Training Log Archive: DWildfogel

The usual weekly accumulation of morning exercises: stretching, strength and balance.

Last night, I felt no adverse affects from the morning's run, so I was thinking that perhaps one more run like that would allow me to move forward with plans for competing this summer. And when I woke up this morning, my knee still felt fine. But after a little stretching, I went to walk down the driveway and my knee was not up for that: felt like my lower leg was dragging, quite similar (though not as severe) as the day I decided I needed to stop running and get PT. Tried jogging a few steps, and that clearly was not a good idea. Bummer. Hoping this is not a major setback.

Later, walking around in SF, leg was still dragging, with pain behind the knee.

Front of house. 6 x 1 lap with 30 secs walk (in a loop) at the end of each lap. Unlike Wed, didn't count the walk in the time or distance.

Laps: 643, 621, 608, 603, 554, 545

I increased the intensity and load of the run from Wednesday in several ways:
-more distance
-longer intervals
-faster pace
-ran the two steeper downhills (gingerly) instead of walking them

Of the above, only the last one seemed a bit problematic: at one point, felt several twinges in my knee on consecutive steps, and generally felt uncomfortable on those downhills.

Encouraged because by the end I was running at almost normal pace, with nothing hurting. On the other hand, the downhills suggest that I'm still quite far away from being ready to run in orienteering terrain.

[Easy distance]

Did almost all of the physical therapy exercises, but with low reps/shorter holds. Before I tried this, my knee seemed not so bad, but later (as noted above) it seemed bad again.

JCCLG. Full workout. Hadn't been here in quite a while, but been doing the equivalents of the machines with therabands at home, so didn't hesitate to do the "usual" amounts today.

[Strength exercises]

At home. Walking, squats, side-stepping, scissors, fire-hydrant (kneeling and standing) - all with Thera-ring. Quad stretching.

Front of house. Out early to beat the heat (it was already 80) and because of schedule constraints.

Ran most of it, 11:40/mi pace, with two short walks each lap. Feel out of shape, though some of that is from sore legs after pushing them at Kevin's yesterday. Pace was "easy distance minus", but the effort was greater than that.

The walks were on the two steepest downhills, a total of 80m/lap, 50 secs. Walked an additional 223 after completing the fifth lap to get the total to three miles.

Laps (starting at the edge of Kathy's driveway): 710, 702, 648, 652, 648

Wore wrong (old) shoes by mistake.

[Easy distance]

Front of house, 2xshort loop. Very windy, but warm. Just felt like getting out there before a busy day. Not much more than a fast jog, but it's the first time since the injury that I jogged for more than 1:20 without stopping. It felt very easy, though in the last minute I started feeling my knee a little.

At Kevin's. Found my glutes! Amazing to watch how the graphs of the sensors showed that I really did learn something about using my glutes rather than my hamstrings or quads. Still a lot of work to be done to make using them routine and then even more to be able to do it when I'm running.

Pretty stressful day. Finally thought I'd freed up around 5pm, but then there were further interruptions during my workout. Nevertheless, did 5 exercises with the Thera-ring, mostly with 30 sec holds and 20 sec rests. Feel like I was making myself pretty sore with these exercises, so cut back just a bit on each of them, though with 5 to do now, it was still a good session.

Think I may have finally "found" my glutes. L suggested that I think about rotating my feet outward, and that seems to get me to thrust my hips forward and tighten my glutes.

Full workout: theraband interleaved with core, adductors, weights. Irritated my neck a little with the weights.

[Strength exercises]

Lake Ranch Reservoir. More walking than running, and then running was really jogging, but I'll classify this as a run since it is about as much as I can manage right now - and the most I've done in a while. Jogged 18 segments for a total of 17:25, maybe close to 1.5 miles altogether. My legs were pretty sore this morning, maybe from yesterday's run or maybe from Fri's PT session, but after walking for 5 mins, decided to try jogging (not running), and it seemed to go OK, so basically did 1 min jog, 1 min walk the rest of the way, finishing with a 5 min walk. Made it half way down the side of the lake before turning back (trying to finish at about the same time as L, who was running up to the third bridge. Walked the two biggest downhills, so two of the walking parts were two minutes rather than one.

Yesterday's running at 10 min pace was probably too fast. Today might've been more like 12 min pace (hard to tell), probably better for starting to ramp up again.

George and Leslie stayed over last night, heading for the Big Basin NavX this morning. I was very tempted to go, but I thought it wouldn't be the best for my knee.

710(715)1425(608)2033
303-300 (turning around at 2336)
-->(624)(726)(651)

[Easy distance minus]