alphasarah

First off, I can't be the only one who finds it funny that the sports med. doctor at my clinic is named Michael Jordan.  Second off, it's not weird that I biked to an appointment about a leg injury, is it?  (Third off - how lame is it that my doctor's office doesn't have a bike rack?!)

Anyway, the diagnosis: patellar chondromalacia with a hip flexor strain secondary to the knee problem (he thinks that I have been compensating for the knee pain and in the process placed undue stress on the hip, which was my hunch).  THANKFULLY there is no ligament damage and NSAIDs, PT, and avoiding running for a bit should fix me right up.  Elliptical, spinning/biking, and swimming are all recommended/acceptable activities.

So I came out of my 5k experience with the idea that I could definitely do that again, and maybe even for twice as far.  So the plan came to be to train for a 10k sometime in the spring (I'm not in any hurry), with the impressively detailed training plan of "let's work on running for longer rather than faster, eh?".

And so today I went out with the intention of running for at least 35 minutes.  Keep in mind that my 5k's (training and race) have been my long runs both in terms of time and distance - the first time I set out to actually run 5k I did it in just under 35 minutes.  I set out at a slow-comfortable pace and toodled along for 42:42.  I didn't go as far as I'd thought I had - when I plugged my route into mapmyrun, it informed me that I had gone 3.75 miles (which works out to a pace of 11:22/mile, for those playing along at home).  Still not bad for a first go at a longer run - I definitely was less tired at the end of this one than I was at the end of my 31:07 5k.

In related news, the running hiatus of Pennsic and the 2 weeks thereafter confirmed something for me: while I probably do have some kind of knee injury, it is defnitely exacerbated by overuse, because it hasn't hurt in ages.  So I'm pulling back on my running frequency to 2x/week and I'll do other (lower-impact) stuff the other days (spinning, swimming, elliptical, etc.).  Still need to get it and my random hip pain checked out, though.
kiersey

When in the course of one length of the pool your goggles smoosh your contact out of place (but thankfully still in your eye) and then when you go to put them back on, the strap breaks, the universe is telling you it's time to stop swimming.

First run since the race (yeah, it's been almost a month), just a quickie since I have all those exciting plans this afternoon/evening.  But I am definitely still averaging under a 10 minute mile.  Next step is to start pushing myself on time rather than distance, to try to work up to a 10K at some point, probably in the spring.

I'm very curious to watch the Olympic 5000m.  'course NBC probably won't show it - the women's final is scheduled for Friday at 8:40 pm; the men's is Saturday at 8:10 pm.

31:06.  When I passed water station/mile 1, they were hollering out numbers under 10 minutes.  I knew I could go faster and started passing people; when I hit water station/mile 2, they were hollering numbers just over 20 minutes (odd, since I'm pretty sure I was going faster the second mile...)  I had forgotten that the last half mile or so of the race was uphill (very  slightly) but I was still passing people... I had to walk for a bit... it was going to be a quarter block ("I'm going to walk to that traffic light") but I realized that if I did that there was no way I was going to start running again, so the walk ended up being about 10 steps and then I shambled on because there was NO WAY I wasn't running across the finish line.  Made the last turn and saw M with the camera and TRex hollering "go mommy!" (in some stunning fashion, no less) and I was able to pick up the pace JUST A LITTLE but not enough to come in under 31 minutes.

M has been delighting in telling me that I got schooled by a bunch of little kids, but I don't care. When I was in elementary school I was the kid who struggled to run a mile in gym class. In high school I was the one sucking wind after the first 10 - 15 minutes of a soccer game.  Now I routinely run 2.5 miles and can run more.  Maybe next I'll think about a 10k... but first I need to get my bum knee checked out (which will happen after Pennsic).

Monday: run in the icky sticky humid heat.
Friday: run in the rain that then turns into the icky sticky humid (but not as hot as Monday).

Went to the gym intending to work out on the cardio machines, take it relatively easy.  Got into the locker room, wanted to run.  So I went for about 2 miles which at this point *is* an easy run.  I'm routinely running sub-10-minute miles; don't know if I'll be able to sustain that pace for the full 5k, though.

I think I may have inadvertently become A Runner(tm).

I haven't been out for a shamble in quite awhile - my knee had been bothering me so the last 2 Sundays I went skating instead of running, late last week I was on waiting-for-the-plumber patrol, and now that I'm not teaching Tuesday and Thursday mornings I can go to spinning class on a regular basis.

Last night my legs were killing me from class - Joe had a commitment that precluded teaching the class so one of the most experienced members of the class took over for him, and she KILLED us.  Had us doing jumps (out of your seat for 5, in your seat for 5, out of your seat for 5, in your seat for 5, etc.), sprints right after climbing a hill, and then with five minutes left she asked for ideas and Mel opened her big mouth and suggested rolling hills.  And then when class was over a song came on that everyone likes, so Michelle suggested doing jumps for the duration of the song.  I did not last the whole song, that's for sure.

So anyway, the point is, when I went to bed last night I wasn't sure what I was going to do workout-wise today.  I knew i wanted it to be in the morning because the high today is 90.  When I got up this morning, I felt great... so great that I decided it would be a good idea to plot out a 5k course in our neighborhood.  (Last weekend I plotted out a 1.2 mile loop so I had a pretty good idea what it was going to take to get a loop just a smidge over a mile.)

( and just how fast did that zombie shamble?Collapse )

And now I really REALLY need a shower.

A short one (1.7 miles) at a 10 minute pace.  Probably could have gone a bit further if I'd wanted to, but I didn't.

1.9978 miles, according to gmap-pedometer.  23 minutes, so I continue doing about an 11.5 minute mile.  I felt slow today, actually, when I was faster than my 2.5 mile run on Sunday morning.  *shrug*  Today I had noise, whereas I didn't on Sunday (I had misplaced my iPod cable, woe, but now it's found, joy).  The bike that followed was slow, though - 3.5 miles in 15 minutes.  I really need to find out for sure when this mini-tri is - I hope it's not the week that we're in Maryland!  One of these days I'll have to try to string all three together and see how it goes, but I'll do that closer to the actual event.

I want to get my bike to a shop to get the rust knocked off of it and get it a tune-up.  And investigate the possibility of putting a seat on the back of it for the kiddo.  That'd be some good cardio - biking around with 35 extra squrimy pounds on there!  Ideally, I'd like to be able to bike to the store with her in the summer, but maybe that can wait a year or so until she's old enough to ride on one of the pull-behind bikes (a kid at her school goes to/from school on one and she thinks it's the COOLEST THING EVER - doesn't hurt that he's in pre-K, who are also the COOLEST KIDS EVER in her world).

I did the most workout in a long time today.  I actually managed to leave work when I intended to, for one.  And then I went out and ran 1.7 miles  (neglected to time it - but I think I was out for about 20 minutes), came back in to the gym and biked for 15 minutes (4 miles) and then did weights and some yoga.

My goal right now is to do 2/3 of the mini-triathlon a couple of times a week.  Yesterday I biked for 20 minutes and then swam for 15 (I wanted to go longer, but I started feeling light-headed, and light-headed and pool are not a good combo), today I ran and biked.  I figure at this rate it will be no big deal to do all three in a row in another 6 weeks or so.