Training Log Archive: SwampfoxIn the 1 days ending Jun 25, 2019: |
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Tuesday Jun 25, 2019 #
Note
With rain today, June has now featured rain on 24 out of 25 days. Lookout Seattle!
Separately, mosquitoes have been very scarce this year, leaving people to hope that maybe this would be an especially light mosquito season. Up until today. Things are now becoming...much more normal. While biking by the river today, I had gangs of mosquitoes successfully launching numerous kamikaze attacks, with happy mosquitoes festooning my legs. Pedaling harder just seemed to attract more of the leeches of the winds.
Separately, mosquitoes have been very scarce this year, leaving people to hope that maybe this would be an especially light mosquito season. Up until today. Things are now becoming...much more normal. While biking by the river today, I had gangs of mosquitoes successfully launching numerous kamikaze attacks, with happy mosquitoes festooning my legs. Pedaling harder just seemed to attract more of the leeches of the winds.
C • Rain 3
Note
I noted that 2 Sundays ago my knee wasn't feeling so great after orienteering that day, and realized during the evening it was different from anything I could remember before, with some sense of it being swollen and/or stiff. That had me concerned. I did some research to try to figure out what was going on. I considered bursitis, but the location and symptoms made that seem less likely to me. What I decided was most likely was a tear in the lateral meniscus, but not being a human MRI, I couldn't be sure. Some more reading made me think it was okay to continue running as long as I took it easy (which I was going to do anyway), and that there was no point in heading to a doctor so early. The main things guiding me was that I never really had any pain--let alone bad pain; it was more mild discomfort and some sense of swelling in the evening--and that my knee was stable and never felt like it was going to lock up or anything like that. Plus, while I was actually running, it felt 99.9% fine and probably the only reason I wouldn't have gone with 100% was just because I knew something was going on.
By Friday-Saturday, I was more comfortable with whatever was going on, less worried that it might be something seriously wrong that I was making worse, and it seemed like things were maybe a little better. So on Sunday I decided to risk giving it a test by running at speed through terrain, and seeing how that went. My plan was to run at the easier end of the race pace band, and that if at any point I felt pain or something else of concern, I would stop at once. The choice of a test site was easy: the Green course at Granite Planite was still streamered, and would take less than 30 minutes--which was the longest I wanted to go at a non-easy pace.
I made sure to warm up thoroughly.
The course starts out with a quick downhill stretch to the first control, and partly on a jeep trail, which I figured would be the greatest stress of anywhere on the course (fast running on a steepish downhill on a hard surface), and I think I probably held back a little on that part just out of nervousness. But once I started climbing up the side out of #1 and got into some of the sage, it was more about trying to pick a good line to #2 and trying to ht the control dead on, and that was the last I thought of the knee.
I kept up good speed along the way, but the effort felt comfortable even so. As compared to when we ran the course during our training weekend in early June, the leaves were now out, and in many places grass was lush and now much taller. Plus there were cows!
When I hit the Finish and hit my watch, I was happy with how the test went. There wasn't any hint of any problem with the knee: it was perfectly stable, with no pain or discomfort whatsoever. I did a good warm down and there was no sign of any swelling or discomfort during that, so also good.
What was surprising was that for all that, my time was only one second off the best time I had run before. When I got home and was checking times, I saw I was wrong: my time wasn't one second slower than my best, as I had thought. Actually it was better than my previous best, and by 19 seconds. Completely unexpected.
In the evening I could once again feel like there was some small amount of swelling, but if anything it was less than what I had been feeling earlier in the week.
The next day (Monday) the knee felt fine in the morning and the rest of the day as well, which was enough to satisfy me things were heading the right direction.
Tonight I ran trails after the rains and pushed the pace up a little bit, and once again it felt good.
This is of course a big relief, and whatever it is (not quite ready to say "was") going on, I'm basically not worried anymore, though I will continue to monitor things.
Completely unrelated: I aimed my run at taking a look at the snow field off the Headquarters Trail, and it's still hanging in there. I don't know if it will make it to July, but it might.
By Friday-Saturday, I was more comfortable with whatever was going on, less worried that it might be something seriously wrong that I was making worse, and it seemed like things were maybe a little better. So on Sunday I decided to risk giving it a test by running at speed through terrain, and seeing how that went. My plan was to run at the easier end of the race pace band, and that if at any point I felt pain or something else of concern, I would stop at once. The choice of a test site was easy: the Green course at Granite Planite was still streamered, and would take less than 30 minutes--which was the longest I wanted to go at a non-easy pace.
I made sure to warm up thoroughly.
The course starts out with a quick downhill stretch to the first control, and partly on a jeep trail, which I figured would be the greatest stress of anywhere on the course (fast running on a steepish downhill on a hard surface), and I think I probably held back a little on that part just out of nervousness. But once I started climbing up the side out of #1 and got into some of the sage, it was more about trying to pick a good line to #2 and trying to ht the control dead on, and that was the last I thought of the knee.
I kept up good speed along the way, but the effort felt comfortable even so. As compared to when we ran the course during our training weekend in early June, the leaves were now out, and in many places grass was lush and now much taller. Plus there were cows!
When I hit the Finish and hit my watch, I was happy with how the test went. There wasn't any hint of any problem with the knee: it was perfectly stable, with no pain or discomfort whatsoever. I did a good warm down and there was no sign of any swelling or discomfort during that, so also good.
What was surprising was that for all that, my time was only one second off the best time I had run before. When I got home and was checking times, I saw I was wrong: my time wasn't one second slower than my best, as I had thought. Actually it was better than my previous best, and by 19 seconds. Completely unexpected.
In the evening I could once again feel like there was some small amount of swelling, but if anything it was less than what I had been feeling earlier in the week.
The next day (Monday) the knee felt fine in the morning and the rest of the day as well, which was enough to satisfy me things were heading the right direction.
Tonight I ran trails after the rains and pushed the pace up a little bit, and once again it felt good.
This is of course a big relief, and whatever it is (not quite ready to say "was") going on, I'm basically not worried anymore, though I will continue to monitor things.
Completely unrelated: I aimed my run at taking a look at the snow field off the Headquarters Trail, and it's still hanging in there. I don't know if it will make it to July, but it might.