Cursed Realm of the Faceless Ghost

So, it looks like my plan to ride this week is over before it began. Between the law review write-on, funeral attendance, and exceptionally crappy spring weather, I just don't see how it's going to work out. I am, however, following through on my plan to not run. Which means I'm going back on my promise not to use the stupid stair stepper.

Today, I used the stupid stair stepper for 75 minutes, alternating between 3 minutes off, 2 minutes on for 65 of those minutes. According to the display, I climbed about 510 virtual floors. I guess that's a pretty good workout.

Anyways, after bothering me on Saturday, my knee actually felt pretty good yesterday, and it felt even better today. It's enough to tempt me to go out and try to run, but I'm going to be strong. However, I may try to run again on Saturday rather than waiting till Monday.

Yet another day of running behind. And yet another day of cross training at the gym. At least my knee is feeling better.

60 minutes on the stairs. Just over 400 fake floors.

We had an ultrasound yesterday, and an appointment with the OB today, so I spent the day at the library in the Avenues working on my project. By the way, Baby's growing nicely, so things have gotten much better since our scare a couple of months ago.

Still no running this week. Instead, I spent another hour on the stairs doing one-minute intervals with three-minute recoveries.

I'm so busy trying to finish my write-on stuff by the deadline tomorrow, so I only stayed on the stairs for 45 minutes tonight. I made those minutes count, though.

My knee seems to be responding well to the rest. I think I'll try to run on Saturday. 10-12 miles of singletrack should be a nice "long run" to ease back in.

My law review write-on materials were due at 5:00 today, so it was crunch time. After that we had dinner with my mom, who's in town till tomorrow. There wasn't much time left for exercise, so I headed over to the track for an easy 4 miles. No knee problems after that little test, so I'll hit the trails tomorrow. 

I wore my XC flats today. Now my calves are sore. It's kind of annoying, but I'm going to make this forefoot thing work. If it helps me resolve my recurring knee issues, the discomfort will be with it. And if it doesn't, at least I can run all naturally and hippy-ish. 

30:15

I woke up this morning, looked out the window, and saw snow on the ground. Stupid spring.

Anyways, I went out for a trail run as planned this morning. I headed up Hog Hollow(?) then down toward Ghost Falls, with a one-mile out-and-back detour up Jacob's Ladder along the way. From the bottom of Ghost Falls I picked up the BST briefly and then ran Clark's Trail back to the top of Hog Hollow before returning to my car.

There was quite a bit of snow on the trail today, enough to make things tricky. Down low it had started to melt, leaving the trails covered in what I could best describe as greasy mud. Up high there was enough snow to keep me from seeing rocks and other features on the trail, making footing treacherous. There were several times where I stepped on what looked like a snow-covered rock but turned out to be a puff of snow, or what looked like a puff of snow but turned out to be a snow-covered rock. I had several close calls, especially on the final descent to my car, but I managed to keep myself upright throughout the entire run.

Also, my knee did not bother me at all for the entire run. But within 30 minutes of finishing the pains inside my kneecap were showing back up, and now that I've had hours to cool down, I can say that something isn't right. The good news is that the rest this week seems to have helped. The bad news is that it hasn't been enough. So, it's more cross training for me this week, although I hope to get out and run a couple of times to test things out.

Also, with my knee acting up and the Squaw 50 a month away, I've decided to roll my registration. I want to run the race, but I want to run it well. And given the way my training has played out since January (not to mention all the freaking snow on the course), that's just not going to happen this year.

Hopefully I can get things together in time for Speedgoat.

(Check it out--I embedded my run like Jun does.)