I've run twice in a seven day span. No, you're not imagining things. Neither run felt good. Quite the contrary. Both were pretty pathetic, but not quite miserable. But surprisingly, they were somewhat positive. Last week, my back felt pretty decent post run, but my right leg got angry tight. Like 60lb draw compound bow tight. So I rolled it out, sat on the couch, watched an epic come from behind Sounders victory and eventually went to bed to test it out the next morning.
Race volunteer standing, my right side kryptonite, didn't phase me. Dishes didn't phase me. Lawn work didn't bother me. 2 hours on the mountain bike which I almost skipped, which would have been idiotic by the way, didn't bother me. So yeah, I was a little bit positive.
But 15 months of no running can leave a person pretty mentally weak. I'm not out of the woods by any means. I won't be training any time soon. And running once around Padden is a huge accomplishment.
I decided to repeat the experiment this morning. My leg felt tighter before the run. The quad was trying to assert its dominance over my entire right side. Or maybe it was left to do all the work by all its surrounding jerk muscle friends that either forgot, or decided not to do. Either way......
Things loosened up nicely during the run. Naturally, out of nowhere, the good knee started hurting and represented the bigger discomfort during the run. The right was tight again, but here I am 5 hours later and it really doesn't feel any more tight than it was before the run. The back is a solid 6/10 on the healthy scale, and trust me, that's better than it's been.
So I'm going to keep visiting and working with the trifecta of helpers I have. Kerry Gustafson of Prime, Steve Noble of Noble Chiropractic, and Carolyn Watson of Core Kinetics. I'm going to change my terrible attitude and get more positive. It's hard to break the habits of a lazy trashy tv watching depressed former athlete. So maybe I'll do some more rolling, push ups or some stuff like that, play on the reformer, hang inverted by my ankles, do a plank for 30 seconds or so, bicep curls because big guns are always rad, and maybe in a few weeks I'll be celebrating 3 runs in a week span. Who knows.
And here is a picture of one of my cute cats, just because its Caturday. Meet Bear!