Cursed Realm of the Faceless Ghost

Rest day. I was worried I had set myself back after my knee pain yesterday, but I don't feel any worse and I think I'm still moving in the right direction. I plan to do some easy running tomorrow, and I won some KT Tape in the raffle yesterday, so we'll see of that helps. I'm skeptical, but hopeful, too.

Also, I plan to see if I can start seeing the therapist this week. In the meantime, I'm also starting to stretch regularly, and I'm trying to use the foam roller, too. If there's anything I can do to heal faster, I'd better do it. 

AM: My knee felt pretty good all day yesterday. Before going to bed last night I applied some KT Tape (following the runner's knee instructions), and right away my knee felt almost normal. When I woke up today I thought there was no way it could be this easy--my knee felt great and I was about to toss my skepticism aside and buy a whole case of the miracle tape.

Unfortunately, the miracle was over as soon as I hit the track. I wasn't in agony, but my knee certainly didn't feel normal, and the tape did nothing to change that. Or maybe it did something--it's really hard to tell sometimes. Anyways, I'll keep using the tape because it was free and it doesn't seem to be hurting. I'll wait till the roll is gone to decided whether it's actually worth buying.

Anyways, my knee felt okay--not great, but okay--throughout my five-mile jog, but it hurt quite a bit when I stopped. Very stiff and sore. But 30 minutes after my run it felt no worse than it did before my run. I'm not sure if this means I should keep running on the track or not. The doctor said it would be okay, and it doesn't seem to make things worse, but my goal is to get better, not to not get worse. For now, I think I'll continue doing easy runs on the track, plus workouts on the stair-stepper, in the pool, and on the treadmill (at a steep incline). Unfortunately, I suspect Speedgoat won't be happening this year.

37:40

PM: Treadmill miles. I've found that while my knee is tolerable running at easy paces on the flats, it seems to feel just fine running uphill. I figure that's a pretty good deal, since it means I can maintain my strength without pounding my knee too hard.

With that in mind, I started with a 10-minute warmup and then set the treadmill to 15 percent for a 30-minute hill climb. I started with 2.5 minutes at 5 mph, then I did three 5-minute reps at 5.5 mph with five minutes at 5 mph between them (I finished the last interval with 30 seconds at 6.5 mph). I ended the climb with another 2.5 minutes at 5 mph, then I leveled out the treadmill and ran at an easy pace until I hit 5 miles in just over 50 minutes.    

AM: I planned to be at the gym by 6:00 this morning so I could spend an hour on the elliptical, but I got a late start and didn't get there till 6:20. Unfortunately, there was no one there yet, so I went to the track at East High. (It turns out that the gym opens at 6:30, not 6:00, but it's been so long since I've gone in the morning that I had forgotten. Oops.)

I ran three easy miles (maybe more--sometimes I lose track) on the track, but that was it because my knee was feeling sore (I can't wait to start therapy tomorrow). East High is more interesting than West High. Yesterday, the only people on the West High track were two senior women walking with trekking poles. Today at East High I shared the track with--in addition to several runners--three middle-aged triathletes, two Cross Fitters, and one race walker. Excellent people watching.

No watch.

PM: Back to the gym for 50 minutes on the elliptical. It's boring, but my knee has no objections.

I had my first appointment with the physical therapist this morning. The real work will start on the next visit, but I did get some stretches and exercises to do at home. According to the therapist, I started taking care of my knee soon enough that we should be able to resolve the problem quickly. Let's hope so.

I think the biggest benefit of therapy will be having some to tell me what not to do. For example, the therapist told me not to run for the next couple of days. He said the elliptical was fine, and at first he approved hiking. Then he found out I was planning to hike up the face of Granduer Peak, so he told me not to hike. Although the climb would be fine, the descent would set me back. I already knew that, of course, but I probably would have gone for the hike if the therapist hadn't told me not to.

