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.
No comments:
Post a Comment