What I knee'ed

As I mentioned a while back, I have ambitious race goals for this fall running the new Myrtle Beach Mini Marathon (1/2 marathon distance) and the Richmond Marathon only 3 weeks later. While I've never been a stickler for a set training program, I tend to schedule my long runs leading up to race weekend so I can prepare for them as the dates approach. I've learned the importance of getting in the longest training run a month in advance and tapering down to race day for a marathon. That said, I have my longest marathon training run to complete either 1 or 2 weeks before the Myrtle Beach race. 

June and July went great training-wise. I was getting in lots of mileage and running progressively 10,11 and 12 miles Saturdays until I made a mistake in late July that stalled my training. In a rush to get a long run in on a Friday morning due to Friday night plans that would prevent a long Saturday run (beer and bourbon plans), I overdid it on a 9 miler without pre or post run stretching and ended up with severe knee pain that halted my training for much longer than a night of binch drinking bourbon would. 

After a visit to the Doctor at my local orthopedic clinic (that repaired my torn right knee ACL in 2001), I learned that I had simply gotten old  not been stretching enough which led to a inflammation of my patella tendon in my left knee. So from here, I rested from running for nearly two weeks and visited the Athletic Performance Center for some painful therapy, use of a foam roller and dynamic stretching that seems to have pointed me in the right direction. During my break from running, I did  a lot of interval training by bike instead with 15-25 mile trail rides around town. 

Since getting back to running 2 weeks or so ago, I have run 7.2, 9 and 14.2 mile training runs along with regular shorter runs and afternoons on either my road or mountain bike. My legs are feeling about where they were this time last year and I am hoping for a solid September and October as the dates near for my upcoming races. In the meantime, I will be stretching, strength training, biking to beer, mountain biking, getting in more long runs and running a few 5k races for fun. 

Carpe viam!