Pain-free running = overzealous Josh

I spent the entire weekend in Philadelphia for Rachel's Penn graduation and despite my desire to run the Rocky steps up the Philadelphia Art Museum, I didn't run a step all weekend. No big deal, congrats to Rachel, college grad, her weekend! My knee felt progressively better each day, until I had to lug one of her 50 pound suitcases down some stairs. Rachel's stairs are hobbit-sized, so you can only really fit up the stairway if you are 5'2 or less, meaning I have to contort in various ways to get around her apartment. I was less than thrilled with my newly sore knee as I boarded my flight home yesterday.

Fortunately, PT was great today. The people at Pro-Sport are great and getting the knots out of my quads, and have a running competition to see who can put me in the most pain each day. Nancy is the runaway winner so far with her sharp elbows. So after 90 minutes of therapy and drills, I was actually feeling pretty good, and decided I would head out to the Cal Coast workout to test out my legs.

I left work a little later than usual for Tuesday so I didn't have much time before the workout started, and decided to take a longer warm-up and skip out of the first couple intervals. Today's workout was 1200, 800, 4x400 - a very short workout since it's our last week on the track. Next week we are moving to the Shady Canyon bike path to start tempo runs. I kept my entire first 10 minutes on the grass, and was thrilled to discover from the first step that I could finally run without any discomfort or limp. After 10 minutes of exuberant running I threw caution to the wind and decided to hop in the 800, but take it easy. The splits were stupid, (38, 34, 40, 45) and I cruised through in 2:37-not hard, but first up-tempo running I have done since my triathlon. I made sure to jog a whole lap before the 400's and was hesitant to jump in those, but decided I would just hang back and relax (and I stayed out of my flats).

Not so much. The first split was an easy 71 (perfect, nothing faster). Then I started loosening up a bit and came through in 66 on the next split, feeling pretty good (ok! but nothing below 65). Then as my legs continued to wake up I started feeling really good and came through in 64 for the next one (crap, may pay for that later). I debated sitting out the last 400, but it was our last group workout there for a while and why not. I ended up running a 61. Then I hopped in with Kare for the last couple hundred yards of her 2 mile workout, and cooled down 3 miles, for 6.5 on the day.

Considering I haven't done anything faster than 6:45 pace for the past two weeks I was very happy to see some leg speed was still there. I really wanted to get moving once before my duathlon this weekend, and I'm feeling like without any major setbacks, I should be good to go for Saturday.