Sometimes after races I don't know if it's best to let me legs rest for an entire day or go out for an easy recovery run. Usually I go with rest and go for that recovery run two days out, but last night the weather was so gorgeous that I wanted to be outside enjoying it. Plus after a crazy busy day at work, I needed to decompress.

So in the evening I set off for a nice easy recovery run. I kept the pace slow and relaxed and in the beginning took plenty of walk breaks.

My legs felt pretty heavy, but it wasn't anything too awful and even the hills didn't seem all that bad.

Originally, I had planned to do about three miles, but I wasn't ready to go home yet, so I opted for four.

But then I was feeling so good, I took the turn to that would make it four and a half.

By that point my legs felt great and I wasn't taking any more walk breaks.

Since the weather was so wonderful and there was absolutely no humidity (a rare occurrence around these parts), I figured what the heck, I'd round out my run with another half mile for a nice five mile recovery run.

My mom and I went to Baltimore this weekend to check out the Body Worlds 2 exhibit at the science center.

It was the coolest thing ever.

The Body World's exhibits are the ones that use real cadavers to show how all the parts of the part fit and work together. I was fascinated.

As a runner, it was really neat to see all the little tendons and muscle fibers that engage to make me run.

As an injured runner, it was fascinating to see the knee displayed with all of the parts the influence it. I could see exactly the areas where I am having problems and see all the muscles that affect it. It was really eye-opening to be able to see exactly what I've been working to improve in PT right in front of my eyes like that.

In other news, I got in a short run Sunday morning. It was only two miles for a few reasons. First off, it was warm when I left and very sunny. Second off, I've been really trying to watch what I've been eating while injured because I'm not burning as many calories so I shouldn't be eating as many either. As a result, I've gone kind of low carb for the past week because I wanted to see if cutting down on carbs really made that big of a difference in the speed of weight loss. Turns out it sort of does, but it also has major negative affects on running.

My legs were so super heavy and my muscle felt so dead tired because they had nothing fueling them that I couldn't push past those two miles. Physically I was running on empty.

In some ways that may be positive for my recovery...as in, it physically won't let me push myself too far so I will avoid more injury. But running like that sucks.

So I'll do the low carb thing for the rest of this week, while I'm still in PT and should still be keeping my runs short. Then after that I'm going to be adding the carbs back to fuel my runs. And I'm hoping I'll be released from PT at the end of this week, which would line up perfectly with the end of the low carb phase and my increased workouts.

ORN:
2 miles, 21:something

This post fits really well with this Thursday's Take It and Run topic about looking at where we've been this year and where we want to go with our running and for me life in general. (Be forewarned, this puppy is loooong.)

I mentioned a few posts back that I was going to write about my new plan for the rest of the year in light of my knee issue and a few other things that have been on my mind lately.

The past two weeks I've been a pretty miserable person. There's a lot of different things contributing to it, stress at work, stress with friends from all over the place, feeling like I'm being pulled in way too many directions by way too many people and general frustration about not being able to run.

Normally, I can have all those things be issues and I use my runs to keep myself sane. Without those runs, I've just kind of been in a lousy mood.

Not being able to run actually made me sit down and think about a lot of things and what's making me happy and what's not and what I'm going to do about it. (Because let's be honest, I'm way better at being happy than being not happy.)

Basically what I've decided is that I need to learn my own limits and not keep saying yes to every single thing that is asked of me. Now that doesn't mean I should turn into a giant slacker at life, but I just need to work in some time for me. Before that was my running, but when I couldn't do that, I kind of lost my me thing for two months so I was just going along with everyone else's things.

Turns out that was making me pretty unhappy.

I have to credit one of my friends from Maryland for making me realize it. We were hanging out one night getting ready to go to the movies and I guess I was just giving off the sense that something was wrong even though I didn't realize it. My friend kept asking me what was wrong and after brushing it off as nothing, I just started rambling about things that were on my mind.

It put a lot in perspective for me.

