Damned Right Leg!

Argh! My right knee is killing me! Okay, it's not killing me. But I don't think it's supposed to feel the way it's been feeling for the last 2 days. And on top of that, well actually below it, the left side of my shin is hurting too. Ever since I got out of bed yesterday morning.

Then, to add anxiety to injury, I was reading a new book on BART yesterday called Marathoning For Mortals in which the author emphasizes going slow and stopping training when something hurts. He's all full of scary warnings about how your legs will fall off and you'll be stuck in a wheelchair eating through a tube in your nose and no one will ever love you if you run when your legs hurt. I know! I know! But I just want to do this Half Marathon! I really want to do it! Can't I just wash down some pills with a big glass of tasty denial juice and keep going???

So I didn't run my 3 miles today on the road. I used my new Aqua Jogger for the first time at Temescal pool. (No, that's not me in the picture. Just imagine a navy blue bathing suit and maybe 15 more pounds. And no, I'm not posting a photo of me in a bathing suit on the web!)

I was starving, so I had a big hummus sandwich on the way to the pool: just the thing your mother tells you not to do. I didn't get a cramp and drown, but with the Aqua Jogger belt tight around my middle, I felt like I was going to barf.

Anyway, Temescal pool is much nicer than the gym's. The pool is big and outdoors and goes to 10 feet deep. I hung out in the deep end and ran in place for 35 minutes. It took a few minutes to get the hang of the rhythm of underwater running without looking like a spaz, but soon I was chugging right along. I just hope that doing this today gave my knee enough of a rest and the rest of me enough of a workout to do my 10 miles on Sunday!

Other things I have learned from Marathoning For Mortals that will be goals for the coming weeks:

1) Add 10 minutes to EVERY SINGLE run to warm up and cool down. That means, walk for 5 minutes before running and then walk for 5 minutes afterwards.

2) Add more time after the run to fully stretch all the relevant muscle groups. (This one is actually in my training manual, with illustrations, but I have been lax. Not stretching enough is probably part of the reason for my pain now.)

3) Get at least 8 hours of sleep each night.