Week 9 Day 1

Meep Meep!  Today's run was my first one on the street.  I had intended to run at 7:30, but it was 37° so I waited until 9:30 when it was 45° because I was determined to wear my new short-sleeved 'pumpkin pie' shirt.  Here I am posing below, before I headed out:

The course I ran was pretty flat.  There was only one section that went down enough to inspire you to lengthen your stride, and no uphills that were steep enough to toe run.  Nobody laughed and honked, so my gear must be foolin' folks!  Here's a map of what I ran:

My breathing was very good today.  Sometimes I'd breathe deeply (in three steps, out three steps) and sometimes I'd breathe quicker (in two steps, out two steps).  But I never had any issue.  My legs felt a bit heavy, and I'm pretty sure my turnover rate isn't nearly high enough.  The goal is 90 per minute per foot, whereas I'm probably not even doing 80.  I only checked my watch when I was within sight of the end, and I had about 30 seconds left until the 30 minute run time, so I started bookin'.  And I completed the course in 30 minutes flat, so that's a 5.1 mph average.  (Don't weep - for me this is good!)  I think the slight down hill on the way back helped me from winding down too severly.

So, I whined a bit on the forums last night about my left knee.  On occasion it can hurt on a stair, and sometimes I feel the knee cap having a little hiccup as it tries to ride up over the end of the femur (or whatever it's doing).  So, just to be safe, I'm going to have an orthopedic sports doc look at it on Thursday.  I'll keep you guys up to date on it, but I don't think it's anything to be overly concerned about just yet.  But, I'll make an allowance for my cat Percy Pants ... that one's a worrier:

Oh, I nearly forgot!  I tried the John Faith approach to nip-protection, and it worked great.  Here is what you do.  You take a band-aid, and you cut it in half - right across the pad.  Then you put the sticky part on the nip and the half-pads hang down like pull tabs.  Surprisingly, this does not show: look at the first pic in this post.  They came off without any drama afterwards.  Well, I might have pulled a scab off the left one, but it's pretty healed up already, so no re-injury ensued.  I did buy the Body Glide, and I'll give that a try in the coming days ahead.