The past week of training has felt both like a success and a failure.
Listening to my body is something I am still learning, even after all of these years. The pain in my left knee got to a point where I was worried about actually doing real damage. On Tuesday, I went for a run and felt great. This week all of the workouts were the same, starting with a 3:00 run, 1:30 minute walk, 5:00 run, 1:30 walk, then repeat. On Thursday morning, I went for my run and once again found myself battling the urge to go at a faster pace than I should. Slowing down often times feels just as hard as trying to be faster. Thankfully, looking at my Garmin after the runs, the second training day was paced much better. All of the running intervals were closer to the pace I wanted them to be.
The bad news was the pain my left knee and leg was in after that. I had trouble walking and was limping around. It wasn’t just my knee, but radiated down the interior of my leg. It also felt like every muscle surrounding my knee was pulled so tight that I couldn’t flex it. I knew that I should rest it entirely because I had gotten to the point where I was icing it and taking Ibuprofen, something I have been trying to avoid. Whenever I start to feel as if I am able to get back out on the road, I try it, only to put myself in the same position, or worse. It looks like I am going to have to rest it longer than I normally do and then see how things go from there.
The good news is that I had planned to work up to a slightly longer running interval beyond week 5. My main goal is just to run for 3:00 and then walk 1:30, repeating that through whatever distance I need to. Running those intervals feels doable as long as I can get this issue with my knee sorted out. Then it should only be a matter of slowly working up to the longer distances each week.