Testing the Knee

Well, the test run Monday night went fine. I ran three miles at about 8:00 pace. Mile one was slow, mile two was the quickest, and mile three was a cool-down. I felt the knee twinge a little in that first mile but it seemed to settle down after that. Because of my positive result I decided to head into last night's speedwork with some gusto.

Unfortunately, just about everyone there was tapering heading into Saturday's Akron Marathon or Half Marathon. But did that stop us from pushing too hard? Heck no! Alternating 200's and 400's were on tap after a nearly 2 mile warm-up. Splits were: 39.9 / 1:26 / 38.7 / 1:27 / 35.9 / 1:22 / 39.2. I was huffing and puffing pretty hard after some of those reps.

But as I was hoping to run a bit more than that I added on a pair of 800's, clocking in at 3:07 and 2:58. And if that weren't enough, I finished it all off with a 7:00 mile. That last one felt really good. Most of the bug storm was gone by then, and although I was still dripping buckets of sweat due to the humidity, I finished strong and injury free. I'm hoping the injury free part sticks around for a while.

Now I need to decide whether or not to run the Akron Half Marathon Saturday morning. Joe's knee is bothering him pretty bad and he's decided not to run even though he's registered and paid in full. So I have the chance to run with his number if I want. I had a 10 mile pace run planned for later on Saturday anyway, so I could start out with a 3 mile warm-up and bump my times down to 7:15-ish for the rest of the race. I'm leaning towards running it, just not completely sure yet.