Week 8 (of 20) -- 100 miles!

Well, it's official. In just under 2 months of training, I've logged over 100 miles. As impressive as that sounds, Mark points out that it's only about a quarter of a tank of gas, which for my car is about $10. Although, my two months of training has been WAY more than $10 worth of effort. Just more evidence that gasoline in the United States is still too cheap. Americans are spoiled and they don't know how good they have it, but I digress... Back to the major accomplishment of the week -- 100 MILES! YAY!

Actually, though, this week could have two themes: "100 miles!" and "Ow, My Knee!" Yep, that's right. The knee pain I experienced early on and which seemed to dissipate for a few weeks has returned with a vengeance! I ran an "easy" two miles on the treadmill at the gym on Wed, and on Thurs, I could barely walk. So, I decided to skip my Thurs run and rest. On Friday, it still hurt, but intermittently. Although, it hurt enough that I wondered whether it would be a good idea to run on Sat or not. I really didn't want skip the 12 mile run for fear of falling behind on my training schedule, but I also know that aggravating an injury is not wise. So, I figured I'd talk to the coach on Sat morning before the run and ask him about my knee. I was fully intending to NOT run this weekend thinking it would only hurt my knee more, but regardless I woke up at 5:30 am and got dressed in my running clothes and gathered up all my gear just in case. Coach Terry said that it wasn't likely that I could damage my knee permanently, particularly because it DOESN'T hurt WHILE I'm running, but only afterwards. He said that I need to be more proactive about icing and stretching, even on days when I DON'T run. Who knew you should stretch when NOT running?

So, anyway, since I was already there at 7am, and since I was all dressed and ready to run, I decided to go ahead and do it (it's true what they say about "dressing the part" being 90% of the effort). It was a flat, out-and-back course and I could always turn around early if my knee started giving me trouble. The first 5 miles were great. My knee was a bit sore at first, but nothing like earlier in the week and it quickly disappeared. Interestingly enough, I was more aware of my tight hamstrings than my knee. But after mile 5, the paved trail ended and mile 6 and 7 were on packed dirt, which was much harder than the asphalt and it was very rocky, pitted, and uneven. My knee hurt a bit at this point probably because my form had suffered from the uneven trail. But by the time I got back to the paved trail, all was mostly well again, although my knee was making me more aware of its presence than it had on the way out. In the end, I managed to finish the 12 miles with a time of 2 hrs, 29 min and 14 sec, just barely under my goal of 2 1/2 hours. But I think that's amazing considering that I wasn't even planning to run! Afterwards, I decided to take advantage of the Pacific Ocean "ice" bath (about 54F) and my knee didn't hurt at all for the rest of weekend. :-)