After my appointment I went to the gym and did one hour on the elliptical, followed by 15 minutes and just over one mile of hiking on the treadmill at a 15 percent grade. (Because the therapist told me not to hike because of the descents, I figured this was fair game.)

In the evening I went back to the gym with Catherine and hiked uphill for 30 more minutes on the treadmill. This time I did intervals (yes, apparently you can walk intervals) to experiment with how fast I can hike. I didn't discover my limit, but I did find out that 12:30 per mile is walkable. At that pace, it's actually more efficient to run. But to become a faster runner I often run steep hills at paces that would be hiked more efficiently, so I suppose hiking at paces better suited to running is the way to become a faster hiker.

Last day to withdraw my Speedgoat registration is July 11. I won't make a decision until then.

AM: Another 30 minutes on the elliptical, and I'll be back for more tomorrow. I'm starting to feel like I'll never get to run normally again. Catherine is planning to go for a trail run tomorrow. You have no idea how jealous that makes me :)

PM: Yet another 30 minutes on the elliptical.  

I had my second appointment with the PT this morning--icing and stretching, massage, some strengthening exercises and a battery-operated topical anti-inflammatory. My knee has been feeling much better over the last two days, and I think the cartilage issue has resolved itself. However, there's residual tenderness in my tendon that is easily exacerbated, which makes it easy to think this will never go away. But I just need to be patient, and I should be back to normal pretty soon.

In fact, the therapist told me to go for a run tomorrow on the wood chips at Liberty Park. I'm only supposed to run as long as it doesn't hurt, and I'm not supposed to go further than six miles, but it's a start.

Today I was back in the gym for an hour. I'm really starting to get tired of that place. I walked for 30 minutes and two miles on the treadmill at a 15-percent grade, then I hopped over to the elliptical for another 30 minutes. 

The therapist told me to run today, and I was looking forward to it. I was supposed to take it easy on the wood-chip track at Liberty Park, limiting myself to 6 miles, but after less than half a mile my knee was already hurting a lot more than I expected. My first instinct was to push through and run the full 6 miles because, hey, the trainer said I could go that far, but I realized that I would probably just hurt myself. So I pulled the plug after 1 lap, and that's where the responsibility ended.

I thought I'd go use the elliptical, but something about the thought of more time in the gym made me snap. Since the therapist had told me I could ride my bike as far and as hard as I wanted, I went home and pulled out my road bike and team kit for my first bike ride since sometime in January.

I started by riding out to Magna, then south on the Bacchus Highway past the copper mine and the wild horse and burro center and on into Herriman. I called Catherine to let her know I was on my way back. Since we were having dinner with her grandparents, she suggested that maybe I'd rather ride for a bit longer and just meet her at her grandparents' house that evening.

She was right--I did want to ride longer. So, Instead of riding home on Redwood I headed south to Saratoga Springs, then out through Lehi and American Fork before riding north through Alpine, over Traverse Ridge and up to Catherine's grandparents' house at Daybreak. 

Overall, I felt pretty good. Not as fast as I have been, but not bad at all. It's nice to know that running hills really does seem to maintain cycling legs. Of course, after so much time off the bike, I will say that my undercarriage is a bit tender and leave it at that.

I ended up with about 85 miles in about 4.5 hours. The downside is that my knee still hurts. It didn't interfere with my cycling, but I could feel that it was sore. I'm not sure if cycling made things worse or if I was just feeling the effects of this morning's run. Either way, I plan to go for another longish ride like today's on Monday and then talk to the therapist about it on Tuesday.

At this point, I can't take much more of the sitting and waiting. I only have six weeks till I start law school, and there will be plenty of sitting around then. I feel like right now my best choice may be to just ride through the pain for a month or so and maybe even do some racing. Once school starts I can take a month or so completely off to heal and focus entirely on studying.

I have mixed feelings right now. On the one hand, I want to be back out running the trails. On the other, I'm sick of the injury and it kind of makes me want to never bother running again.