Sarah Ulmer Retires due to injury - now how predictable was that?

"Olympic champion and New Zealand sporting great Sarah Ulmer has announced her retirement from cycling.
New Zealand's first and only Olympic Games cycling gold medallist has been battling a perplexing sciatic nerve injury in her leg since it forced her out of last year's Melbourne Commonwealth Games.
A recent visit to a surgeon convinced the 31-year-old it was time to end the most frustrating period of her glittering career.
She will be remembered for her golden year in 2004 when she set a world record in winning the women's 3000m individual pursuit at the world championships in Australia.
Several months later she bettered the record in claiming gold at the Athens Olympics.
After a year's break from the sport, she switched to road cycling and was consistently impressive there before injury struck.
"I've been toying with retirement for longer than I actually expected," Ulmer told 3 News today.
"It's been a pretty frustrating year from the cycling side of things. I've been in and out of doctors and medical specialist and MRI machines.
"The crunch with the actual decision was a trip to a surgeon in Christchurch who didn't give me a greater than 50 percent chance that he could improve me."

TV3 News article and video

______________________________________

Gary Moller comments:

The retirement of Sarah Ulmer comes as no surprise. When I stood by the finish line as she blitzed the field of the International Womens' Tout of Wellington, organised by George Sandoval, just weeks before the last Commonwealth Games, I commented to a cycling mate, Paul, that she had just blown her chances at the Games. Not too many months earlier, I had attended a cycling coaching conference at which she was the honoured guest. It was during that conference that she revealed some of her training secrets (and flaws - one being her poor diet and the other being the misunderstanding of the importance of recovery). That she was heading for burnout was pretty obvious. I had seen the signs before: for example; when an athlete gives to the demands of exhausting advertiser photo shoots, luncheons and dinners, exhaustion is the inevitable consequence and so this was to be for Ulmer. The signs were there: Stress, weight loss and chronic injury.

Am I speaking a load if rubbish? Read these articles and judge for yourself.

An athlete in a sport like cycling or running can be one only - athlete or business person - never both. One or the other. So; does the athlete make money or win medals? It is difficult, if not impossible to make both happen concurrently in a sport like cycling.

20 years ago there was no such thing as the sports scientist and the personal trainer in New Zealand outside of a few academics. Sports conditioning of new Zealand's best was the domain of the coach who had been there and done that themselves. Now we have the sports scientist who has inserted their expertise between the coach and the athlete. Few have been there and done that, having learned their trade via the text book and the ivory tower of academia. We have gone downhill ever since, with just a few exceptions.

Most sporting injuries of a non-violent derivation are to do with coaching, diet and lifestyle. they are not medical issues - even if there is a physical sign like a protruding lumbar disc. Seldom will medical interventions like drugs and surgery bring about a lasting "cure" as has been so well illustrated by Ulmer.

Lorraine's autobiography "On the Wings of Mercury" illustrates so well how much winning once and winning again and again has to do with the ivory from the neck up.

athlete, runner ultra marathon burnout advice

"Gary,
I am 48 y/o and have been suffering from some form of chronic exhaustion the past 6 years. I've had every medical and mental test known to man but nothing shows up defective, and the only diagnosis I've received is ME/CFS.

Just prior to this all starting I was running ultras and my last race put me in the emerg ward, blood work showed me void of electrolytes, although I was eating and drinking lots. It felt like my body was not going through a recovery cycle but I plodded through the race and went straight to the food table afterwards, but felt like it was just sitting in my belly, then I started to cramp everywhere, then I threw everything up. I made it home and drank more Gatorade and lay in bed feeling like I was literally going to die, then finally dialed 911. What a trip!?!?!

This was after a tough year of training, did not feel like my normal self, so not sure this incident was the beginning of the problem or the result of a poor training year. I started tapering down my training but soon realized I was suffering from exhaustion before I even started, recovery was non-existent. "

................"

G

_______________________________

Gary Moller comments:

"G" goes on to detail the longterm health consequences that we might discuss in a later article; but let's start with a general discussion about training and nutrition for ultra distance running.

Recover!

Preparing for and running ultra marathons is all about recovery: recovery following training sessions and recovery after an event.

An ultra distance runner needs only to do three long runs per week and plenty of shorter ones in between including cross training like aqua-jogging. Of those three long runs only one should be of three hours or longer.

Training should go in peaks and troughs over about a 4-6 week training cycle. Each cycle finishing with the longest run of the cycle such as a 4-5 hour pod before having a lazy rest week before doing another build up.

Watch the video here about Lorraine's advice about recovery. For every mile raced, you should schedule a day of recovery. That means 50 days of relative rest if you ran a 50 miler. The video deals with this in more detail.


Mineralise!

Ignore the claims of commercial electrolyte replacement drink, carbo shots and so on - they are totally inadequate for replacing the minerals lost during exercise. Minerals are lost even when not sweating. They are lost as waste products of muscle and other tissue damage and the high metabolism. All that these drinks and gels do is rot your teeth and set you up for early onset diabetes.

