Knee pain, walking and some cautious 4ks

[rmc28]

The day after my 12k run, my left knee/lower leg was definitely Not Happy. I experimentally walked for 30 minutes which seemed to help, so I did it again in the evening. I spent the rest of that week putting in 30min walks in my lunch hour and again in the evenings if I could, and everything seemed a lot happier. I missed Thursday evening because of children and Friday entirely because of heat.

I did read up carefully on runner's knee, but don't *think* that's what's going on. It feels more like my dodgy pelvis i.e. overmobility as a legacy of pregnancy. Regular walking or running seems to keep the pelvis happy, and regular walking seemed to ease up the knee rather than make it worse. I have been a bit slack about stretching lately, so my muscles may not be able to keep things in the right position as well as they need to.

On Saturday morning I did a cautious 4k at 30s:45s and took particular care with my stretching afterward, and also managed two 30-minute walks in the evening. All seemed well that day and the next. I continued with the "1 or 2 30-min walks a day" regime, running Monday evening and Wednesday morning, this time ~30 min at 30s:30s and again stretching carefully afterward, and again all seems well.

1-2x 30 mins walking or running a day is a lot of time commitment but it really seems to help my stability (pelvis, knee and mental health too!). So I made myself an "ideal world" schedule:

	Lunch	Evening
Mon	walk	run
Tue	walk	walk
Wed	social lunch	date night
Thu	walk	bonus run
Fri	walk	run
Sat	long run
Sun	2x walk

Thursday nights are most likely to be lost to children, so that can be a bonus run if I do get out.  That means I'm running 3 times a week normally, 1 of them long, and I can work on building up both speed and distance as previously planned.

The running is all in the evening for now (well, Saturday long runs are a combination of "when it isn't too hot" and "when it best fits in with the family") but that's seasonal.

If I can stick to this for a few more weeks, the next bit of my plan is to sort out a weights programme (i.e. use my gym membership and get someone to write me a programme).  I think I could swap two lunchtime walks for two lunchtime run-to-gym-and-lift-weights sessions, and add a Sunday weights session.  The gym is about 7 minutes away from my office on my usual running-lunchtime route, and about 35 minutes walk from home.  So 2x 20 min session in the week, and a longer session at the weekend.

30 mins: 3.6 km

[liv]

Last night I waited as long as I could for the temperature to get cooler but while the evening was light enough for running, which is a bit of a narrow window, but at least it wasn't too boiling hot and there was a pleasant breeze. I was aiming to keep at a steady pace of about 8½'' / km, which I didn't quite manage, I was quite a bit faster than that for the first half and quite a bit slower for the uphill stretch. But I did manage 3.6 km in 30 minutes, which is the fastest I've ever managed on this hilly route.

And I did the first 2 km (basically halfway, before I turn round and run back uphill) in under 16 minutes. That I think is the first time I've definitively managed 8''/km, my eventual goal pace which I've been working towards asymptotically since I started this running regime, over a substantial distance. I think I could probably keep that up for half an hour if there weren't pesky hills in the way, but it's still going to take some work to manage that 40 minute 5K.

I feel reasonably good about this. It wasn't one of those rare brilliant runs where I feel like I'm flying or like I could go on forever, and I wasn't trying to "race", I was aiming for a slightly faster steady pace than last time I tried to do a steady pace run. I think I was at about 80% of maximum effort throughout, which is to say that I never felt it was a struggle to go on, but by the time I got to the last five minutes I didn't have much left in the tank to try to speed up for the final stretch in order to get a better time. So I'm not celebrating the fact that I went a tiny bit faster than I have before, I'm celebrating the fact that I'm getting better at paying attention to my body and pacing myself sensibly.

Three weeks in, still on week 1 of the app...

[highlyeccentric]

Sigh. Today's effort did result in a complete, non-sabotaged week 1 workout, though. If I made a list of things which have, or which I have *allowed* to derail my adherence to the workout, excluding 'failed to go running at all', it would include:

- deciding to run to work to exchange headphones. Turns out that stopping mid-workout is not a good incentive to resume and complete the workout properly, especially when work is in a part of town with lots of traffic lights one has to wait for. Still, having headphones that don't fall out when running is useful - if only I had remembered to fix that *when not in the middle of running*.
- gas. Why I am prone to burping while jogging (and not during the walking cycles) I do not know, but it is not helpful.
- roadworks. These were loud enough to drown out the 'walk now, run now' prompts, got me all muddled, and I ended up walking for half the workout.
- Inexplicable mental meltdown. Pretty sure exercise is meant to promote happiness, not lead to one bursting into tears ten minutes in for no known reason. (This came in the middle of a bad week, but why the meltdown when running instead of, i dunno, over breakfast, I do not know.)

On the bright side, the leg pain has ceased, my lung capacity/breathing stamina has notably improved, and I haven't fallen over anything or anyone for two whole weeks. Progress!