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!

From NR: Treadmill?!

Today I experienced something that I don't think I've ever encountered before . . .

I wanted to run on the treadmill. It was beautiful outside and I did my easy 3 miles inside. On a treadmill. Voluntarily.

I know. What's wrong with me, huh?

Actually, I think it was part making sure I could stop if my knee was pissed and part not wanting to run up Chester today with the un-eveness and not knowing where 3 miles was at. It ended up being fairly nice, though. Sometimes it's good to force myself through a treadmill since it's much harder for me than it should be.

So something else that was new for me - I went to an official yoga class for the first time on Saturday. My sister goes every Saturday and since I was visiting her for the weekend, I got to go along. It was actually really nice. It was two hours long and I didn't even notice, I thought it was more like one hour. Turns out yoga is not so good for my knee though - lots of kneeling and I think too much twisting the leg out and holding. The kneeling I knew was a problem right away and made sure to kneel on a blanket and try to kneel uneven, keeping less weight on my left knee but I didn't really think about the twisting at all. So my knee was rather unhappy with me the next morning. Which axes my plans to check out yoga classes at the Fitness Center. I did look back into Pilates, though, and am annoyed to only find a morning class. Maybe there'll be a different schedule come fall.

So once my knee made some noise, I opted for being smart (yay, Sam!) and took a few days off to make sure it wouldn't freak out on me too much. My knee being unhappy could also be partially due to a jump in mileage I may have just done, too . . . I went for a test run yesterday and things seemed pretty good so I decided on a short run today, tomorrow off and go back to my scheduled long run on Saturday.