The usual refined carbohydrate diet that is promoted to endurance athletes is quite devoid of minerals, let alone the fat soluble vitamins (D,A,E,K). These dietary practices are a recipe for disaster! And the consequences can continue for many years later including the development of seemingly unrelated medical conditions.

The solution is daily consumption of a cup or two of my bone broth recipe. This is the distance runner's best dietary source of minerals as well as providing a rich supply of collagen and protein for repair and recovery.

Protect your Joints
There are plenty of examples of ultra distance runners who have worn their joints to the bone. Some have required joint replacement decades before time.

When training running huge mileage there should be measures to aid the joints with repair. That means taking a joint food formulation daily along with the mineral rich bone broth. Go here for product details and watch this video if you are wondering which one is the best for you.

What is your Weakest Link?

New injury low for Sarah UlmerOngoing injuries mean Sarah Ulmer has been ruled out of next month's world road cycling championships8 August 2006

"The leg and lower back problems which forced Sarah Ulmer out of this year's Commonwealth Games time trial have now put paid to her world road cycling championship aspirations.

Ulmer says she can still ride but only to a certain level, which is about 15 percent below what she needs to be competitive, and she has confirmed she will not be competing in Austria next month.

....Ulmer is heading to the Australian Institute of Sport this week to see if they can shed any light on the problem."

_________________________________

Gary Moller comments:
I personally doubt if the experts at the Australian Insititute of Sport will shed much light on her back pain. Sometimes such experts can be the worst to consult.

Here is what I wrote in an article about knee pain and it could equally apply to other health and injury issues, including back pain:

So, your knee(s) hurt for some reason? If you go to a surgeon, you will be operated on. If you go to a rheumatologist, you will be prescribed a powerful medicine. If you go to a physio, you will be given utra-sound and strange exercises. If you go to an osteopath, you will be massaged and manipulated. If you go to a podiatrist, you will be given $500 orthotics, if you go to a personal trainer, you will do lots of funny exercises and go on a diet. Sounds uncomfortably like a lottery to me, I reckon! Currently, in NZ, if you have a knee problem, you will probably be sent to the surgeon. Heaps and heaps of knee ops are happening.

Often the solutions are right under your nose. An expert or specialist on, say, back pain, or bike setup, weight training or nutrition probably knows their topic so well because that is the topic that has consumed their energies. However this may leave little over for the study of other disciplines. They may not notice the obvious. Nor may they see the big picture.

I watched Sarah win the final stage of the international women's road cycling tour here in Wellington. This was just a few weeks before the Melbourne Commonwealth Games. She was on her own from 1/3 of the way and went on to produce one of the most emphatic wins one would ever see in international cycling. As the race was proceeding, I commented to another bystander that this stunning performance could be her undoing at the Commonwealth Games. How right I was and her injury problems continue.



By getting a healthy balance between the things that wore her down and those that built her up, Lorraines Moller's running career spanned a breath-taking 28 years of international competition.

This reminds me of the time I was down at a sports medicine course at Otago University several years ago. Attending, as well, was one of the sports medicine minders of our best fast bowlers - if only he were not forever injured! This bowler has suffered just about every injury known to fast bowlers, including heat exhaustion. His minder was seeking expert assistance with the heat exhaustion problem. To my horror, he was wanting to fry this fine young bowler in the university's climate chamber! I thought the poor guy's body was pleading for a break!

What would you rather: a fast bowler who bowls at 90% pace 100% of the time, or the same bowler who bowls at 100% of the time; but is unavailable because of injury for 75% of the season?

What is your weakest link?
We all have a weak link - some obvious, many not so obvious. I have two: For me, it is my low back and my tendency to get colds when I am pushing too hard. Back pain, colds, stress fractures, tendonitis, bursitis, glandular fever, anaemia, foot pain and hamstring pain are among the most common weak links that abound. No amount of physiotherapy, anti-inflammatories, manipulation, surgery or massage will restore the weakest link, unless the underlying causes are dealth with. The problem is a coaching and lifestyle one. These are not sexy and they take time and effort.

Anabolism and Catabolism
Vigorous exercise breaks our bodies down (catabolism). The body responds by building new and stronger tissue and larger energy reserves (anabolism). Training, competition, rest and nutrition must all be perfectly balanced to ensure that the anabolic processes are always a step ahead of the opposition (catabolism). For more information about anabolism and catabolism read the relevant sections in Training for a marathon.

If we do something especially exhausting, like a hard marathon in the heat, a multi-day cycle or several days bowling at pace; then we will need as long as several days or several months before we do it all over again. In the case of the marathon, the break may be as long as 6-8 months. During the intervening period, however long that may be, the athlete goes back to doing the basics and gradually rebuilds to another slighlty higher peak. Fail to do this procedure of recovery and rebuilding each time and the weakest link in the body will fail.

I like to use my sister, Lorraine, as an example of an athlete who got the balance right. Despite being a full-time professional distance runner, her annual weekly mileage was only about 80 miles and she only ever ran about 2 marathons really hard per year. In fact, she had a 2 year cycle that actually ran into 4 years - 2 years to the Commonwealth Games, a recovery year and then another year buildup to the Olympics and then a rest year, and so it went on.