The general conclusion that I've come to is I'm going to do things that make me happy. I've never been a big drinker (in fact, I really don't like the taste of alcohol) and it seems like that's all anyone wants to do whenever we go out. Not that there's anything wrong with going to the bars from time to time. I usually have a good time, but I just need a change of scenery.

I've also evaluated a bunch of friendships that have done nothing but stress me out and I've come up with some ways make that better.

As far as running goes things seem to be improving. I just got back from a 3.5 mile run. It was crappy and hard and bad, but it felt good to be out there. (I think my legs were dead from PT. They upped my weights a bunch and added some agility drills. Plus it was like 90% humidity out there.)

As far as the rest of my running for the year. I've done some serious re-evaluating. My original plan had been to run three half marathons and a handful of other select distances this fall.

I've come to terms with the fact that it isn't going to happen.

My new plan looks something like this and will kick in once I officially get released from PT.

Three days per week I will lift at the gym (I'm thinking MWF) to maintain the strength I've built in therapy and help prevent future injury.

Two to three days per week I will do runs between two and four miles, trying to keep myself close to three for the most part. If I only run two days, I will use the third day for cross training or rest depending how I feel.

One day per week I will do a longer run between five and eight miles.

I plan to stick with this plan at least until the end of September (although this may change depending when I get released from therapy.)

As far as races go, I don't think I will race at all in August. From there I will play it by ear and see how I'm feeling. I want to have a solid base before I enter a race.

I'm going to focus mainly on 5Ks and 10Ks when I do get back to racing.

I'll re-evaluate later, but for now it's a plan I'm happy with.

Sorry for the length of this one. Just had a lot I needed to get out.

ORN:
3.5 miles, 38:57

I figured the only way I was going to get in that three to five miler I wanted to do before Monday was to do it last night.

So I went out for a nice easy run. My goal was to shoot for three miles and depending on the amount of daylight I had left and how I was feeling I would go from there.

It was really pleasant out last night. Not too much humidity and a decent temperature after the sun went down.

I kept my pace under control. I wasn't trying to break any records here and I ended up getting in 3.3 miles in 34:28. Not too shabby for just coming back off two months of no running.

My right knee felt a little sore during the run (that'd be my not injured knee) but I'm thinking that was just the shock of having not run in so long. Otherwise, everything felt good.

If I have time to get another run in this weekend I will, but truth be told, I'm not packing running stuff for my trip to Maryland this weekend.

My really good friend is getting married and my main goal of this weekend is to go have fun with my friends, enjoy the wedding, dance at the reception and come home Sunday feeling tired, but happy.

If I have time/energy Sunday when I get home, then maybe I will try another run.

Not sure when I'll have another post up, but it definitely won't be until Sunday at the very earliest. Hope you all have a great weekend while I'm busy busting a move at the wedding reception!

ORN:
3.3 miles, 34:28

Yesterday's post was so super short mainly because I wanted to get up the numbers before I forgot them. I had lots of things to say, but not a lot of time to say them so that's what I'm going to do now.

Where to start, where to start.

Well the run yesterday was a spur of the moment thing. It had been hot and nasty all day Sunday until we got a bit of a storm to calm the humidity. So I sped home from my friend's place after we finished watching the Bourne Ultimatum (good movie), probably broke some record for changing from normal clothes into running clothes and was out the door by 9 p.m.

It was light when I left my friend's house, still do-able when I got home, but by the time I got changed and got outside, just about all traces of daylight were gone.

My neighbors have a lot of lights at the end of their driveways though so some of the roads were decently lit.

But the darkness and the sudden onset of even more humidity (and my knee of course) were the main reasons this run was so short. I didn't even push to finish the whole two miles because it was quite dark by that time. The last thing I needed to do was step awkwardly and twist an ankle or something.

The main highlight from this run was that I was able to do it without any pain. YESSSS! And when I took the tape off this morning my knee still didn't bother me (like it did last week.) Strangely enough though, my right hip bothered me, which wasn't a new thing. I'd be having problems with a sore hip for a bit after some of my runs.

I'm going to mention the hip thing at PT tonight. Maybe there's some connection between the hip and the knee.

