Step by step, mile by mile

AM - 5. no knee pain! yes!!!!! with it being my first run in under 30 degrees in years, the stiffness from the past few days off was definitely accentuated, but i think some good stretching between this run and the next will probably take care of it

PM - 10. felt good, probably the most effortless 10 i've ever ran. legs were hurting a little the last 10 minutes or so, but that's just from not running the last couple of days. even though the AM run went well i knew this was the real test if the knee was okay, i'm so happy to say it is.

so about 30 minutes after my PM 10 the left knee started to get sorer(?) and sorer. nothing worse than last friday night, but about on par. its mild enough that i could run on it, but i think it’ll get worse. i barely feel it after waking up which is good. i didn’t feel it at all after my AM 5, so my two takeaways are 1.) it needs a few more days to fully recover(hopefully just that since 2 days off nearly did the trick) and 2.) i’ll probably need to ramp training back up a bit slower. obviously i’m frustrated, this isn’t the most inopportune time but with about 12 weeks until the 5k i was planning on peaking for, it’s not great. i’ll take today completely off, cross train and do some upper body lifting thursday and friday and try again on saturday or sunday. 

stretched my IT band during my lunch break and the knee felt really good after, and the "can't run" depression was getting me down enough that i couldn't stand to wait any longer and did 5 after work. knee feels fine 30 minutes later. working a 12-hour shift before adds some solidarity to it too. still have a couple of benchmarks to clear before i can stop being paranoid about it; waking up tomorrow and feeling fine will be the first