Injury Management

It was good to get back to running today after a three day hiatus. The rest was prompted by the holidays and an ache on the inside of my right knee. I believe that I have a minor strain of the medial collateral ligament.

I had a very similar injury in August. It cleared up after about two and one-half weeks via a combination of rest, ice, aquarunning and judicious running. At first I thought that this injury was bursitis, but concluded that it was a strain to the medial ligaments or muscles. I have learned through seated yoga poses that my right knee is very tight. I presume one or more of my knee muscles or ligaments are pretty taut. I had been making great strides in both yoga and running prior to this injury. Pushing to the limit one is only as strong as one's weakest part.

So here we are again, same diagnosis, same cause. Last week I had a record week with four days straight of yoga classes and 30 miles of running for the week. All that stretching around the knee exposed my limitations once again.

However, there is a big difference this time around. The Houston Marathon is in two and one half weeks. There is no interest in rest with the longest run of my life looming. Besides, the pool is too cold for aquarunning. So the plan is to do the minimum level of training in my training plan as we taper for the race. Other than that, there will be a lot of rest, ice and only one yoga class per week.

So how was today's run then? Reasonably successful I would say. The knee does not appear to have worsened, although the run did not improve it. For the record the run was 7.5 miles in 71 minutes. A 10 min warmup, stretch, 30 min tempo at 8:30/mi, 3 times 2min VO2 max intervals with recovery in between, wrapped up with a recovery jog home.

Now where did I put the ice bag?