Not Chasing Skirts, Honestly

With the knee improving every day, I tried a few things. The first was my return to the Caragh Lake road on Monday. It is quite a hilly run, and that used to aggravate the knee a lot, but I felt ready. After 5 weeks of almost relentless gale force wind, the conditions had finally improved and I did not feel the need for the sheltered but much more boring road towards Ard-na-Sidhe or the Devil's Elbow any more.

My knee held up well, but I definitely felt a bit of a twinge. I'm getting there, things are undoubtedly improving, but slowly.

Still, I was encouraged to try something else on Tuesday, namely stopping to wear the knee strap 24/7. This worked out less well, after a day in the office my knee was quiet sore again. Strange as it sounds, sitting in a chair seems to aggravate the knee more than running. As much as I would want to, I can't stop attending my desk job and the knee strap was back on for today.

I had planned a fairly slow run on Tuesday. I am well aware that I have been running a bit fast the previous week and tried to reign myself in; after all, there is a marathon to be run on Monday. I started out slowly enough, 7:50 pace or so for the first couple of miles. I switched off at that point and by mile 6 the average had dropped just below 7:30. Still, the heart rate was not particularly high and the legs felt perfectly fine and I was content to just keep going like that for the final stretch. Then I spotted a group of runners half a mile ahead of me, and I did what any of you would have done: I put the foot down.

Now, I am short sighted and I did not wear my glasses, so I could not possibly see who was so far ahead of me. That's my excuse. Otherwise you might accuse me of chasing skirts, because the group just happened to consist of 5 girls on their morning run. I knew some of them but had never met them out on the road at that time of day. Apparently I am not the only early riser round here any more. Once I passed them (after a mile at tempo pace, 6:30 or so) I kept going for a bit longer (otherwise they would have thought I had sped up just to catch up to them, wouldn't they?) and took it a bit easier on the last mile home. Obviously, the average pace of that run was significantly faster than originally planned. Oops.

I guess the universe made me pay for all that caper. This morning my knee hurt from not wearing the strap last night, the wind had picked up again, it was raining and I had slept through the alarm, leaving me just enough time for 6 miles. Then again, with the marathon just around the corner that might have been fortuitous anyway.

I got a bit of a scare on Monday night when the weather forecast predicted 25 degrees for Friday, just in time for another scorcher of a marathon, but relaxed when the next sentence was "but it won't last the weekend". Whew, that's lucky, but Niamh didn't quite see it that way.

I'm finally starting to look forward to the marathon on Monday. Now that I have found some confidence in both my knee and my fitness, they can bring it on.

30 May

8 miles, 1:03:00, 7:52 pace, HR 144

31 May

10 miles, 1:12:55, 7:17 pace, HR 154

1 Jun

6.05 miles, 46:50, 7:44 pace, HR 148