Catching up

Golly, didn't realize it'd been this long since I last wrote. There's so much to catch up on. When I last wrote, my knee was bothering me a bit. So I didn't run for a week, and it was still somewhat swollen and sore, even with the rest and just walking. So last Thursday I talked with the coach for the marathon class I'm in, and he suggested I see a Physical Therapist about my issues. So I did. Here's the gist of things since:

• basically, I don't have any serious injury, just irritation under my patella
• the PT suggested that I do some strength training to increase my quad and glute strength, some drills to get me used to landing on my mid-foot or balls of my feet while running instead of landing on my heels (which puts a lot more of the shock of impact on my knee), and a return-to-run program for the next few weeks (similar to the Couch-to-5K plan I did a few years ago)
• the irritation and swelling have decreased a bit, but not all the way yet; I'm itchin' to run, but being careful not to push too fast thinking that I'm better when I'm not
• so I've been doing a lot of cross-training-- swimming and biking, mostly (indoors for both... it's still snowing here)
• I even tried a water aerobics class. I had some preconceived notions going into it, but thought I'd give it a try-- "who knows, it could be a good workout," I told myself. Uh, no. 'Twas not a good workout. 'Twas little more than me and a bunch of severely overweight and/or over-aged ladies bobbing around in a pool for an hour. It sucked. I tried quite hard to get my heart rate up, which mostly just got me some bad looks from others because I was making too much splash. At the end the instructor asked how I liked the class, to which I said that it was okay but not nearly the intensity of workouts I'm used to. "Oh," she said, "it's deceptive-- you actually burned 20% more calories doing a workout in the pool than you would have on land." Bull$*#! You can't tell me that splashing around in the shallow-end with my heart rate not over 120bpm burns as much as an hour long run in which my heartrate is around 165bpm and I burn about 500 calories. Nope, I don't believe it.
• So no more water aerobics for me. But I'll continue to swim laps and spin, and run every other day (low miles, high frequency is the prescription for the next few weeks).
• By mid-April I'll have to decide if I'm better enough to go for the full Mary or to shoot for a good half. I'll keep you posted.