This post originally appeared on Ben’s old blog, Running From the Physio.
A little late, but they do say better late than never… right?
Tuesday: 2.21 miles @ 8:37 min/mile
This run last week I used a heart rate monitor to control my pace: no such control this week. My concern over my left knee had risen by this stage, and I had found that running quicker seemed to control it reasonably well. So rather than follow my training plan, which dictates that this is a nice, slow recovery run, it just ran it at a comfortable, but reasonably quick pace. Either because it was a short distance, or because of the pace, my knee was actually fine. The time included a stop towards the end to give a couple some directions to Travelodge (actually, because they caught me right near the end of my run, I was a little boggled and just said I didn’t really know and wafted them generally towards the Toneway. Good look to them walking along there.)
Wednesday: 2 miles
This run was scheduled in my plan to help gain distance without making any of my other runs too long. However, because I was worried about my knee, and wanted to give it as much recovery time as possible I skipped this run.
Thursday: 6.38 miles @ 9:10 min/mile
This very much felt like the mid-week medium distance run that it was. My legs were weary from the week’s work, and Thursday itself had been a particularly long day. Again, my knee held up better than I had been expecting, with just a niggle over the last mile or so. The route was a familiar one and generally, apart from the heavy legs, it was a decent run.
Saturday: Parkrun, 5km (3.11 miles) @ 7:12 min/mile
Somehow I ended up arriving quite late for this. I left home at more or less the same time as usual, but the cold weather, rather than spurring me on to keep warm, seems to have just frozen my joints during the walk. That said, it must have worked as a bit of a warm-up, as the run was pretty good. After quickly collecting my Sweatshop voucher, as I talked about in the last post, I headed over to the start. I decided to sit on the shoulder of a runner that I knew generally finished about 30 seconds ahead of me for the first lap, and see how I felt. In similar fashion to the previous week’s run, I stuck with him for the first lap, and then naturally felt that I could go quicker on the second lap, so stepped past him and headed off on my own. The course was a lot drier than it had been for a while, and that probably helped to contribute to a personal best of 22:27. I could certainly have pushed harder towards the end as well, which gives me great confidence for being able to break the seven minute mile at some point soon (although I don’t want to risk injuring myself with the half marathon less than two months away now!)
Sunday: 8.40 miles @ 9:19 min/mile
This should have been the same route, but in reverse, as the previous week, but I messed up a little straight out of the house, and ran the wrong way! Because of this I added about quarter of a mile onto the route. The weather was pretty horrible, I went out later than I meant to and it started raining/heavy drizzling soon into the run. By the end I was looking for any excuse to shorten the run, and kept feeling phantom pains in both knees, but I resisted and ran the planned distance. In general my left knee has been feeling a lot better, both during this run, and throughout the week, so I’m confident now that with some management I can keep it together!