11 days, I think my knee might hold

I went for a 6km run this afternoon and although I actually found it quite tough, probably once again because I wasn't strict enough about what I ate and how much fluid i drank. Oh well Wednesday will be better. My knee behaved much better today although by about the 5.5km mark it was letting me know it was there, but nothing near the pain of before.

I think resting it over the weekend was wise. I'll try run a 7km on Wednesday and then walk 4km on Friday and then see how I manage the Zoom Zoom Mazda 15km. It will really give me an idea how my fitness and my knee will hold up. If my knee gives trouble I will not train on it until race day, but will rather try to do comparatively length of time training on a bike. Hopefully then a full weeks rest will have helped it, because it seems like the orthotics are working, but perhaps there's just some left over swelling that gets in the way when I run now.

I had a gut wrenching moment this afternoon, I was approaching the 3km turn around mark when I looked down at my monitor and it said 210bpm!! Which can only mean one thing ofcourse, for about 30 seconds my heart (in the other sense) sank and I imagined going back for another shock, but then I noticed that the indicator that the signal is coded, a little line around the beating heart, was missing! I asked Melodie to step away so that I was certain to be picking up only my heart rate, and to my immense relief it dropped to a very respectabel 100 bpm. It remained within reasonable limits for the rest of the run... atleast my heart is happy with me :)

Not long now!!

20 days... the irony of it!!

I went for a nice run yesterday morning, because my running partner was not going to be here yesterday afternoon. It was a good run, 5km, just over 35 min, which is just over 7min/km. I set the intervals to 1min running and 1:15 recovery, which seemed to work quite well.

This morning I started a 10km race...the Right to Run in Arcadia...it was a flat course and I thought it would be a breeze, but alas, by the three km mark I could already feel my knee and by 4km it was really bothering me, I stayed on the course till 5km and then decided to get back to the finish as soon as possible. So I walked back about 2.5-3km and finished (the 7.5/8km) in 60mins, which isn't too bad I guess considering.

So if you haven't noticed the irony yet then I'll point it out to you. I train for 2 years aiming to finish the 2 Oceans half marathon, I think I am fit enough, cardiovascularly, to complete the race, but now, with 20 days to go, its my knees that are causing me trouble!! From here it's supposed to be plain sailing, money in the ank and all those cliche's. Maybe deep down, subconsciously, I don't want to do this thing?

Well I think next week I'm going to try using my old shoes again. I can't remember feeling this knee problem before I got my most recent pair of new shoes. But I will also make an appointment with a podiatrist, hopefully he/she doesn't tell me to rest it for too long.

23 days

While I certainly don't have as much power as I did before I'm defititely feeling better than on Monday. I think it must have been too much salt, I'll have to be very careful indeed going forward. I ran 6km on a route that included some long, mild hills, which I found relatively challenging, especially when compared to running hills a few weeks ago, but I guess I must admit I was in hospital last week, and I wouldn't be surprised if the lack of power is due to the effects of amiodarone, which has a 50 day average half life in your body. That means it takes 50 days to halve the amount stored in my tissue, so in 100 days I will still have a quarter of the 1000mg I took in my body!! This is good for my heart rythm, I guess, because it'll probably stop me from getting out of sinus for a while, but the other effect is that my heart rate is REALLY slow and I assume consequently i have quite low blood pressure. You would think then I should eat more salt...but that is obviously also very bad for me!My knee did bother me a bit today, which is bad news! I thought perhaps running with the orthotics would help, but by the 5th km it was starting to niggle and was noticeable all the way home. I think I'll leave it till after my long run this weekend to see how it feels, then I'll make an appointment to see a doctor about it.

26 Days... knee trouble :(

I've been reading up a little about runners knee and there are many sites with information. It's a very common problem and there are a number of listed causes that I think apply to me!

First - flat feet, I do have flat feet and a few years I went to a podiatrist (or was it an othopeadic surgeon?) to get orthotics because I often get shin splints if I walk fast, however I stopped wearing them as the problem seemed to stop bothering me as much, probably since I began running regularly. Well atleast it stopped bothering me in my daily life, shin splints definitely do bother me from time to time while running, and perhaps this has something to do with my sore knee.

Second - related to the first is overpronation (foot rotating too fat inward on impact), but I already have shoes that help with this problem, they have a large instep, and my last shoes did well to prevent this. I have exactly the same type of shoe as my last pair.

Thirdly - overtraining, or atleast a sudden increase in training. Over the passed few weeks I have been running 30-40km a week, which is 25-50% up from what my body is used to, but it's strange that its happening now, because I started training like that about 2 months ago, and I would imagine the running that I did the past year would condition me to some extent for such an increase.

Fourthly - inadequate stretching, here I have to admit I am guilty! Especially of the quads and hamstrings. I don't stretch a lot and recently at the club they have given up stretching for mild strength exercises before a run. I think I will try to remedy this immediately.

Another cause they mention is an imbalance between the strength of you quads, hamstrings and iliotibial band (ITB). Perhaps this is a cause but I have no idea how I can find that out.

So the question now is what to do about it? It was definitely pronounced yesterday due to the hilly terrain, but the 2 Oceans is hilly terrain and if I end up with knee pain like yesterday on the big run I will be very disappointed! Do I go straight to a podiatrist or go to my GP? Do I try make some changes myself first? Start streching more, start wearing my 4 year old orthotics while running? Perhaps those could now cause more damage? Stop running downhill!? Downhills are where I can gain the most time because they apply the least effort to my heart... I really would prefer not to stop running downhill.

Then adding to my woes are that I have serious deadlines looming at the end of this month and every day I take off means less time to work on work. So I'm reluctant to go see a doctor again after last weeks full day off. Oh well I'll think about it a bit more today, see how I feel after tomorrow's run and then make a call.

27 days... if it's not one thing then it's another!!

To be perfectly honest I was a bit worried on Thursday night that, although the procedure had worked, I had again slipped out of sinus rythm later the same day. I could have sworn there were irregular beats as I was lying in bed going to sleep. However last night and this morning proved me wrong. I'm back to having a slow regular beat that responds perfectly to effort, so my heart rate is once again an indication of speed or steepness of the hill.

The graph is of the 10 I did this morning which was aptly named the Sunrise Monster. The start was scheduled for 6:08, sunrise and the terrain was monstrous. The hills around Pretoria are pretty scary when you don't have a motor vehicle!! On the steepest hill, which rivals the roads on the side of Signal Hill in Cape Town, one woman had passed out and soon after an ambulance came passed to help her out!

I erred on the side of caution this time, walking up most of the hills and jogging the downhills, we were going along at a nice pace, when something else that has been bothering me very mildly for the passed few weeks, but in comparison was too small to mention here really came to the fore! My left knee started complaining to me! I think it was all the downhills, because it really was very hilly terrain.

So now my heart is happy again, and I intend to keep it that way for a long time, but my knee is unhappy! Think the universe is trying to tell me something!!?