Folly or Feasible?

Dear KBT,

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

Co-signed,
Your knees & Your shins

It doesn’t help that in addition to doing the longer runs, I’ve been doing them along a route that requires me to run on the sidewalk instead of the road. I used to grouse about runners not using the perfectly good sidewalk right next to them, but now I understand!

When I started Sunday I was feeling an exhaustion deeper than just sore muscles and had decided to abandon my every-other-day plan in favor of listening to my body when it was begging for rest. Apparently my body didn’t get the memo from my mind, causing it to stage a revolt. My right shin, which has been niggling at me for a couple of runs, started complaining a bit louder. That, however, was nothing in relation to my right knee, which has twinged with almost every movement and particular abhors stairs.

I’ve spent lots of time icing both; frozen peas are my friend.

The plan for now is to lay low until Wednesday morning, and do 28 and not a minute more. I’m still deathly afraid that every bit of conditioning, muscles and desire I’ve developed over the past seven weeks will suddenly dissipate if I go more than 48 hours, but common sense has to trump irrational fears. Sometimes.

The run itself was great. I ran my W7D3 route in reverse. Hey, what a concept! Start with the flat so you aren’t worn out halfway through… I’m not sure , though, how there could be so many uphills toward the end, where I’d been running hills last time — how can it be uphill both ways?!?!

Mostly, though, it was great because it was ten degrees cooler than the coolest day I’ve had yet. I do so love the low 60’s. I got to sleep relatively late, run in the sun and yet not sweat like a slurpee. No wonder I was able to keep going.

A (temporarily) bum knee is a small price to pay for finally feeling some joy in this running thing.