Training Log Archive: Lori

Running with Sam and Presto at Briones! We set out for an easy-peasy run today. It was warm-ish and humid-ish, and it even rained a bit, which was confusing. My left knee felt a bit funny right at the beginning when running across some uneven grassy ground, but then both knees felt totally and completely fine for the entire rest of the run, which was great! We had some close cow encounters, where the cows just refused to move off the trail and also saw a snake. Everyone was wearing masks and being very polite about moving off to the side of the trail, so it was an excellent outing!

Normal stretching back home after some bubble tea (which ended up just replacing lunch...probably not the best plan...).

Both knees are feeling decent today. I'm going to give them another day off and then try some easy fun this weekend to see how they do. I'm a bit baffled by the switching of which knee is hurting - it seems like a strange way for an injury to go. They both hurt in the same place, so maybe they just both got a bit stressed out by the snowy sidehilling this weekend, and it's just manifesting oddly?

I had to go into lab to do some essential lab maintenance-y stuff today and didn't get home until almost 9pm, so I wasn't tempted to go for a run tonight, which was probably good because my left knee was feeling slightly wonky going down stairs today. My right knee feels great, though, so that's good. Neither knee hurt on my bike commute, which is good news. Perhaps I'll do one run and one bike ride this weekend or something. I iced my left knee before bed.

Running with Sam and Presto after not-lab! My knee felt completely better during the day today, so we headed up to the fire trail for a nice easy run. It was pretty warm today, so running felt a bit harder than it should have. Presto clearly agreed. My right knee (the one hurting at the end of our backpacking trip) felt completely fine, but my left knee was feeling a bit funny sporadically. Ugh. Come on knees! Otherwise, it was really great to get outside!

Normal abs.

Normal stretching. My right knee feels completely fine, but my left knee is bugging me a bit now. I iced both knees before bed.

My knee hurts getting up from sitting down and going up and down stairs, although it is somewhat inconsistent (i.e., sometimes it does not hurt when doing these things). I'll try stretching and stuff throughout the day and hopefully it will feel a bit better tomorrow. Definitely not running today. I'll have to see how things feel the rest of the week.

Limber 11 plus calf stretching. My inner thigh muscles are SUPER tight. My knee definitely felt better after this than before, so hopefully it was at least somewhat useful. I was going to ice my knee as well, but then our power went out and I decided that pulling a block of ice out of the freezer was probably a bad plan when we don't have a good idea of when our power will return. I just took ibuprofen instead.

Backpacking in the Shasta National Forest with Sam and Presto! We packed up camp and headed back down to the car. The snow had visibly melted since Saturday, but there was still plenty of it and still lots and lots of awkward sidehilling on snowy slopes. We stopped briefly for a last view of Mt. Shasta before the trip through the forest. My knee started hurting a mile from the car - a weirdly sharp pain on the inside of my right knee (not the knee that was bugging me after I smashed my toe). There wasn't really anything I could do about it at that point. I had to get back to the car and so did my backpack. I'm guessing my knee was displeased about the slippery, snowy sidehilling with a pack.

We saw the first person we'd seen all weekend mountain biking, but we were able to stay at least 10 feet away from him, so it seemed like a very successful outing from the social distancing perspective!

After changing into clean clothes and a quick lunch at the car, we headed back to the Bay Area. Fun weekend!

Normal stretching back home. My knee was painful getting out of the car, but then felt better after stretching. Fingers crossed this doesn't turn into something long-term... Tomorrow will definitely be a rest day!

Hiking with Sam and Presto in Shasta National Forest! After a pretty cold night, we decided to see if we could make it at least to the next high point over. Our original plan was to hike to Grizzly Peak, but that would be a 16 mile hike, which, with all the snow, seemed a bit out of the question at this point.

We didn't want to take the PCT, so we decided to do a mixture of cross-country bashing and seeing if we could find the elusive forest road. We spent about an hour swimming our way through the manzanita forest and were starting to consider the possibility of just bailing back to the campsite when we saw a bare patch of dirt about 100 meters away. Could that be the road??? After about 10 minutes of bashing, we stumbled out onto what appeared to be a massively overgrown trail. It only seemed invitingly trail-like because of what we'd been hiking through before then. The going was still kind of slow - the trail was either covered in manzanita or snow, but we could actually make decent progress now, so we continued on. We made it to a really nice high point with amazing views of Shasta, Lassan, the Trinities, and Grizzly Peak around lunch time, and decided there was no way we were making it to Grizzly Peak today, so we settled down for lunch before returning via a similarly insane path.

We made it back to the campsite around 2pm and decided to just spend the rest of the day relaxing and turning snow into drinking water while oggling Shasta and Lassan from our rocky perch. Excellent day!

A slightly better attempt at stretching.