Post-Sick Working Out

I took all of last week off from running - I was just trying to get my feet back under me after that terrible sickness!

Thursday I managed to work a full 10 hour day at work, so I figured Friday it was time to get back at it, but gently so as not to undo all my healing progress.  I rode the trainer at an "easy" effort for about 30 minutes, and man, it is tough knowing that only a week before I had been throwing down an hour's hard effort easily and now 30 minutes easy was a stretch!  But I was glad to get it done and be back in the saddle again.

Saturday morning Preston had to work, so I decided to take Z to the park after breakfast.  I wasn't planning on running, just a nice brisk 1 mile each direction walk.  But as I was walking along I was struck by a strong desire to run - I felt great, bouncy, ready to go - and so I did some little run intervals, usually to the next stop sign from wherever I felt the running bug.  And I did the same on the way back.  I was really excited about this!  For me it is really something to be out on a walk and to just *want* to run.  I was really feeling the love.

Sunday we went to the pool, but I wasn't feeling it, and I've officially missed triathlon season, so I just played with the baby and didn't do any laps.  And I'm ok with that.

This morning I went back out for my first "structured" run since the sickness.  I walked a warm-up, then ran 4 minutes, walked, 5 minutes, walked, 6 minutes, walked, and then 7 minutes, walked.  I intended on doing a hard 3 minutes to close out an even 30 minutes of run/walking, but when I went to do that last interval, my left knee was PISSED.  I'm not sure what was going on.  It didn't hurt at the end of the 7 minutes, nor did it hurt during the walking.  It only hurt when I tried to pick up the pace again.  I walked some more and tried 3 more times, each time immediately quitting because it was so obviously tweaking.  I'm not too worried yet.  I'll take some Ibuprofen and go easy on it until I run again on Wednesday.  It is probably just me trying to come back from the sickness to soon or something.  *crosses fingers*

So now that my triathlon season is over (without ever completing a tri, sigh), I'm wanting to focus on running and fun workouts.  I think the spontaneous interval session was a great start, and I think I'm going to throw down some P90X in the morning "for fun".  I'll do an arm focused one so as to lay off the knee.  Bring it!