All systems are go!

Today I decided to go out and test my body with a short 2.5 mile run, as well as try to break in my new racing flats, the waffles. I will first off say that those shoes are awesome. It feels like I am running barefoot. These shoes are not designed for confort by any means, but I actually had no problem with them. My feet feel good, and I don't feel like I took much of a pounding.

As far as the run I started out kinda slow, but the shoes. I swear it was the shoes. They convinced me that I should run faster. So my first mile was done in 7:19, then my second in 6:48 and my final half mile was at a 6:01 pace! I think I am going to be ready to put on a pretty good show at my 5k next week.

On the knee/shin front I did not feel any significant pain in my knee. There was a little tightness for the first 100 feet, but that went away and never came back. My shins gave me a brief little trouble for a couple strides, and now that I have stopped, they feel a little sore, but nothing like when they were a problem.

So like the title says, all systems are go! I have a 9 mile run scheduled for tommorow, and technicly today was supposed to be a 30min tempo run, so perhaps I will do that yet. I'm really excited to be back.

Dead...Freaking...Tired

I don't know why I am posting tonight, but I am TIRED. In case you did not know, I am a physics major about to graduate. And to get that diploma you have to do a senior seminar on a project of your choosing. Well due to factors, and I state this lightly, BEYOND MY CONTROL, I had to put in string of late nights to get this thing done.

So in hinesight, my injury had pretty good timing. It would have been tough to fit running into my schedule these last couple days as I was leaving the lab routinely at 2am only to goto work on my paper at home until 4am, hence the wacky time of this post.

But on the running front I have good news. I got my new racing shoes today! I got the Nike Zoom Waffle Racer IV. I took them out for a quick spin around the block to both start breaking them in, and to check out my knee situation. And yay! Both felt very good.

So I am excited to start running again tommorow. Back to a normal life, and blogging!

Just Dance!

Today I was feeling pretty good. I iced my shins and knee in the morning. Took some ibuprofen and went off to my classes. Then later in the evening I went off to my dance rehearsal, when the ibuprofen should have been worn off. I was prepared to step out at any time should my knee start bothering me, but that never happened. So I am pretty excited about that.

Perhaps tommorow I will take that test jog and see what is happening on the knee front. But for now its RICE.

On the Bench

I'll be sitting on the bench for a while. I went for a short test run to the nearby middle school to vote. I kept a slow pace but I could definitely feel the pain in the back of my knee. It was not bad, and were I a couple years younger and dumber I would have just run through the pain. But I have decided to shut it down for a couple of days, enjoy the beginning of baseball season, get some projects done, and strength train my upper body.

So my time should not be a loss, and perhaps this little rest will finally put an end to my brief shin splints episode for good.

To be honest I will still probably go out everyday and walk a bit, perhaps jog a quarter mile and see how I feel. So I will keep my young blog full of posts, and I'll keep reading yours. But for now, Play Ball!

Good News and Bad News

<---------Bad News is that this might be an exaggerated version of my hamstring tendons. Since the pain I felt today was pretty strong, and I did slightly notice it the night before I did some searching, and according to sportinjuryclinic.net:

Symptoms of hamstring tendon rupture:

• A sudden sharp pain in the back of the knee.
• Swelling, tenderness and heat coming from the point where the tendon inserts into the knee.
• Pain when you bend the knee against resistance.

I seem to be having the first two, and none of the other injuries described anywhere in my searches have come close to describing the sharp pain in the back of the knee that I am feeling.


Now for the good news. This can be treated with RICE. Which for those of you unfamiliar with this notion, RICE stands for: Rest. Ice. Compression. Elevation. I should also be able to keep running, just making sure I don't push anything.

Turns out that this injury pops up mostly when you do fast acceleration and decelerations. This pretty much describes my hill training for tomorrow :( So I will try one, see how the knee feels, and then go from there. But the good news is that this is nothing very serious, and yes that picture is a vast exaggeration.

On another note when I saw the description of the symptoms and saw that picture I shed a couple tears. And since I have done considerable sweating, and have had some bleeding from a toe blister that I got a couple days ago...I have successfully accomplished the Blood, Sweat and Tears portion of my blog title in only 2 weeks or so!

And finally, I added some stuff to my blog. I have some good links to running websites. The last two are great resources for runners. You just have to check them out to realize their vast wealth of information. I also put in a race countdown timer! The geek in me is cheering

What!? Another One!?

Today my shins felt good again. I'm liking the progress I am making here. Now though on the same leg as my shin splints I have a sharp pain in the back of my knee. I have never felt this before, but I don't like it. I was able to adjust my stride enough so that it did not hurt, but damn, I hate these little injuries that pop up, and I sometimes feel like this poor guy to the left. But I guess unlike him I was able to do my 3 mile recovery run today plus some strength training. I know running has more than its fair share of nagging little injuries, but I think I am getting the raw deal here. Anyways I hope to be back and running strong tomorrow when I do my hill repeats. And for the official Hal definition of hill repeats!

Hill training is scheduled for the first six weeks of this program on Tuesday. The speed benefits of hill training are similar to those for interval training on the track (below), but in the early spring it may be easier doing this workout on the road than doing repeat 200s or 400s at the track. Select a hill about a quarter-mile long, but don't worry about pitch or the exact distance. Run up hard, as hard as you might during a 200 or 400 repeat. Then turn and jog back down, repeating the uphill sprints until finished. Be sure to warm up by jogging a mile or two before and cool down with the same distance after.

Before I started this 30 week program I was doing some of these exact hill exercises, and I was only able to do 4 of them, and 4 that were not done well at all. So its great to see progress, but 8 is tough, really tough.

Just pluggin along.

I ran yesterday for 8 miles. My shins hurt only a little bit at times, and during those time I slowed down and they went away. I think the big key to my success last night was that I started out very slow. I ran a 10:30 mile for the first mile, and then once I picked up the pace the rest of the way I was fine. I ended up with an average pace of 8:27.

One thing I am sick of though is this weather. The last 7 runs I have been on have had some sort of precipitation. I don't care if it rains out, and I actually welcome a downpour. It makes me feel like I'm a hardcore runner. But the last 7 runs have had this lingering mist and light rain junk. I also don't think I've seen the sun in about the same amount of time. I think somebody went and stuck me in Seattle without telling me. And today's forecast, light rain and drizzle! AHHHHH.

Soon I will go out for my 3 mile recovery run, and strength training. Then I will tell you all about that one!