In other news, my weekend was lots of fun.

Friday night was my friend Jenn's bachelorette party at Howl at the Moon in Baltimore. It was definitely the most fun night I've had in a while. We had a great time requesting songs for the pianists to play and singing along and dancing like crazy. My roommate requested this country song and told them it was my favorite (haha it wasn't at all) so they called me up and had me dance to it on the stage in front of everyone. It was hilarious.

Saturday I went to see the Dark Knight. What an awesome movie. I highly recommend it if you haven't seen it yet. Afterwards I met up with people from work at one of the bars downtown.

Sunday afternoon I went to Border's to wander around and picked up the newest Runner's World. Oh and I watched the ESPY's. I love the ESPY's. Did anyone else watch? I was tearing up when they gave the Jimmy V award to Kevin Everett. Man, what a great story that was. I missed Josh Hamilton getting his award though for Greatest Comeback. He's got a great story too. Anyway, here's the full list of winners.

Anyway, that's all I've got for now. Congrats to everyone who raced this weekend. From the reports I've read so far it sounds like you all kicked some major booty!

I decided the smart thing for my very sore legs was to give them some time off after the race and then try to get two nice slow runs in toward the end of the week.

Yesterday I planned to go for a nice easy 4 miles when I got home from work. Being the genius that I am, I thought it would be a good idea to do this run in my old sneakers because I thought they might still have some miles left in them. Bad idea, peeps. The pain started about the half mile mark. Shins, knees, hips, ankles. It was fun really it was. But I kept going because hey I'm smart like that.

When I hit the two miles at the 20 minute mark (Apparently I was flying for me!) I had to stop and walk. Unfortunately the two mile point is a half mile walk back home. So I logged 2.45 miles in around a half hour or so.

Today I learned from yesterday's mistake and wore the new shoes. Ahhh it felt so much better.

Again, I planned for a nice easy for miles. But for some reason I couldn't get myself to slow down the entire time I was running. I logged the first mile 9:30. For me that's blistering. I hit mile two around 19 something. I ran for a little bit more before I had to stop and walk in part because my legs were tired and in part because it was really hot outside and I didn't have water with me.

I did mostly walking for the rest of the time with a little bit of running thrown in. I went 3.87 miles in 42:51. That's not bad for walking from basically mile 2.5 on.

I don't know why all of sudden I can't make myself run slow. I was like screaming at my legs to slow down, but they just wouldn't listen. I mean I'm excited that I can go faster, but I'd like to be able to complete a longer run without having to stop and walk after the first two miles.

ORN:
Thursday: 2.45 miles, 30 minutes
Friday: 3.87 miles, 42:51

First off, thanks to everyone for the comments about Saturday's long run. You are all right. I got through it and that's the important part.

This morning was a 45-minute recovery run. I warmed up for five minutes at 5 mph then turned it up to 5.5 for a few minutes. My legs started to feel heavy so I knocked the speed back down to 5.2 or 5.3. I bounced back and forth between the latter two speeds for most of the remaining time.

Nothing really noteworthy to report. The run went fine. It wasn't anything special, but it wasn't bad either.

The only thing that was crappy was that I ran out of time and didn't get to stretch as well as I would have liked to at the end. I've also been nursing a scratchy throat and a stuffy nose for the past few days. I'm hoping to kick it soon.

Thank you all for your input on whether to lift or run first. After I asked the question, I remembered interviewing someone for a story I was working on that said lifting first can be good because it's easier to maintain proper form because you aren't as fatigued and you can use extra glycogen stores so that way when you do the cardio portion you burn more fat.

Interesting in theory. I like the idea of having better form and I didn't want to be super sweaty on the weight machines so I decided to lift first and run second.

Weights went well. Upper body only. I did a little bit on the machines and then switched to the free weights because I like them better because I have more control over what I'm doing.

The run was shit. My legs felt like lead. I was tired and dragging for the whole 30 minutes and I was only at 5.5 mph. Ew. It was not the most satisfying run in the entire world. But whatever.

Tomorrow is cycling class! Dare I say...whooo hoo?