First 'naked knee' run last night

[Narmour]

I've been running since the beginning with my left knee strapped up as it has always been a source of discomfort and worry, since I dislocated it as a child. It sometimes aches, and occasionally clicks. it's generally not a great joint and I would regard it as my weak link.

Recently I have been more aware that my knee, whilst it is a million times stronger than it was at the start of C25k, will not get any stronger than it is now, as I'm not really giving the muscles round it a chance to take the full strain. So I decided last night to ditch the knee strap and go for a gentle run to assess how the knee copes. I set myself my usual 5k loop, as it has plenty of bail out short cuts, should my knee play up. The whole run was fine, my knee ached a little on the walk home so I took an ibuprofen to limit any swelling and went easy on it the rest of the evening. No niggles this morning, it feels as good as it does after a normal 'strapped up' run.

Besides this, the run was pretty terrible. I got caught short running along the beach and had to make a quik dash to the Esplanade Bar to use the facilites (thank jebus they were open!!), then the cold air seemed to be playing havoc with my lungs as I couldn't seem to fill them properly and really struggled most of the way round. Having a break 15 minutes in wasn't good either, as I felt like I had to start from scratch. My phone strapped to my arm kept loosening and when I tried to fix it, I kept turning the volume down on my playlist. I had to stop running a couple of times to sort it out. And finally, I decided to do the run backwards so I could test myself going up the hill on High Street (It's not called high st for nothing). I managed about half the hill before having to stop, which isn't too bad, but I'm sure if my lungs weren't complaining about the cold I would've made it to the top. By the time I got to the top I still had about a km to the point that i had set to end, but the fight had gone from me and I strolled back. At the top of High Street I had done 4.65km in 32 minutes (not including loo break, and several stops to curse loudly at my phone). Not my greatest run but encouraging that my knee held up.

[runsandknits Graduate]

Tomorrow's a new day! All looks promising for knee. Well done for running up the hill - not sure I'm ready to face too much gradient quite yet :-S

[mhussain Graduate]

Hey Narmour, we have to take the good with the bad. No doubt you have learned something about yourself during this run. Your knee has held up which is positive, and you managed to run up a hill which you didnt anticipate on I imagine. Therefore, sounds to me you have done pretty well. Great job still - as you were still out there! M

[Narmour Graduate in reply to mhussain]

Thanks!! sometimes I guess we all feel like we are superhuman when we are getting ready to go out for a run and we imagine ourselves running a marathon without breaking a sweat. So when real life hits we huff and puff our way round the course, and can't quite get to the end of that hill, and we get brought back down to earth. It just makes us more determined to get out there and try again.