Catching Up

At one point, I was going to post updates to the physical therapy as I was going through it. Unfortunately, something got in the way. It was boring. It worked great, and the PT was able to teach me quite a bit about knee stability and exercises to help keep the knee stable, but at the same time, the real highlight was bringing in a UVA pennant for them to put up on the walls (which were already chock full o' SEC flags -- but Virginia needed to represent).

In any case, I finished my physical therapy. And it was good. And I went back to the sports doc, who told me that I still have fluid in my knee and likely what was happening was that my kneecap was floating around and banging into things when I was doing some crazy exercises... like running. The solution at this point was to give me a brace to keep the kneecap in place while working out. As an added bonus, the brace has some stability stays on the side, too!

So, here I am. It's one week until the Gate River Run, which is apparently the largest 15k in the country ("USA 15K Championship", according to the website: http://www.gate-riverrun.com). In any case, there's an untimed 5k for charity, and a vicious 15k that everyone says is absolutely fantastic to do. And I really want to do the 15k. I signed up for it long ago, thinking I'd be healed by now, mostly for the reason that the race finishes inside Jacksonville Municipal Stadium, home of the Jacksonville Jaguars (and to make some of my friends happy, I have to mention that it is also the home of the annual Georgia-Florida game). It ends in the stadium! How awesome is that? They'll put us up on the Jumbotron (which is much larger than the one in Lights, Motors, Action! at the Disney races).

But I've been sitting on my bum for five months.

What to do?

Well, if you're anything like me, you're going to take your new brace and go for a walk. You'll start out with a notion of going five miles and seeing what it feels like at that point, and if you can keep a reasonable pace going up to then.

And if you're still anything like me at that point, you'll be feeling pretty damn good at five miles, and you'll come up with a plan to go up to the local grocery store and get some G2 and walk back home.

And if you're still anything like me, you'll get up to the grocery store and realize that you've gone 5.8 miles at this point, and you'll be incredibly curious to see how quickly you can finish the 10k. So you'll skip the G2 and keep on going.

Finally, you'll get to the 10k point (in 1:28 -- walking), and realize that you're just short of 5k from the house.

So, here you are. It's your first excursion out of the house in a looooong time. You're testing yourself to see if you think you'll be able to walk a 15k next week, and keep a decent time (hoping for less than a 15 min/mile pace). And to do this, you *do a 15k*.

And you do it in 2:12.

And then you can't really walk much on Sunday. Or Monday, for that matter.

But just wait until Saturday!!!