From NR: Haven't we been through this already?

Dear Left Knee,
I see you're still upset with me, choosing to voice your displeasure around mile 15 of an otherwise great 17 mile run. I'm sorry to hear this. Can we maybe talk about it instead of you just taking it out on me? Did you want more icing? No more yoga? A slower jump in mileage?
Love,
Sam

Yeah. I hit the Osaugie and Tri-Corridor trail with Leslie for 17 miles of fun on Saturday. I think it's good to do and I highly recommend hitting the Corridor at some point to all who are running Whistlestop. It's just nice to remember before the race what the surface you're going to be dealing with is like. I had been starting to worry about more gravel than there is and was pleasantly reminded of how nice the surface is. And also sometimes reminded of the single file running down the right hand side that went on when there were soft spots . . .

Well, my knee was vaguely annoyed throughout the whole thing. It didn't really hurt, but it had that feeling where I was aware of it and you shouldn't be aware of your knee while running, it should just be there. I had a mostly lovely run, though, even with how humid it was - the fog never really lifted and I'm actually pretty grateful for that since if the sun had come out during the run, it would have been hot AND humid. So it was hard to breathe at times but I guess that's what comes with summer.

A couple miles from the end, though, my knee started really hurting. Not enough to need to walk but enough to make me think about it. I didn't need to gimp on it and since that's my measure of needing to walk, I kept going. Turns out trying to slow down made it hurt worse so I don't think the cause was us boogieing our way along after the turnaround at goal pace or faster. Though, it WAS better to slow down and sort of squat more on the uphills. Very strange. I went home and iced it and it behaved walking around so I guess I'll go back to icing after all my runs.

So . . . now what? I'm scheduled for a 20 this coming weekend but when I whined about that, Leslie's had a very reasonable response along the lines of "would you rather run the 20 and not be able to do Whistlestop or do one less 20 and be fine at Whistlestop?" Hmmmmm. Excellent point. At this point, I'm not sure if it's something I should be worried about or if it's still annoyed from all the sudden kneeling and twisting at yoga when I've barely kneeled at all since February or March. So I guess it's another week of paying attention to how the knee feels and I'll probably make the long run decision later in the week. I'm about to head out for some trails so we'll see how that goes!