10K done.

I have to admit, it was looking pretty bad there for a while. Two weeks ago I was pretty convinced I wasn’t going to be able to do it and had to stop training. I wasn’t able to start training until about 7 days ago, and then it was light. I did a 5 mile run on Tuesday around the lakes at ND to see if I was going to make it. It wasn’t easy. Wednesday and Thursday I was too sore to do anything and by Friday, I didn’t want to do anything. Yesterday I mostly sat around eating jelly beans and pasta dishes to load up on carbs.

Dad got here at 6:15am this morning, about 15 minutes earlier than I had expected. My alarm had just gone off, so I wasn’t totally asleep, but it was a abrupt wake up. I drank a can of Coke Zero and took about 600 mg of ibuprofin, just in case. The knee looked rather normal and felt rather normal and, indeed, it caused me no problems for the race. In typical Vince fashion, we arrived two hours earlier than necessary to the race and watched the runners for the 5k and the half marathon run off. It was neat. I had been to a number of races in my life, mostly the ones my parents’ were in, but I had never run in one. I never figured I would, either. I saw Joe Donnely, our congresscritter from Northern Indiana and put in a good word for a piece of legislation I’m hoping doesn’t pass. He wasn’t too thrilled to be talking to me. After waiting for a few moments, we moved into the race line behind the 9 min/mile pace marker for the race to begin. I didn’t even hear the gun go off - there were about 1000 people in the line and everyone began moving.

Initially, we were getting passed by a lot of people. It mostly didn’t matter to me, since I realized I wasn’t going to be able to do a 9 minute mile, but the fatties and little kids were annoying. After about mile 3, most of the fatties had started walking and I had passed the little kids. I was doing about an 11-12 min/mile at that point and, with the race about half over, I picked it up. Mile 4 was done at about 10min/mile. Mile 5 was done at about 9min/mile and the last 1.2 miles was done at around an 8min/mile pace. I completed the course, all 6.2 miles of it, in an hour and five minutes of continuous (indeed accelerating) running. So I can declare victory there.

There was one casualty though. My poor toe. I dunno how it happened, but it’s pretty messed up. My legs are all like Jello now, so I think I’ll go take a nap. Small price to pay, I guess. I’ll post the official time when they post it on the website. We were chipped through the race, so I’ll have a better idea of how I actually did.

Here are my official results. Not too impressive, actually, but it was my first race ever.

5K OK… 10K in 5 days.

I ran a 5K yesterday around the lakes of ND and everything seemed to glide along all Kosher like. The knee presented no problems. The problem, however, is that the 5K was pretty hard toward the end. It being only the second time I ran in the last 2 months. The question is, how will 10K work with virtually no training? That’s tough to say. I’ve been keeping it at around 9 min/mile, which would be my ideal rate, since moving much slower is little but glorified walking and moving any faster is certain failure.

I guess the point is, barring something unanticipated, I’ll run the 10K and hope for the best. The last two weeks of doing nothing but popping pills to keep the swelling down may have helped the recovery process, but it’s seriously hindered the training process.  I’m also saddened that Katie won’t be running with me, since she has to go to an orientation or some garbage for Ecuador.  Which means I’ll be running solo.  If anyone wants to just come up and jump in the race with me, that’d be cool with me. (dad? if you even read this?)

In other news, I’ve lost all the weight I gained and am back to a feather-light 180 pounds. (hooray)

Hooray for running!

Finally, the knee behaved itself. I did 30 minutes of elliptical to warm it up and decided to test it out on the treadmill. Not one for half measures, I decided to push a 9 minute mile right off the bat and see how it help up over the 9 minutes. The first four were easy but at minute 6 I was dying. Not my knee, mind you, which was fine, it was me… running and elliptical are not the same beasts! By 7 I could tell my legs were getting spongy and that stabbing pain in my chest started to swell up. 8 minutes in I was dropping sweat, just trying to focus on anything other than the remaining 60 seconds. By the end, I was exhausted, but my knee held itself well. I did a cool down lap around the track and could feel the knee begin to swell, so I showered and took some NSAIDs. Hopefully tomorrow I won’t regret it. One thing is obvious, I’m not going to run the Sunburst at a 9 minute/mile pace, which is only 9 days away and… maybe… I’ll still be able to run it.

The knee is behaving itself?

I did some elliptical yesterday for about 55 minutes and my knee is quite fine.  I think I’ll try another hour on the elliptical tomorrow to see how it holds up.  If it does, maybe a run on the weekend?  Who knows.

MRI results are in

and they didn’t find anything.  So, I was “prescribed” 2 ibuprofen, 3 times a week for a week and to take a week off of exercise.  Which is really lame, since I took last week off because I was depressed about not being able to do the Sunburst.  Now, I’m feeling fairly confident, that after two weeks of not training, I’ll fail.

So, I guess it’s good news that nothing is horribly wrong, but not finding anything is disappointing and not being able to run is even more so.

Fail.

Two minutes into a 30 minute run I had to stop because of knee pain. I can do elliptical for over an hour but I can’t run for more than 2 minutes. At this point, running in the Sunburst seems very unlikely since it is only some 28 days away. My right ear bud is also suddenly defective on my iPod and I have an MRI scheduled for my knee on Wednesday. MRIs make me think bad, bad things - though, the X-ray was negative - but sometimes that don’t mean much.

It’s a real bummer since I’ve been working pretty hard to get to this point and it’s looking pretty glum. I just wish my knee was good. Life’s so unfair :(