2:19+, and 2:18+. I used pool-running throughout my career. I did almost no interval training, and no fartlek training. Pool-running was often my only really high-intensity training. I considered pool-running to be an important part of my training, and an important factor in my improvement.

That's pretty impressive. Like you, I plan to continue with the pool running once I get healthy. Could you expand on some of the intervals you were doing in the pool? What type of recovery time did you use? Length of intervals? How many/total time? Did you use an aqua vest or not? Thanks.

Thanks for all the feedback. The one thing that I have been happy with is the fact that pool running actually seems to accelerate recovery. My achilles is less swolen and painful than it was before I started pool running.

the diceman wrote:

That's pretty impressive. Like you, I plan to continue with the pool running once I get healthy. Could you expand on some of the intervals you were doing in the pool? What type of recovery time did you use? Length of intervals? How many/total time? Did you use an aqua vest or not? Thanks.

I started pool-running about 25 years ago, and last did it 15 years ago, so my memory is pretty hazy. I know that I was committed to making most sessions as intense as possible. Unlike intense running on land, which always got me injured, intense pool-running had almost zero risk of injury, so I did it very hard. I probably made quite a spectacle of myself, with lots of gasping and grimacing. I don't recall the length of the intervals; I just remember going back and forth across the pool, always finishing up at the end of the pool with as hard an effort as I could muster.

In the early years, I used a water-ski jacket. In later years, I felt that I could simulate the movements, cardiovascular stresses, and muscular stresses (not connective tissue stresses) of land-running better by going without any flotation device, so that's what I did.

The length of time for each session varied with my schedule, probably anywhere from 20 minutes to perhaps as much as an hour. In later years, when I was unable to do any land-running for long stretches because of stress fractures, I incorporated long steady pool-running sessions. I remember doing one that was at least three hours long.

Avocados Number wrote:

The length of time for each session varied with my schedule, probably anywhere from 20 minutes to perhaps as much as an hour. In later years, when I was unable to do any land-running for long stretches because of stress fractures, I incorporated long steady pool-running sessions. I remember doing one that was at least three hours long.

Dude, you're an animal. 3 hours in the pool? I try to do some pretty intense sessions; things like 40x 45 secs hard, 10 seconds easy. Or 10x 5 mins hard, 1 min easy. But I have to constantly change up the leg kicks or my legs go completely dead pretty quickly. Did you find this to be true as well? I've gotta believe that anything over 30 mins of hard intervals using the same leg kick leaves your legs pretty dead. How did you avoid day to day muscle staleness?

I remember playing around with different "running" styles in the water, but my recollection is that, to get the right intensity and a "stride" frequency that approached 150 strides per minute, I settled on one "running" style for pool-running without a flotation device, and another style (more hunched up) with a flotation device, but otherwise only slight variations in the leg movement. (I probably had more variation in arm movement.)

I don't remember having a problem with muscle staleness from pool-running. Compared with the stresses of running on land, where the connective tissue is always being inflamed, the stresses of pool-running seem relatively mild, and the fatigue feels less like incipient injury and more like the pleasant aftermath of a good hard effort.

Anyway, as you can probably tell, I'm a big advocate of pool-running. Twenty-five years ago, before people started selling pool-running vests and belts and the popularity of pool-running really took off, I regarded it as kind of a "secret weapon" in my training regimen, even though it took an injury to cause me to give it a try.