Day 88

I originally planned to make a trip to Canada today to hear Andy's concert, but after talking to him this morning, we both decided it would be better if I came up to hear him next month when he plays again. With my evening now free, I knew I had to run. I was actually a little excited to run because it was a gorgeous warm fall day.

Pretty day for a run

After work I headed to the club to run 7 miles. As soon as I parked I realized - I forgot my watch. AHH!!!! How am I supposed to know how fast I'm going? How far I'm going? BIG FAIL. I have a few standby loops that I know, so I started off on the "mansion route" which I know is 3 miles. When I started running I was instantly in pain. My knee hurt soooo much... I was limping more than running. After a mile or so my stride evened out, but I still felt super slow and sluggish. I was miserable. I wasn't breathing hard and my leg muscles felt perfectly fine. It was so frustrating that I couldn't go faster just because of a stupid knee. I stopped after about 2 miles just to try to calm myself down. I was on the verge of bursting into tears. It's amazing how a few days ago I ran 14 miles and felt perfectly fine, and then today... 3 miles makes me have a breakdown.

Anyway, I collected myself and finished my three mile run. Anna loaned me a knee brace, which I had in my car. I grabbed that and decided to test it out on a treadmill. It didn't feel good at first, but somehow I managed to finish the last 4 miles on a treadmill. I'm glad I did it all, but I don't know that I'd say I enjoyed more than 2 minutes of it. So much for running outside on a pretty day...

I'm feeling really frustrated with running this week. Last week I was really sore, which was annoying, but at least I felt like I was doing something. This week I barely feel like I've exercised at all... my muscles are completely fine. But my knee. My knee! I've gone from feeling strong and ready to feeling crippled and very nervous/worried.

Obviously my knee isn't going to get better with just one day of rest, but anything is better than nothing. I needed to do one more 7 mile run this week before my long run, and I had originally planned to do 4 miles tomorrow and then a 5k Saturday morning. Time for an adjustment. In hopes that it will help my knee, I am not going to run tomorrow - I will only do the 5k on Saturday. This will be the second time I've skipped 4 miles during the training, but I'm not being lazy and then saying after the fact, eh well my knee hurt. No. I'm making this decision now. No running. Knee must heal. Please heal. :-/

Total Miles Run: 313.12
Total Weight Change: -7.1