Once more, with feeling

Okay. Well. So.

In fact I did take some time off. I went to see an orthopedist, because the pain in my ankles and in my knee was darn persistent. He took some x-rays to check for stress fractures. Nothing showed up, but he said it's possible I could still have a stress fracture in my knee, but it wouldn't show up for 6 weeks, and then on an MRI. I was ordered to take two weeks off. If I was better, good. If not, MRI later. Well, I'm better. And the pain in my ankles was tendonitis, so two weeks off cleared that up completely. The pain in my knee turned out to be the pes bursa ... or something ... whatever muscle means "goose foot" in Latin.

Two weeks later, I"ve done week 1 day 1 again. Knee was a tiny bit twingey, but it didn't hurt. I felt nothing the following day. In my off-day, I did some toe-raises and squats.

Today I ran w1 d2. Again, fine. Easy.

This is partially because, due to the recommendation of some marathon-runner friends and a very athletic husband, I should run a LOT slower than I think I even need to. Previously I was running around 6.3 - 6.5mph (I'm on a treadmill and can measure), and that felt slow. Since, I've slowed down to no more than 5mph. It's almost painfully slow, and a tad boring. It's not all that challenging -- I don't really get winded, and I barely break a sweat. But evidently, it's what my joints and bones need to get used to the repeated impact of running.

So I'll be doing this painfully slow pace for a while. I keep seeing on the c25k subreddit that the program was designed solely for endurance and not for speed. Once one's endurance is up to snuff, you can work on speed. I still have almost a year, so I will definitely be doing that. I'll be running a 10k in October to have proof of time for the Disney Princess half-marathon, and I'm hoping by then I can have some kind of decent speed so that I can start in an OK corral (haha... the OK Corral ...). Maybe. we'll see.

So, there's that. Sometimes you fall down and have to start all over again. I'm starting again from the top just to be very careful, to keep up with that incremental building. Two weeks off is too long just to pick up where I left off.

So -- once more, with feeling!