I'm back!

I am SO trying to be a good dooby and smart when it comes to my weak knee.   And!  I am sitting here typing this with an ice wrap to the darn thing, post-run! (sanctioned by PT) . . . a run during which I actually stretched! and kept to a limited time and alternation of run and walk.

Icing something!  I never ice.  Stretching?  Stretching is for yoga, and with the exception of a nod towards some sort of calf-stretchy-thing when I had shin splints a couple years ago, stretching and running are mutually exclusive (for me).  And my alternation between running and walking is usually dictated by my pressing need to pee*, take a picture, inspect my footprint or see something shiny, not by dictated time intervals.  So I really am trying to Do The Right Thing.

And today that took me out for 30 minutes of movement, running 3 minutes walking 3 minutes, to the tune of 1.92 miles.  My first run in over a month.  Plus, yesterday I ran .6 miles! on a treadmill!  OMG!

Right now, just being able to run this exciting milage (2.5 miles! Superstar!) pain free is a relief.  Hopefully in a week or two I can drop the walking all together.  Funny enough, it turns out that I'm having this IT band issue not because the band is tight (my right one, in fact, is tighter than the affected left), but because when fatigued, my left knee turns inward and increases the tension on it, thus: irritation.  So says PT Joe.  Therefor, he says, I've just got to strengthen certain muscles and pay lots more attention to my alignement and this issue should essentially go away over time.  So there's that.

For now, I've just run very short distances very pain free.  For now, this is totally fine.

*I ran this little run through my neighborhood.  Begging me, the nearly constant trailrunner, to ask: where do you fking pee?  Yeah, I know it was only 30 minutes, but still.  This remains a mystery to me.  Yes, I peed in a snow bank, two tenths of a mile from my home.