Training for a Belt Buckle

I was looking at my mileage from last week and I think it was my second or third longest week ever. 

I am really hurting today.  My lungs are really sore from all the heavy breathing yesterday and my quads and glutes are totally trashed.  I took the puppy on a one mile walk this morning and that was painful.

When I took a shower I felt a burning sensation in my butt and looked and found that I have a fist size bruise and several cuts in my left buttock.  I slammed down pretty hard at mile 7 on the ice and that must be where that happened.  Darn - the glory of blood in a trail race and only my compression shorts knew it.

I'm feeling pretty crappy today, so took the day off sick from work. Walked the puppy 3 slow miles this morning trying to wear her out. I think it worked on me. Was able to determine a lot on different surfaces which leg muscles are used because of the way I could feel each muscle on the grade and uphills/downhills.

Finished writing up Saturday's race with pictures: http://adventures-in-running-with-maurine.blogspot.com/

3 1/4 miles around Wheeler Farm with the puppy.  Ran more than I walked.  Tomorrow I hope to be able to do gentle running the whole time.  Still soreness in the quads - but much better than the previous days.  The butt bruising is no longer painful.

Tomorrow I will add to my lack of humility and take my coffee mug to work so that I can remember all the 'fun' I had during the 9 1/4 hours or toil and labor on Saturday.  Who wants to make it a party next year?

I am registered for a 10K in Sandy on 4th of July morning.  If the legs are recovered I will try and break 60 minutes for a new PR.  If not - I will go for a PR and figure out my racing strategy for the Des News 10K later this month. If there is any chance at all of injuring myself by racing - I will just make it a hard run.  There is still a lot for me to learn about short races and that will help me improve my long races as well.

Headed out for a 3 mile run with the dog this morning.  About 3/4 of a mile from home I started getting a shooting pain below my left kneecap (the pain I had feared on the trail run last Saturday but never got). Turned around and started walking home.  The pain quit after about 5 minutes of walking, but I felt it on every stair as I walked into my house.

PM - went to gym and did a light leg workout with weights - light weights, lot of reps.

Twilight the dog is now ready for trail running with her new haircut:

Walked the dog again - still feeling occasional pain on stairs under that knee cap.  I will stick to walking and or pool running until Saturday and then try a knee strap to take pressure off the patella.  If I get much pain during the race on Saturday, I will just stop running.  Not worth permanent injury.

I'll do another walk this afternoon when we walk down to get my race packet.

PM - race walked with Twilight for 3.25 miles.  Silly dog thinks she is so smart - dragged behind me the first half of the walk like she was soooo tired, the minute I turned around she got 6 feet in front of me and was full of energy. Felt the pain under the kneecap on the few small uphill sections.  Just took more Ibuprofen and am icing the knee now.  Tomorrow I will test out both the neoprene knee brace and my patella support strap and see which one does best keeping the pain out of the knee.

Put on my neoprene knee brace and a weighted vest and walked/ran with the dog to the office.  No pain on the knee - ran about .75 of a mile.  

Too nice to last.  A little pain on the walk home - on uphill, downhill, curbs.  Hard to describe, but it feels like the kneecap floats and grinds against the knee at times.  It ended up doing this constantly back when I had to have knee surgery at age 19 (another person ago). Ended up carrying the puppy a few blocks because she was overheating.

Took a nap and then ran to the gym.  Used the patella strap and that seemed to help. No pain on that run.  Lifted weights for about 40 minutes, but I had no energy and then figured out I had probably eaten less than 500 calories all day. Bought a sub sandwich and on the walk home the knee was again hurting on any kind of uphill/downhill/stair.

My gut is saying don't run tomorrow.  I really don't know what to do.  Probably play it smart - but I rarely tend to do that.  Maybe I should just swim tomorrow and throw toys for an hour for the dog instead of walking her and actually let my knee rest.

Any thoughts?

Skipped my race today. I'm not going to run or walk and try and let the knee heal.  Will do some quad tightening exercises starting today to isolate the supporting muscles around the kneecap.