Tired Legs

I monitored my injury for most of Saturday and I can report that things seem to be feeling fine. As the blog post title indicates, my legs were actually tired and sore from running 2 miles. Wow. Anyways, I miss this pain. I plan to hit the pool for some water running today. My month long membership at the Y has expired so now I'm trying out the Montgomery County Aquatic Center just a couple of miles up the road from FOX DEN. The pool there is indoors, so at least I'll have that going for me as we enter November.

If things go well and I continue to improve, I will slowly phase water running out and "land" running in. For the next two weeks my goal will be to run every other day and slowly, steadily uptick the distance from 2 to 5 miles, maybe getting up to 45 minutes if things progress naturally. Of course, as far as I know, there is no literature that details a recovery for something like this, so I am going off what my orthopedist said when I saw him a month or so ago: when you start to run, run by feel and take it easy, every other day. You will feel some pain, but you should be healed. Use how you feel as your guide.

I intend to follow this simple approach. IF all goes well, I am hoping I can either jump in a Turkey Trot or my HS alumni xc race during Thanksgiving and test where I am at in terms of fitness. Last year, at that time, I ran 16:02 for a 5k. Dismal, but just a few weeks later I ran 31:57 for 10k over the sloping Kentucky bluegrass (double the distance, at a faster pace, on a cross country course). And, I am hoping to be able to run at the USATF XC Club Champs on December 11 in Charlotte, NC. I am getting ahead of myself of course. Looking forward to tomorrow morning's run.