Monday, August 12, 2013

Taking a knee

My stubborn streak knows no bounds, I guess, and I should know better, at least my knee will thank me for it in the long run.

I felt the tweak on my left leg somewhere during my long run more than a week ago, a 20 miler that was done with great effort. Instead of following a hard effort with rest, I ran 13 miles the day after, then 8 miles the day after. By the time I took a rest day, some day last week, my knee was complaining full on.

Well, that last post was a little premature on the "this is a great year" theme. As I'm figuring out how to set up my recovery this week, part of my mind is thinking setback while the other thinks about the long view.

The pain, on the area to the outside of the knee, it's only perceptible when I'm running harder, somewhere faster than 5 minute kilometres. It's also sore as I climb stairs. Walking or jogging, I can avoid the pain. My thought that it was overtraining and a lack of stretching did me in. I hopefully took to the streets this morning thinking that a weekend of icing, stretching and anti-inflammation medication had brought it down.

No such luck. I started to curse myself, asking why I did a 11 mile run on Sunday. It's funny how when your legs get loosened up, you can run 4:45 kilometres on a sore leg -- it actually didn't feel sore yesterday.

So a mini hiatus it is. I'm not going to get any better by having a half hearted approach to recovery. I have a 30K race on Saturday, an easy run on Wednesday but otherwise I'm shutting it down for now.

Maybe I'll have more time to blog.

In lieu of running, blogging on the waterfront.



2 comments:

Emma said...

Awww, damn. Sorry about the knee. More time to blog could be good for those of us you like reading your work, though!

Patrick said...

Sorry to hear about that. Hope you are able to get back to full training soon.