Y5K #21

I'm sorry I haven't finished blogging about my Week-o-Vacationing, but life just gets busy sometimes, you know? In any case, here's a post on my exercise from last week: 

• Tuesday: Started out tonight by miscalculating my 5 minute warmup and doing 6 minutes instead. Not a big deal, but probably contributed to my longer than normal run. I decided to go for 4 sets of 8.5 minutes of jogging after a couple weeks of doing 8s. Chose a different route that unfortunately included a busy intersection that I mistime the light at both times I had to cross it, so I did a little jog down the sidewalk and back and then jogged in place for a bit which I hate doing.  At the end of everything my right foot was starting to feel a little crampy. Hopefully that's not a problem that comes back again. Seems like I've had something similar pop up at least once this summer without becoming a serious problem.  Total for today: 4.2 miles plus a little jogging in place in 51 minutes.

• Thursday: Foot problem went away for the most part. Maybe a twinge or two after Tuesday.  Thursday night I played volleyball again, but my knee was starting to hurt before the end of the night. So that was a little discouraging.

• Saturday: Woke up feeling a little crappy. Knee still a little sore.  But wanted to run anyway. So I told myself I'd do something shorter, like 3 sets of 8.5s or something. Right as I got to the end of my first 8.5 set, another jogger was coming the other way, so I told myself I'd at least keep jogging until we had passed each other (sometimes pride can be a motivational tool). And then I decided, hey, if I'm already going a shorter distance, I might as well see how far I can go without stopping to rest.  And then I made it the whole way around the loop that I had planned on jogging. Without any walking!  The whole loop was 2.6 miles and I did it in 28.5 minutes, counting the first 5 minutes that I walked to warm up. So I probably jogged about 2.2 miles in 23.5 minutes. Could I have gone another 0.9 miles (at that rate it would probably take me another 10 minutes running)? That's an excellent question. If I meant that I had reached my goal and that I didn't have to run any more if I didn't want to? Yeah, probably. :)  Anyway, we'll see how my knees and feet hold up after today's run, and maybe try to do some more no-walking runs like this one mixed in with longer ones.  And yeah, I probably need to find another 5K to sign myself up for. There's a 5K on the morning of the U's homecoming game, but I just realized that that is also the Saturday of general conference, so I kind of think that might not be the best day to do it. Maybe the week after...

 So, I have to say it was a pretty good week, even with just 2 runs and some lingering knee pain. Hoping to get in at least 2 runs this week, maybe 3.  And it was way encouraging to do so well on Saturday. Didn't even really have too much in the way of negative consequences that day or the day after.  Hoping that my knee situation doesn't get any worse, and hopefully gets better. It hasn't seemed to bother me while I'm running much, but it did start to bother me a bit at volleyball, and obviously the fact that it's persisted for a day or two after running isn't encouraging.