Turn of Events

Haven't had much of interest to blog about. I could write about how I had to work Tuesday evening and didn't have chance to run. Or about skipping Thursday's run in favor of attending my Son's Senior Class Honor Assembly. Or about how I had the 'pleasure' of an emergency Friday night dental visit when a crown came loose during dinner. None of that would make for interesting reading though.

Instead, I decided to wait for today and my planned 8 miler.

So...the run group was meeting at a different place this morning. The route that was planned out was a loop. The planner thought the loop was 'about' 8 mile. Six of us showed up, and away we went.

The temp was ~50 deg when we started with a gentle breeze. Quite nice actually. We naturally broke into approximately two groups based on pacing. The small group that I was with was doing ~10:45 pace. Something I've been running comfortably for the past few months.

Around mile 5, however, my left knee started to hurt. It started as a gentle nagging pain, but quickly turned into the same pain that I experienced in 2008. Some of you have experienced this yourself. It's the 'you really need to have someone look at this' pain.

I began to ease up on my pace and slowed to something closer to 11:45. It helped somewhat. Also part of the route was on dirt. That was a little better as well. But by mile 7, even a slow pace on dirt wasn't enough to compensate for the knee pain.

At mile 8, we were still a good mile from our starting point. Normally I don't mind going a little longer than planned, but not today. I made it to about 8.5 miles and decided to turn off my Garmin and walk in.

The best description is that it is crunchy and painful. I'm fairly certain that it's a repeat of what ailed me before. I probably need to see the orthopedic for Euflexxa injections again. If I go that route, however, it will likely be a good 2 months or so of down time. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

In any event, I believe I need to do the following in the short term: 1) scale back on distance and intensity, 2) increase the frequency of my PT maintenance exercises, and 3) call on monday to schedule time with the orthopedic guy.

Additionally I will think about doing more cycling. And maybe even get back to the pool again...