Prognosis Negative

That title is for you Seinfeld fan's out there.

I just got back from the doctor's office, where I had my knee examined. The doctor thought that the pain was most likely being caused by a partial tear of the ACL. When I first heard that, I got scared, but he assured me that it was pretty minor. He said if running doesn't bother it, go ahead and keep running. He also said that he had no problem with me continuing to play softball either. I should just manage any pain I feel with Ibuprofen or Aleve. All in all, I'm was pretty happy with the way things went. I will go back in sometime after labor day to have an MRI just to confirm that this really is all that there is.

So last Friday I mentioned that I wanted to try and get in a 20 miler at some point over the weekend. As the work day drew to a close, I was feeling pretty energetic, so I decided that I would just knock it out right there. I did the reverse Halsted Run, which is the point to point course from my work to my house. In total it is 23 miles. Unfortunately, I only had enough in the tank for about 19 miles. The last 4 miles turned into an absolutely brutal death march. It was raining and humid for most of the run, and running through rough neighborhoods is a lot different at 6PM on a Friday night as opposed to 6AM on a Friday morning. I think I was running a little too hard through some of those neighborhoods in the early going and paid the price later on. The whole run was probably one of the stupider things I've done lately.

I did survive the run, but was just completely wiped out from it when I got home. I had chaffing all over from the wet shorts and shoes and everything was sore. The next day things didn't really improve much, although I did manage to get out for a very easy 7 miler (After liberally applying vaseline all over). Finally on Sunday, I started getting my legs back and went for a pretty decent 10 miler to close out the week and hit 100 miles for the first time in the last 3 weeks.

I guess I am pleased with how the week went. I was able to get in 2 longruns and one uptempo workout. With the hard race effort on Sunday, I can live with only one real hard effort. Bottom line is that even a few months ago, there is no way I would have been able to log 100 miles at any pace the week after running a half-marathon. Hopefully this week, I'll continue to get back into the flow of things.