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PESKY INJURY FORCES TEGENKAMP TO SKIP INDOOR SEASON - rrw
Published by
Jan 27th 2009, 6:10pm
PESKY INJURY FORCES TEGENKAMP TO SKIP INDOOR SEASON **5000m Ace Looks Forward to Outdoor Season** By David Monti (c) 2009 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved - used with permission
Still
recovering from a pesky knee injury sustained while altitude training
in Flagstaff, Ariz.., last fall, two-time U.S. 3000m indoor champion
Matt Tegenkamp will skip the indoor season this year. Instead, he will
slowly build up to his outdoor debut in the spring, hoping to be at
full strength for the U.S. Outdoor Championships in June.
"I got
a little banged up," said Tegenkamp in a telephone interview from the
house he recently sold in Madison, Wisc., in anticipation of moving to
Portland, Ore., next week. "We went up to altitude at the end of
October and all of November; things were going great. Then I got to
the middle of December, I got the same thing I got before the Trials:
it was my knee."
Various electronic imaging tests showed that
Tegenkamp's knee joint is structurally sound. However, the Beijing
Olympic finalist in the 5000m had developed a hard-to-define
inflammation problem.
"It could be something like bad
tendonitis, or the plica band that wraps around the kneecap," said
Tegenkamp. "It can get really, really irritated. It can cause the
knee to track a little differently."
Tegenkamp, 27, has been
receiving a variety of treatments, including a procedure where the
anti-inflammatory medication Dexamethasone is passed through the skin
on his knee from a special pad. "There is a ion transfer and that
drives the medication down through the skin," he explained. He also
said he had been taking anti-inflammatory medications and even took a
"rich platelets" treatment. "They take a pretty significant amount of
your blood, then spin it down just to the platelets," he said. "They
inject the platelets back to wherever you're having the pain, and it
makes a chemical reaction through the body and causes a huge rush of
blood to that area. The point of it is that the body will heal itself."
Tegenkamp
had to do a complete training shutdown in order to break the
inflammation cycle. Today, he was to try his first run to see where he
stands.
"I need to just get out and test it," he said. "It's going to be indoors in a prudent environment."
OLYMPIC YEAR DID NOT QUITE SATISFY
Sometimes
compared to American record holder Bob Kennedy, Tegenkamp and his coach
Jerry Schumacher have set high standards. In 2007, he finished fourth
at the IAAF World Championships, just 3/100ths of a second out of the
medals. In 2008, he finished second at the U.S. Olympic Trials in the
5000m, and advanced easily to the Olympic final. But the final didn't
go the way he had planned, and he finished 13th in a fast race where
Kenenisa Bekele set a new Olympic record of 12:57.82.
"There was
some complacency on my side of the way we trained," he said. "We
trained for a kicker's race. Athletes need to be patient and need to
react to what happens. I was trying to predict when the major move was
going to be made even before the race. I was up on everyone's heels
and using up lots of extra energy. I feel if I had been more patient
in that race, I would have run a much better race.
"That's
where it dawned on me after," he continued. You have to have no
expectations and totally react. It's all about competition You just
have to fight and hang in there."
Tegenkamp said he needs to
improve his overall strength and endurance, slowly working up to steady
100 mile weeks. Because he was injury-prone in college, he always kept
his mileage lower than most top 5-K runners and worked, instead, on
developing his speed. Now he feels he needs to lay down a thicker base
to be his best.
"Basically we'll look at February to the start
of May as the base period again," he said. He added: "You can still
run really really well off strength (but) you may not feel good doing
it."
PORTLAND CALLING
Tegenkamp, and his wife Michelle,
will attend the closing on the sale of their Madison home on Friday,
then fly to Portland on the following Tuesday. His entire Madison
training group will be reconstituted there under coach Schumacher.
Training partners Tim Nelson, Stuart Eagon, Simon Bairu, and Jonathon
Riley have already moved. Chris Solinsky, Tegenkamp's key training
mate, is in the process of moving now.
Leaving Madison isn't
easy for Tegenkamp, a place where he and Michelle both went to school
and where his running career truly blossomed. But like any
professional, he needs to uproot sometimes in order to advance his
career.
"We just kind of had a big gathering on Saturday with
neighbors and close friends of ours," he said. "It's going to be
different. We were definitely settled in Madison. We loved the
house we were in and everything. But the athletic side of things for
me is short-lived. We want to do everything we can maximize my
potential."
Tegenkamp is already one of his country's fastest
middle distance runners. He's the #5 American of all-time at 3000m
(7:34.98) and #4 at 5000m (13:04.90). His 1500m personal best of
3:34.25 isn't too shabby, either. Still, he thinks he has the
potential to do much better. He just needs to find the balance between
training hard and training right.
"As an athlete I always wanted
to push the envelope and ride the red line," he said. "It was kind of
a wake-up call this year. I was fortunate enough to make the Olympic
team, but I didn't perform well enough at the Olympic Games. That's
what we're trying to change this year, to get back to the basics."
ENDS
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