ahm tah-ared

Oh my aching knees. I had great hopes of gradually increasing each week, from 20mpw to 22 mpw to 23 to 25 to 27.5 and then then to plateau at 30 for a while. It seems my knees might have a different thought on that plan. The KoolAid plan says to pretty much listen to your body and advance as it allows. Dayum, that making sense business again. I really hate that. This week was great for swimming - Pike swam with me 3 days (counting today, hopefully) and I did 1800, 1500, 1800 and have 2100 planned for today. Nothing compared to my old swimming days but I never had to deal with currents in pools either (at least that's MY excuse).

So this week was 2.5, 4.5, 2.5, 4.5, 2.5 and 6.5 (tomorrow will be the 6.5) but since I have been running since Sunday, but not counting that day in my total (I know, it is insane) that's another 6 days in a row for me. Since I used to have trouble with my knees after 2 days in a row but after implementing Chondroitin and glucosamine at first 1200mg/day and then at 1800mg/day to banish the painful knees, I wonder if I just need to up the ante again. I like the logic of the Koolaid program - lower daily mileage to allow bones and ligaments to adjust but frequency to get just as high mileage as 4d/week program but I wonder if my knees are cut out for it. One big hmmmm.

We've got Hurricane Ricardo gunning for the southern area of the state (and Belize) and yesterday the water already showed the effects of this much larger than Paula cane. Still no worries, the tortugas have us covered.

I'm still up in the air on the Xeh-Ha triathlon but definitely will do an HIM (70.3) next year. Just not sure if it will be Cancun, Mazatlan or Veracruz.

Drinking the Kool Aide

So I've been bouncing along on my own program (4 miles every other day for a week after the medicinal runs, bump up to 5 miles and then jump into a marathon training program - Hal's, natch, Novice 2) and getting my ego stroked with multiple longer (to me) runs (8, 8, 9, 9) and dropping my average pace (9:40mm last 5K - still can't commit to metric 100%) but starting to get niggings of patellofemoral syndrome and plantar fasciitis. Hmmm... As if the calf wasn't enough. So I stopped going around barefoot (for PT) and iced the heels after each run and the PF pretty much went away until my last 9 mile run. Hmmmm... The PFS seems to ebb and flow so I just kind of kept it in the back of my head and started looking around the web.

and I found the Kool Aid.

So last week I jumped into the first week (supposed to be 2-4-2-4-2-0-6 and instead went 0-3-3-3-4-0- and today should be 6. AND I'm dropping my speed. I was holding 10:00 mm pretty easily for 4-5 mile runs but according to the Kool Aid and McMillan, my recovery (MWF) runs should be crushingly slow at 12:18-12:48 (have not yet been able to run that slow), long runs 11:18 to 12:18 (I am pretty sure I can do that) and easy runs (TTh) 11:18 to 11:48 (again, might be able to bring the pace under 11:18 but it is not easy to run that slow). My ego has taken a HUGE hit from running 10:00 to trying for 11:00. But I'm looking long term now and if I manage to get to the end of the year without injury I'll be a total convert. And it does make sense - I've been pushing my ligaments prolly before they were ready (post injury) and I'm hoping this might do the trick.