Figures...

It figures that as soon as I make my blogging "re-debut" I have a grueling and mediocre run.

I was in a complete running mood, feeling very gung-ho towards a route that used to kick my butt and come back for more. So I laced up my shoes, headed out the door, and started off at a fairly decent pace. I practically glided up and down the first hill...it wasn't until the very gradual uphill that I started feeling like my legs were made of lead, which leads me to believe that I am far better at running up steep hills because it is such a mental thing. Long, gradual hills just hurt (in my opinion).

Instead of pushing through a fatigued 4 mile run, I stopped at two with a vow that I'm going to run 4 tomorrow morning. During the middle of a training cycle I probably would have forced myself to keep going, but since I'm just coming off a healing knee, I'd rather stay fairly recreational at this point. I'm feeling antsy to go for a jog now (or "yog" as I playfully like to call it) but I know better.

I'm baaackboo

After almost 2 months of no running, I am more than happy to say that I. Am. Back! Of course back does not equal as good as new, so I am trying to keep my mileage low for a while and re-enter the running world slowly.

A brief recap of this week's running:

Sunday - 5 mile race - 38.47 min.
Monday - Rest - yardwork & walk
Tuesday - 4 mile run
Wednesday - 2 mile run
Thursday - 4 mile run
Friday - Rest
Saturday - Rest/easy jog
Sunday - 10k race

It's so great to be back!

Good news and bad news

I feel like I haven't posted in forever...just like I feel I haven't been running forever. But in reality, it's only be 3 weeks. Hopefully this will be the last week of complete rest. Ever since decided to stop cross training and just focus on resting/yoga/stretching, my knee pain improved by leaps and bounds. It still gets twingy and tight but nothing compared to the beginning of last week; the pain flare ups are fewer and farther in between and that's great news.

I've been tempted to go do a test run but somehow I've managed to talk myself out of that; I know my body needs the rest and running before I feel confident that I would not cause a setback in healing would be stupid. So sometime towards the end of next week my running should be making a slow comeback...hopefully.

The bad news is that I've managed to come down with a stomach bug that just won't quit. It started bothering me yesterday morning, peaked yesterday afternoon, and is now decided that it doesn't really want to leave me alone today. I definitely feel much better than yesterday but I still have that "feed me ginger and crackers or else I'll rebel" feeling, which is never fun.

Oh well. It's Wednesday and we're halfway through the week!

Back from the dead

I've been reluctant to post here lately because I have been feeling a bit down about not being able to run. I know that I should be glad that I'm giving my body the time to rest and heal, but lately even things like walking down stairs have started to cause a knee pain flare so I've stopped all "athletic activity" for the week (i.e. no swimming and cycling for me this week). Deciding to take a nearly complete rest week was difficult but I want my knee to heal as soon as possible and this seems like the best possible way to do that.

With that said, I have started to do yoga again. Some poses start to make my knee feel a little iffy but as long as I don't put any unnecessary pressure on it, everything is fine and dandy. Plus poses like warrior will help get my leg strength back up.

My first "back to yoga" class was yesterday. Before that I hadn't taken yoga since January. I used to be in a fabulous habit of taking at least 3 yoga classes a week but I (obviously) fell out of that habit. But I need to get back into it; my muscles were screaming tightness yesterday. Even sitting in lotus pose made my hip flexors cry. That is not good. At all. It's amazing what muscles aren't reached during plain 'ole stretching...(and it's amazing what muscles yoga works. I admit that my arms are a bit sore today).

I'm hoping the combination of yoga and rest will provide my body the basis for good healing. We'll see.

Who woulda thunk it

Never in a million years did I think that I would choose swimming over cycling. But I did this morning; I had been planning on doing a 30 minute bike ride followed by a 45 minute swim but I just couldn't handle the idea of sitting on a spinning bike for 45 minutes, overheating and wishing I could be running. So I decided to swim.

I always lose track of how many laps I've done so I've just been using time as a determinant. Today I swam for an hour; I did 20 minutes of breaststroke, 17 minutes of kicking drills, and 23 more minutes of breaststroke. I need to do more research on swimming drills and test them out to see which ones aggravate my knee and which ones don't because I know that being stuck with breaststroke only is going to get old very quickly.

I also did some leg exercises this morning. I haven't talked to the physical therapist yet because she's booked up until the end of this week but I do have a list of exercises that I got the last time I went through physical therapy so I've been trying to do those at least once or twice a day and I do think that they're helping (wow, run-on sentence). I haven't been in tremendous pain the past two days (knock on wood).

Well that was interesting...

I woke up this morning with a much happier knee. It still hurts, but not nearly as bad as yesterday...thank goodness. I was actually able to walk without tremendous pain (knock on wood) and the stairs are getting much easier to deal with.

I've been focusing on proper alignment when I'm walking up and down the stairs and I think that's been helping a lot. I know that my alignment is way off because I can barely balance on my injured leg but the balance on my non-injured leg is fine. Suspicious.

Tomorrow I'm going to call up the rec center's physical therapist and see if I can get an appointment with her, just for an opinion and maybe some exercises that will help me out.

Anywho, despite the fact that it's beautiful out (warm, sunny, wonderful) and I would love to be running right now I still managed to get in a good workout. I headed to the gym (woe is me) and lifted weights for about 30 minutes (I'm guessing, I don't know what time I started). I only worked on arms so I wouldn't aggravate my knee and I'm definitely going to be sore tomorrow. But I've decided that free weight are much better than the machines. Not to mention the fact that there isn't really a wait for the free weights.

After lifting I jumped in the pool for a 45 minute swim. Getting back in the pool after a long break is always such a strange feeling but enjoyable none the less. I started out with freestyle only to learn that it, in fact, really irritates my knee. So I switched to breaststroke and continued to swim pain free. For the last 15 minutes I grabbed a kickboard and did some kicking drills just. Honestly, I was shocked by the fact that freestyle irritated my knee while breastroke didn't; I was expecting just the opposite.

Following my workout, I sat in the hot tub for 10 minutes. That really helped to loosen my legs; I will most definitely be doing that again because I felt such an improvement.

It's funny how my least favorite tri leg (swimming) is very much growing on me. I never expected this one bit.

The hardest decision yet

I have decided to stop running until April. I really really want to run and I want to get on with my training plan, but the knee pain is just not making that possible right now and I don't want to get even more injured. Between yesterday and today I have had a major flare up and attempting to run on it tomorrow would only be stupid.

So I will be biking and swimming and weight lifting until April 1, when I will hopefully feel well enough to run. And 2 months definitely isn't the ideal training time for a half marathon...at all...but considering I "trained" in a month last year, I know that I'll at least be able to finish on that much training (plus all the cross training).

I'm not happy about this decision (at all) but it's what I need to do.