Avoiding injury

What do you do to avoid injury? Stretch? Know you should stretch, but don't, hoping the thinking about stretching will help?

Me? I don't stretch. I was doing yoga after my runs, but I haven't even been doing that as my sleep has been eating into my stretch time.

What sparked this conversation? Well, Wednesday, I started out on my run and literally a quarter mile in, and bam! ankle roll on the inverted curb. Caught myself and bam! tweaked knee. So, I limped home. Defeated.

I got back out there this morning, since both ankle and knee had been feeling fine within a few hours of baling on the run. I took it slow, just in case and wouldn't you know, right at the 1 mile mark, my knee started an ache thing. Sigh. Knee, don't you know I have a half marathon in 50 days? Clearly not.

I found this article on Runner's World. I pretty much think strength training is the way to go. A lot of those exercises don't need extra equipment and seem pretty easy. I'll definitely be looking into those after the long weekend. Problem is, where do I add those into my day?!

As a recap, Tuesday, I ran 3 recovery miles after my 9 miler Monday. My time was 32:53 with splits of 10:40, 10:48, 11:17 average of 10:56 per mile.

Wednesday was a pretend run.

This morning, 3 miles in 32:45 with splits of 10:32, 11:09, 11:02. Let's just say 99% humidity = death warmed over. My knee slowed me down some, but I think mostly it was the humidity. Even though I have been running all summer, this humidity has been pretty much nonexistent, so these are conditions I am not familiar with. I guess I've had it easy.

Tomorrow, I'm going to work on speed. And I think I'm going to try this workout I saw on Another Mother Runner, with warm up of 5 minutes because I don't really want to make 21 entries in runkeeper. I'm lazy like that.

<found here>

In other news:

Yesterday, Lydia and I went to the grocery store while the big kids were at school. I'll save you the boring details. But let me just say I missed my veggies. I ate a whole avocado by myself between lunch yesterday and lunch today. I wanted more for dinner, but refrained from going and buying another one. I didn't want to overdo it. (PS: a month ago, I didn't like avocado. Now I can't live without it.)

<whole wheat tortilla, supremely spicy hummus by Sabra, spinach, turkey, queso blanco, red pepper, avocado, and grape tomatoes. Yum>

Today, I started spending some time at the kids schools, helping out their teachers do things I know they would have to do on their own time. Time away from their families. I enjoyed the time at both schools, but especially Madison's school, where I had a nice chat with the building guidance counselor as I worked through copying and cutting and sorting for Miss M. The best part though? Lydia running to me when I got to grandmas to pick her up. Yes, baby girl, I missed you too.

Oh, and I must tell you about dinner. I started Our Best Bites Slow Cooker Kalua Pork with their Pineapple Mint Pico de Galloo on corn tortillas. Very Hawaiian, I guess. I wouldn't know. I've never been. Can we remind my hubby that my birthday is next month?! Wouldn't a Hawaii trip make a great 30th birthday surprise? Yes, I think so too.

And a picture to make you giggle:

<Lydia. Throwing a fit. Because I wouldn't let her destroy play with Noah's name tag. True story.>

 

The knee... And a routine

If you tuned in yesterday, I mentioned that I ran pain free. 24 hours later, still no pain in my knee! Booo-ya!

But I want to give you the story of my knee:

On 4/18, I ran with a sore calf- you know, the "I'm a beginner runner sore calf", you know it right? I didn't think much of it when I started out, but the next morning I was limping with pain in my left knee. But it got better throughout the day, not 100% pain free, but better.

On 4/20, I ran faster than I have before, 13:25/mi for 2.17mi (week 2, day 1), but my knee was s-o-r-e. Not the best plan perhaps. But I will say it did not hurt when I walked out the door. And I *think* it was threatening rain, so I decided to stick around the house and run the circle around the park instead of only do my warm up around the park and then venture out into the neighborhood.

On 4/22, I wanted to continue my training anyway (again, not the best plan), took it easy and ran 14:02/mi for 2.24mi (week 2, day 2). SORE! I could barely walk for days. Whoops!

I read up on runner's knee. I figured I needed to strengthen my quads to catch up with my new found running habit. So I started some yoga. Just the master skill on the Xbox game Play Your Way for Kinect. 23 minutes of hurt. Shoo, me and squats are not friends - and that "pretend your sitting in a chair and try to touch ceiling" pose, definitely not my friend.

I rested for a few days, and continued training on 4/26, I iced my knee, and took ibuprofen after running.  Very slow go, 14:45/mi, 2 miles even (week 2, day 3). The relaxing after felt good!

I ran 4/28, very, very slow- 15:07/mi for 2.12mi (week 3, day 1).

This week, I've started a routine: yoga every morning, running (c25k training) Monday, Thursday, Saturday, afternoon walk with the kids on non running days (at least). So far so good, but it's only Tuesday!