Long Run Re-cap: I Hit the Wall + Hurt my Knee

Oh gosh – don’t even know where to start. Don’t want to say I am embarrassed, but I admit it right here: I hit the wall today. And then even worse, I did not pay enough attention when crossing a street, mis-stepped somehow and now my knee is hurting badly. The good news is that it is not swollen or so and I hope that 2-3 days of rest will address the issue. Tomorrow would be a rest day anyway and I am ready to call Monday a rest day as well. It sucks, but it is what it is.

So, here is the actual run re-cap. I stuck to my plan and ran a 9.55 average per mile for the first 7 miles. Then I met 2 really nice people who were running as well and we teamed up since we all had the same trail ahead of us. And here is where I made the mistake – I ran too fast. The 2 were running almost a minute faster per mile than I did before. But I felt good and so I went along. We were talking the entire time we ran together which was roughly for 6 miles. I realized that I was at my upper limit every once in a while because I could tell the way I talked while running. But as mentioned, I felt good and the time and the miles were just flying by. That’s the good thing I did not experience so far – having some running buddies for talking along the way really eases your mind and makes you forget that you’re actually running. I reminded myself of re-fueling and thought that I did alright.

After roughly 7 miles of running together we had to go separate ways and I continued on alone. I still felt Ok. I had to stop at a red light and paused the GPS watch actually because this specific traffic light would take about 3 minutes to switch back to green. I finally crossed the street and then had a long hill to go up. How long up a hill? The next 2.5 miles. Then there would be a stretch of roughly a mile fairly flat before hitting another 1.5 mile stretch of having to run uphill. While crossing another street is where I happened to hurt myself. And then I also realized that my GPS watch was still paused and I was probably already 1.5 miles away from where I had paused it. Both, the knee and the GPS watch bothered me. The hill dragged on and I could feel the energy disappearing from my legs. After about 2 miles of uphill battle I decided to walk. My knee hurt and I was out of energy. I ate another pack of Gatorade Chews and about 20 minutes later also ate a GU gel.

I walked until I had both stretches of uphill behind me and started running again. But with no energy in my legs and a hurting knee my average pace dropped to 11.30 minutes per mile. I decided to call the run early at that point – roughly at around mile 17/18 considering that I had missed to restart my GPS watch earlier. I stopped the GPS watch and decided to take it easy.

I had another 2 miles ahead of me and it was a mix of walking and slow running. I came home, had 2 shaker bottles of post-workout drinks. Then I took a shower with the final 5 minutes just having ice-cold water running down on both my legs. Then I sat down on the couch with an ice pack and started the healing process for my knee. Hopefully I will be able to work out again 2-3 days. After reviewing my split times I can see that if I run a minute faster per mile, I am just not ready for it just yet. So, my existing goal of 9.45 – 10.00 minutes per mile still stands for now.

So, the GPS watch says I ran for 15.3 miles, but the total mileage is closer to 19 +/- a little bit.