Back in the saddle

I ran for the first time in two weeks yesterday! I didn't want to go, but once I was running (and listening to my favorite podcast: "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me") I felt really good. I took it easy, just running my normal 2 mile route. It wasn't too hot and my podcast kept me laughing the whole time.

distance: 2 miles
Time: 19minutes 30 seconds (approx)
Per mile: 9.65 minutes/mile

My IT Band

I mentioned earlier that the outside of my knee had been hurting recently, so I decided to take the week off from running. Instead, I used the weights and elliptical at the RB and swam laps in the RB pool. (I tried to use the bike in the RB, but it was broken.)

Despite all of my efforts to rest and heal my knee, it was still hurting significantly on Tuesday night.....then everything changed when I went swimming on Wednesday evening.

I was a little nervous going swimming by myself, and possibly having to share a lane with a faster, stronger swimmer. I was also going to try to swim half a mile (30 lengths) of the pool with little or no resting. I could feel the tenderness of my knee as I swam the freestyle, breaststroke, backstroke, and side stroke, but the water felt so good. My knee didn't inhibit me at all. And when I got out of the pool my knee felt considerably better. It is actually ridiculous how much swimming healed my knee. (It was like windex on "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"...magic!)

While my knee feels considerably better (it doesn't hurt when I walk or go down stairs), I am still going to take it easy this weekend and will probably go swimming once more before I run again.

Hooray!

(Btw, the part of my knee that is sore is called my IT band and many people that I have talked to have injured it at some point in their life. Now, everyday, my IT band is getting stronger. It's wonderful.)

Bridal Veils to Vivian

Saturday morning, Dani and I both got up at the unholy hour of 6:45 a.m. to go on a Red Rock Relay team run up Provo canyon. Geoff, Kevin, Chris, Dani, and I headed up University Ave and got to Bridal Veils Park around 7:30.

It was warmer than it was for our Thursday run/fiasco, but it was still kind of cold. Kevin was nice enough to run with me the whole time, even though his legs are long enough, I'm pretty sure he could have just walked next to me at a comfortable pace and kept up. We went 2.5 ish miles up to Vivian Park, talked to a nice ultra-marathoner who was also out for a morning run, and then headed back down.

It was a good first team run--I got to know Kevin better and learned interesting and cool things about his family.

I don't really know how long it took us, but it was about 5 miles and it took us about an hour (including a five minute breather at the top).

Distance: approx 5 miles

Time: approx 55 minutes

Pace: approx 11 min/mile

Knee update: The outside of my left knee has been giving me a little bit of pain. I talked to my physical therapist friend who told me it was probably a tendon and showed me a little black band to put around my leg to support it. I bought such a band, but my knee still hurt after our run on Saturday. I iced it for a few minutes, and I am planning on low impact cross training and weight training for the first part of this week to strengthen my tendon and let it heal.

Indian Hills' hills

Yesterday my roommate Dani and I got up early to go for a run in the Indian Hills (over by Rock Canyon park) area of Provo. As you could imagine, it is named that way because of how hilly it is over there. As sadistic as it sounds, we knew there were hills and planned to go anyway.

We dropped Dani's car off the Riverwoods, near the mouth of Provo Canyon. Then, we drove over and parked my car by the temple. We both fastened our keys to our shoelaces and took off, up-and-down, up-and-down until we got back to the Riverwoods.

*Sidenote: It was very very cold yesterday morning. It was flurry-ing and windy and just overall frigid. I was wearing long sleeves, long pants, and a sweatshirt. My poor roommate had on a t-shirt and shorts! I think she was really cold.

Once we conquered all of the hills and endured the downhills, we were feeling pretty good about ourselves. Ready to get in Dani's car, take a hot shower, and get on with our respective days. Then Dani looked down at her shoes and gasped--the key was gone! Oh wait--no it wasn't, it was tied in her other shoelace. Whew.

Then she gasped again. It was her house key nestled into the laces of her left shoe, not her car key! We looked around the Riverwoods for a phone, but none of the stores were open, it was too early. We thought about running back to the temple...but quickly kai-boshed that idea. We would rather hitch back. We walked a little bit on the Provo canyon trail and ran into two maintenance workers. They graciously let us use their phone, chuckling at our situation. But then we realized we didn't know any of our roommate's phone numbers! (Remember the days when we used to memorize phone numbers?) Dani called her mom who called her brother who got the phone number of the girl across the hall from us, Lene.

Half an hour later, our rescue party arrived. We were pretty much frozen by then. But overall, a good run! I'm a little bit sore from it today!

(Since I don't have a running watch, I'm stealing this stats from Dani's running blog.)

Time: 42:45

Distance: 3.43 miles

Pace: 12.27 min (remember all those hills...they slowed us down)

[Made obvious by the title of this blog]

I am not a runner.

I come from a family of non-runners. Historically, I have hating running. As per the traditional youth experience, I dreaded running the mile in gym class. I would run for 100 yards and then walk for 100 more. As a result, I never ran a full mile (without walking) until the summer after my sophomore year of college. Seriously.

But now, in the "prime" of my college-life years, I run. It would be overstating it if I said I enjoyed every second of running--I don't. I especially dislike the first mile of every run.

But at Joe Kelly, author of "53 runner's commandments" noted,

53. Running is always enjoyable. Sometimes, though, the joy doesn’t come until the end of the run.

Amen.

The purpose of this blog is to track my progress and keep myself accountable for training. (It might make me run a bit faster if I realize my 12-minute miles are going to be published for all the world to see.) I will pretend like people read it, but I don't expect anyone to really read except for me (and my dad).



P.S. Thanks to my effervescent roommate Dani for suggesting a running blog! LOVE. IT.