Cautiously Optimistic

It's a good day! Woohoo!

I was supposed to trail run this morning, but Frank had scheduled an early mountain bike ride so I decided to head to the gym to treadmill run a few easy miles last night instead. As much as the treadmill bores me to tears, it has a couple of advantages...one, it doesn't punish my body and has a bit of spring to it. Two, I can set it for very specific training paces, stop as soon as I'm done with my needed distance, cool down and go home. It was also a good option for calling it quits if the workout wound up being a painful disaster. On the trails, once I'm up there...I'm up there.

I started my run last night with the gym pretty empty, and immediately had dull pain and achiness on the outside of my knee. My heart sank and I really thought this was a worst case scenario...pain with every run, and no ability to train safely for a marathon. I made myself chill, though, and give it a few minutes, hoping this was just rusty legs after my longest period of rest from running since thyroid surgery.

As I kept going, the latter turned out to be the case. Yippee! The dull pain faded and I went for 5 miles at my easy pace. In the back of my head I had that "just one or two more miles" voice whispering to me...but this wound up being the little scare with the IT band that made me stick to a maximum of 5 miles today.

The only soreness I felt after was the area where I've been using the foam roller-and I think that's good-sore, the kind that's come from never using a foam roller in my life and suddenly using it three times a day to stretch and lengthen the IT band. I'm not kidding myself into thinking that I never have to worry about it again and have been encouraged to use the roller after workout, whether I'm having pain or not. That said, I feel VERY lucky and happy today to be able to run again. The next big test will be seeing how the body holds up at the Slacker Half next weekend.