Pacers is Teh Awesome

Run tonight was awful, but ended with a piece of good news that means I can continue my march towards Marathoning.

Run first:

RunKeeper Result

Total Distance: 4.56 (more on this later)
Duration: 52:32
Avg Pace: 11:31
Avg Speed: 5.21
Elevation: 118
Heart Rate: HAVE NO IDEA B/C I FORGOT THE DAMN MONITOR.

This run was awful - no bones about it. I was tired, cranky, and hoping that the blob of rain hovering over DC would shift down to Alexandria so I could have a good reason not to run. No such luck.

So the run started out bad because I lost the group immediately. I tried to catch up with them, but was unable to make the lights they were making, and thus had to run it alone. Sad. :(

I made it through my first batch of intervals and felt like awful, and then number 2 and so on and so forth. Then I made it to the halfway point where I stopped and stretched a little bit because my knees were starting to ache (more on this later).

On the way back, I caught up with the dude guy leader of the fun runs who was sprinting with a couple of gazelles. I was on my "fast" interval, so I joined up with them, running a good portion of the "fast" minute at 7 minutes/mile (!). Then I dropped back and started to feel AWFUL.

Not sure if it was a combination of not having NUUN (though I did have gatorade for lunch) and not having an egg for breakfast and having a salad for lunch (which actually filled me up quite nicely), but I just had no energy to run with and my knees hurt, and my head got light and I made the command decision to cut my run short.

I still was the last person to finish, but oh well.

Now, onto the piece of good news!

So from time to time, Pacers has a physical therapist stop in to make sure we're all functioning correctly and to listed to us whine about what hurts. She is my buddy :)

So I mentioned to her that my knees hurt and she did a few things with me, and determined that when I get tired, the mechanics of my run get lazier and my knees start to press inward, which causes pressure on the knee. So she told me to do some squatting exercises on one foot to get stronger.

But even better, she also told me that I do NOT have runner's knee - which means I don't have to stop running!

Hooray for small miracles!

So tomorrow is the Lost Dog 5K number three, and I'm starting to long for a day off. Just have to get through tomorrow, and tomorrow night, and then I (kind of) get a day to myself.

I'll be going on travel to the big city of Tampa next week, so we will see how my runs stay up. Not looking forward to the long run on Sunday....:(