Both of my maintenance runs were fairly short this week. Monday was July 4th, and I didn't want to be out much longer than I had to, so I stopped at 32 minutes. On Wednesday, my right knee started hurting maybe 2/3 of the way through the run, and I stopped right on the 30-minute dot. I proceeded to spend the next two days icing my knee, rubbing Bio-Freeze on it, and trying to avoid stairs. I skipped going to the lab on Friday because the elevator was out and I did not think I could make it up nine flights of stairs at least twice with my knee how it was.
This morning I ran six miles and my knee did not hurt once.
A very similar thing happened last week, you may recall; my ankle - also the right one - hurt on Friday night and Saturday morning, but during the actual run it didn't hurt once. I mentioned these events to the physical therapist at the end of the run and she was somewhat mystified. I don't know how to explain it - last week I thought maybe the stability of the shoes cushioned the ankle in a way that my normal walking shoes don't, but I don't think that explains the knee, especially when the knee problem first appeared during a run. Do the long runs give me a surge of adrenaline that lowers pain? Does my brain just know I'm planning to run through the pain and does what it can to prevent it from flaring? My knee (technically just to the lower left of it) still hurts a bit if I press on it, about as much as it has all week, but it didn't come up at any point during a six-mile run when I would have had the force of landing shooting up through it hundreds or thousands of times. I don't know. More ice for it, I guess, and hopefully it continues to be only a minor nuisance during the week and not on Saturdays.
The six miles was... I mean, I can't call it easy, I guess, but it was a lot easier than I thought. Maybe this stands in comparison to last week - right now (10:30, around an hour after I finished) it's 83 degrees with a heat index of 83. Last week at this time it was 87 with a heat index of 98. So that's just a slight difference, yeah? The first two miles - down to the place we turned around the last two weeks - were pretty easy. The next two - down to this week's turnaround at Diversey, and back - weren't that bad either. The last two were the worst, but even they really weren't that bad. I started to feel my stomach grumbling around the last mile but had come prepared with an extra gel pack, which helped push me through.
All that and I even ran a little faster this week - the only person I could sensibly be paired with was in the 13:00 pace group, so we ran about 13:30 to split the difference. Total time was 1:25:42, but that includes about a five-minute stop at the three-mile turnaround to hit the bathroom and get some extra water, so that's about 1:21:00 total which is a perfect 13:30 mile. About an hour of it was actually running, with the walk intervals taking up about 20 minutes.
Looking at my socks, shoes, and even the lower part of my shorts, I apparently got covered in dust/dirt at some point during the run. Not sure how exactly that happened, although I guess it could just be the result of mostly running on the dirt/gravel track next to the path instead of on the path (a mite softer on the legs). It hasn't happened before, but in previous weeks the ground has been a little wetter. Whatever.
Next week: seven miles. Once again, as with this week, it will be the farthest I've ever run.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Long run 3: 5 miles
When I crossed the "finish line" today, the coach asked me how I felt. "Horrible!" I said, and although I said it light-heartedly, I really wasn't being ironic. I felt pretty horrible.
To be fair to me, there were two extenuating circumstances. The (I think) smaller one was that I didn't get my full maintenance running in this week. Wednesday there just wasn't time, and when I went to make it up on Thursday I only got in ten minutes before a thunderstorm hit. Granted, this is largely my fault - I wouldn't have had to worry about the thunderstorm had I successfully gotten up and done the run Thursday morning like I initially planned before, predictably I suppose, flaking out - but nevertheless. I wore down pretty severely over the final mile of today's run, which could be due to the lack of full maintenance running or could just be because five miles is the most I've ever run (well, I ran 54 minutes of it and walked 18; that's probably four miles and change of running and somewhere between 0.75 and one mile walking, but at any rate it's more combined than I've done before since the 4 miles last week was done at the same interval setting of 3:1), and so I broke down after hitting four, the number I'd successfully done last week without feeling too bad.
Or, it could be because it was FUCKING hot out. I just checked the temperature - 87 with a heat index of 98, according to the Weather Channel. Um, gah. Granted, it's 10:30 right now and I finished around 9:20, but it was already quite hot when we started and only got hotter, and the humidity certainly didn't help. My hat was heavy with sweat by the end; my shirt was sticking to me everywhere; etc. I went through almost two quarts of water, then pounded a Gatorade as soon as I got home. I don't know what it takes to lose multiple pounds through sweating, but if you told me I had, I certainly wouldn't be surprised. At least this time I had the foresight to put sunblock on, because it was richly needed.
Still, I finished five miles without dying even though the morning was about as hot as they're likely to come, so that's a positive. And my right ankle, which started hurting last night when I put weight on it and was still giving me some problems when I got up this morning, actually did not hurt during the run, which was a pleasant surprise (probably has to do with the stability of the shoes). I also had very minimal problems with the left foot - there was brief, partial numbness somewhere between three and four miles, but it passed fairly quickly rather than lingering. If I can avoid having to shell out another 100-150 bucks for new shoes and the tradeoff is two minutes of numbness for every five miles - even if it is the shoes, which the fairly minimal numbness makes me think it might not be - that'd be okay, I think. I'll try rolling out the tendons some more this week and see if things improve further.
To be fair to me, there were two extenuating circumstances. The (I think) smaller one was that I didn't get my full maintenance running in this week. Wednesday there just wasn't time, and when I went to make it up on Thursday I only got in ten minutes before a thunderstorm hit. Granted, this is largely my fault - I wouldn't have had to worry about the thunderstorm had I successfully gotten up and done the run Thursday morning like I initially planned before, predictably I suppose, flaking out - but nevertheless. I wore down pretty severely over the final mile of today's run, which could be due to the lack of full maintenance running or could just be because five miles is the most I've ever run (well, I ran 54 minutes of it and walked 18; that's probably four miles and change of running and somewhere between 0.75 and one mile walking, but at any rate it's more combined than I've done before since the 4 miles last week was done at the same interval setting of 3:1), and so I broke down after hitting four, the number I'd successfully done last week without feeling too bad.
Or, it could be because it was FUCKING hot out. I just checked the temperature - 87 with a heat index of 98, according to the Weather Channel. Um, gah. Granted, it's 10:30 right now and I finished around 9:20, but it was already quite hot when we started and only got hotter, and the humidity certainly didn't help. My hat was heavy with sweat by the end; my shirt was sticking to me everywhere; etc. I went through almost two quarts of water, then pounded a Gatorade as soon as I got home. I don't know what it takes to lose multiple pounds through sweating, but if you told me I had, I certainly wouldn't be surprised. At least this time I had the foresight to put sunblock on, because it was richly needed.
Still, I finished five miles without dying even though the morning was about as hot as they're likely to come, so that's a positive. And my right ankle, which started hurting last night when I put weight on it and was still giving me some problems when I got up this morning, actually did not hurt during the run, which was a pleasant surprise (probably has to do with the stability of the shoes). I also had very minimal problems with the left foot - there was brief, partial numbness somewhere between three and four miles, but it passed fairly quickly rather than lingering. If I can avoid having to shell out another 100-150 bucks for new shoes and the tradeoff is two minutes of numbness for every five miles - even if it is the shoes, which the fairly minimal numbness makes me think it might not be - that'd be okay, I think. I'll try rolling out the tendons some more this week and see if things improve further.
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