I Am Twelve Years Old (Again)

    Today (which will be yesterday  by the time you actually read this) I decided to give running yet another go and, once again, try to up the mileage just a touch.
   I gathered up and donned all the usual running accouterments and just before I left I gave my wife a kiss goodbye. As I was getting set to walk out the door, she looked at me, giggled, and said "You look like you're twelve!"
   

Me, doing my best impression
of a twelve-year-old!

At my age (not twelve) I've kind of gotten past the part of caring a whole heck of a lot about how I look anymore. This goes as much for street clothes (I believe grey goes with anything) as it does running attire. Notwithstanding all this, her comment gave me pause. I'm sure she saw me more as the young boy headed out to baseball practice or perhaps joining the Scout group or maybe even headed off trick-or-treating. I get it, I really do. Even the people on the street give me funny looks occasionally so when I finally hit the forest I do feel a little more at ease (although there was that time I was hiking through the woods and came across this young family whose three-year-old looked at me like I was Bigfoot and quite often the other hikers are wearing flip-flips and I'm dressed like I was running the Barkley Marathons but I digress...) 

This tree fell in the forest (across
the trail in Warbler) but I'm not sure
if anybody heard....

   Back to what matters. The simple plan was to make my way back to Kains Woods via Warbler Woods and run a slow 3K. Due to some right knee issues, I've very gradually been upping the mileage, having started at 1K and then 2K and today up to 3. You may have noticed a pattern and quite likely will be able to guess how far I'm running next week! The knee, which had been feeling awesome the last couple of days decided to feel not quite as awesome today (which is now yesterday) and I wondered if being out on the trails with it was even a good idea. Like a lot of other times, though, when my knee or perhaps another body part is feeling kind of iffy before or at the beginning of a run, by the time I'd run a couple hundred meters everything was fine. And because this all happened yesterday, I can tell you that the knee still feels fine today!

   

At the end of 3K's worth of
running. They don't want you
to go this way, so I didn't.

I'm not sure if global warming is the issue or not, but even this late in September we are in the midst of a heat spell that rivals easily anything that occurred mid-summer. Mid-thirties now for several days in a row. Somehow or other, I did not take this into account with my hydration and, in spite of the fact that I was wearing a hydration vest which could have accommodated two chest bottles and a bladder, I set out with only one chest bottle. Huge mistake! With the extra little bit of running and ending up just that much farther away from home, I didn't have enough water to see me back. Because of this, I ducked out of the forest as soon as I could just to avoid the extra labour and walked back along city streets, thinking that if anybody was out with a hose I might get 'em to either spray me or fill my bottle. Well, no such luck. About half a kilometer away from my place,

Cutting out of Kains Woods early.
Not a lot of fun, traversing
those large concrete blocks...

though, I did run into a house where they were watering the lawn and the sprinkler was mercifully spraying the sidewalk at the same time so I walked back and forth in it for a bit and it was heavenly. Yet another lesson learned. It was the same kind of a mistake that a twelve-year-old might have made...
   

I Ran TWICE As Far!

   I had a little free time yesterday afternoon so I thought I would head over to the nearest trail and see if a little running was in order. 

   
 I more or less did the exact same thing as I did last week and headed over to Kains Woods via Warbler Woods. My goal was to try and add a little extra mileage this week as the last time out I had run a paltry one kilometer. To be fair, I am really experimenting with my right knee these days and any sort of mileage is just a bonus right at the moment. In light of this, I actually doubled the kilometers this week and aimed to do two, yes, a whole two kilometers!

   I hiked briskly through Warbler then got back out on the streets til I got to Kains. Once I got to the three K mark I started a slow run.
   The one difference between this outing and the last was that I didn't feel any real pain in the knee right at the beginning and didn't have to make up my mind as to whether this was actually a good idea or not. Not only that but when I hit the 1K mark and then ran through it I didn't have the feeling that I was in dangerous territory---in fact I felt like I could have run a lot farther! Right from the get-go, the knee felt strong and good. At the end of the running portion, I found a log to sit on and munched a couple of granola bars I'd brought along. Very briefly, the knee protested when I stood up and started to walk again but after a few feet the pain disappeared.
   Today, I can tell that I was out running yesterday. It's a kind of discomfort that I'm actually appreciating because it's the old discomfort, the aches and pains of a body that worked hard as opposed to a body that's broken! And that's good!

On The Trails Again And Some Actual RUNNING!

   This was supposed to have been the summer I really got into trail-running. I got a bit of a taste of it at the end of last summer and vowed that I would get into it full-time come this summer.
   I actually ran trails most of the winter long (it was a reasonably mild winter here in London) and felt that I was well on my way to enjoying an awesome Spring and Summer. 
   Unfortunately, these plans got a little de-railed back in May. Wanting to see what marvelous benefits my winter training had wrought, I attempted to go run the streets in my neighbourhood. My knee popped on me about four houses down and that was it for running. My doctor told me that walking would be okay, so that's what I did. Started easy and then got into it with a vengeance and ended up hiking about 110 kilometers worth of the Thames Valley Trail in the month of July.

Warbler

   I also spent a great deal of time  on my knees in the  backyard, laying stepping stones and border rock. What with all the hiking and kneeling, my right knee never truly had a good chance to recover.
   Lately, though, I've managed to take a break from all this and my knee ended up feeling much better. So much so, in fact, that I actually decided to try and go for a short trail run this past Thursday.
   My plan was to hike through nearby Warbler Woods and then on to Kains Woods, which are more or less adjacent to each other. Once in Kains, the plan was then to run for at least a kilometer and see how I felt.
   Well, I started to run and it did not feel good. Had a fair amount of pain in the knee and after about a hundred meters I shut it down. In my head, I began this list of all the medical stuff the knee was going to require and especially began entertaining concerns that I was now dealing with something chronic, as opposed to temporary.
   And then I remembered almost every other time I had ever gone running, especially after a layoff. My knees always hurt. And even though they always hurt, I persevere until gradually things loosen up, parts fall into place and I end up running just fine, thank you. It occurred to me then that this might be what was happening. I decided to give it another shot and, sure enough, after a little bit the knee came around and ended up being quite workable. I ended up running for the allotted kilometer and then returned to walking briskly. I had set my Garmin when I walked out the door and as soon as it hit 5K I turned around and headed back the same way I came.
   

The entrance to Kains Woods. Took my
trekking poles for the hilly, hiking parts.
While I was running, I pretended they
were spears.....*giggle*

The right knee seemed fine at the time but I knew that the telling part would come the next day. On Friday, however, the knee continued to feel good (well, as much as a 64-year-old knee can) and I had no issues with bending, kneeling or using stairs. Woo hoo! 
   So now the plan is simply to do this a little more often and up the running portion of it by small increments. I also still have the option of seeing a PT for the knee, as I do have a referral, if at some point it flares up again. Perhaps a little hard work mixed with
optimistic caution will get me trail-running next summer! We shall see!