Running & Knee PT

I am not a typical blogger. I don't post frequently. It often takes me days if not weeks to finish even one post because I spend so much time composing my thoughts. But then, I do have a day job.

I thought I would see what it feels like to just write whatever random thoughts are in my head each day. So I'm going to try to write a post a day for 50 days. By the end of the year, I should know whether my thoughts flow more freely after this mental exercise.

Today my thoughts are on running.  My husband and I signed up for the Pizza Pie 5K which is this morning at 9:00. It will be chilly out. It's in the Park Hill neighborhood which is near the Denver Zoo.

I have been slacking off on running lately even though I am actually in a "run club" for the first time ever. Four or five of us meet at 6:00 am on Mondays. I am the only one who is not a beginner though I am not a high mileage runner; I usually run 3 miles. As a group, we are working our way up to a 5K, which is just over 3 miles. The farthest I have run is a half marathon (13 miles) and I did that distance twice. I have also run a couple of 10 milers. I learned that my body starts to fall apart if I run too far.

My thoughts are also on my right knee. I hurt the back of my knee training for a stair climb months ago. A friend thought I might have a Baker's cyst but I didn't feel a lump. The pain seemed to be mostly on the calf side and not from the hamstrings.

I managed the pain for months by wearing one of those ugly compression things (the ones with a hole at the kneecap). Then I aggravated my injury running a 10K trail run. I don't remember hurting it but I must have wobbled or twisted it somehow. The day before my 10K, I also whacked my knee hard lifting a cooler into the back of the SUV.

I finally decided to get help for my knee and have been undergoing physical therapy for about 4 weeks. The x-rays showed that my knees are actually in pretty good shape - no signs of arthritis. The surprise during my first week of training was that my pain seems to originate in my ankle. I couldn't do a knee to the wall exercise without my ankle hurting. So I do a couple of exercises for my calves twice a day and a lot of exercises to strengthen my glutes. Which means lots of butt squeezes and single leg squats. The squats show me how weak my right side is compared to the left. I have a couple more weeks of PT.

The pain behind my knee has almost completely gone away. The front of my knee hurt this week when I went up and down the stairs but I have been dealing with that off and on for years. I'm thinking that was either due to the squats or because I thought I could get away with not wearing the supportive knee band.

Time for more coffee.