Thursday, September 15, 2011

The Jury is Still Out

Never end the title of a posting with a preposition. Or so Grandma would say if she'd been here for the blogging years. Which reminds me - Grandpa had a sentence that ended in seven straight prepositions. I need to find that again.

Yesterday my knee felt terrible. I was about to call it right then. Today it felt a lot better and I thought I would be able to run with no issues. The temperature was in the fifties. And yes, it did go much better. The lower temperature means I can run faster without going into cardiac distress. The change in temperature sure does make a big difference. My pace today overall was 9 1/2 minutes per mile. It felt good and even when I stopped my left knee felt fine.

Even after I stopped to walk up the hill it felt okay. It wasn't until a good 90 minutes after the run that I started to notice a little tenderness. I've iced it once already and that helped, and I'll be icing it again before bedtime. Even so it still doesn't seem as bad. Now the guessing game begins.

Was it because I've worn my older shoes for several runs in a row? And my knee is slipping back into the old familiar, non-irritating pattern?

Or was it because I ran at a more comfortable pace and didn't spend the whole run trying to throttle down? Consciously slowing down doesn't go well for me, I've found.

Finally, was it a delayed reaction from taking it easy with the hills and icing the knee for the past week?

I'm heading to Texas for a few days. During that time I'll be getting in 2-3 runs, all non-hilly. This will probably be telling. And I'm taking only the older shoes. If things continue to improve I'll start working in the newer shoes every few runs.

I'm still not sure I'll make it to Memphis. But the chances just improved drastically this afternoon.

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