Spotted on the Lakefront Path: ME!

First, apologies for the lack of posting and reading. These past couple of weeks at work have been rather awful, and will continue to be rather awful as we're getting ready for a conference in two weeks. Lame, lame, lame, but that's life.

So on to the good, the bad, and the running. Last week was a big week in terms of me running and stuff. In order of appearance, here are the highlights:

Thursday - This was a double in terms of my activities. I had physical therapy in the morning and then an appointment with Dr. Balu in the evening. PT would not include running that day, because it was more about getting me through my exercises and taking measurements for my doctor appointment that evening. It was neat. My physical therapist thought that I had made a lot of progress in terms of strength. The one exercise that seemed to be the tell-tale sign of my lack of glute strength, didn't prove to be as irritating as before.
This is the one where they have you lying on your side, bottom leg bent and forward, top leg straight and out in the air a bit. The therapist then pushes down on the top leg, which you are supposed to be able to hold steady.
After we were done with all of that, my therapist was going to send her notes to my doctor, whom I would see later on.
Flash forward to later that day: Dr. Balu did the same scurrilous exercise with me and I failed miserably. I nearly flipped around when he tried it. So, Dr. Balu gave me more exercises to do because if I didn't increase my glute strength, I'd end up in the same position I had started in. So I left his office feeling rather glum.

Saturday - The forecast called for weather in the mid to high 40's. This is basically a call to anyone who's been hiding inside all Winter: Get outside NOW!!! My physical therapist had instructed me to try going for a short run outside to see how it feels, just once before my video gait analysis, which will be this Tuesday. Therapist said 15 to 20 minutes maximum. Judging on how past efforts had gone in this respect, I decided it would be wise of me to heed her advice. So, I got up, got my running clothes on, woke up the now dormant Garmin, and headed out. I decided to walk to the Lakefront path, run out for ten minutes and then turn around and head back. This would then give me time to walk back to my apartment and stretch my legs out. With a bit of trepidation, I started running. I kept waiting for the pain to set in. I watched for the signs: knee starts to ache, calf feels tight, then weird feeling turns to pain, the hamstring feels like someone stabbed me, and I walk...

But it didn't happen.

And I ran at a sub-10 minute pace. As soon as I hit the 15 minute mark, I thought to myself, surely this is where the pain will start up, it's just a matter of time. But I was okay. In fact, I kept going until I hit 20 minutes. At that point, I decided that it would be best to stop and not tempt fate. I was pretty tired anyway. It's amazing how fast your endurance goes bye-bye when you haven't been running for over two months.

And of course, as soon as I got home, I stretched, I foam-rolled, I sticked, and then I took a nap.

I won't say that my leg felt completely 100% beyond a shadow of a doubt GREAT on Sunday. There were a few twinges that I recognized all too well. But overall, not anywhere near the same feelings as before, when I'd be crippled for the next day basically. So I'm hoping this means I'm on the road to a (speedy) recovery. I'd love to use the time from now until mid-May to build up a good base, continue to build core strength, and continue to build glute strength, before I start training for a fall marathon.

I'll be trying to catch up on all of your blogs this week (whew!) and will try to update you tomorrow about video gait analysis.