Aquarunning to the rescue!

After nearly complete rest (just a few short pool runs) from 6/28 – 7/22, then aquarunning with greater frequency and duration during the last week, today’s land run was without pain. Though the distance was just 3.5 miles, the pace was surprisingly close to what was typical just before the injury appeared, yet it felt comfortable.

Aquarunning seems to have worked wonders both in maintaining fitness and (in combination with whirlpool therapy) promoting healing; about the only drawback is that it has bleached my swim trunks.

Now it’s just a matter of rebuilding lost fitness, hopefully in time to at least come close to the goal-predictions stated previously. As an astute reader reminds me, it’s important to ease back into land running, gradually phasing out the pool runs while increasing road mileage, since the legs have not experienced any impact forces in six weeks.

Watch for a detailed discussion of aquarunning in a future post.

Training update – pain free!

After 4 weeks of no activity (“complete rest” sounds better) beginning with the last post, the left knee pain subsided almost completely, and I had my first ‘aquarun’ on 2/13. It was just 15 minutes long, and turned out to be one of only four such workouts over the next month.

The pain returned with the resumption of running on 2/15 but has been manageable; the symptoms have slowly subsided in response to a regimen of cryotherapy (via Cramer Flex-i-Cold packs) after each run, plus occasional heat prior, and weight training (leg extensions and curls). Today’s workout was the first since January without any pain at all.

In preparation for the local 5K run coming up on Sunday, weekly interval workouts of 5 x 1200 meters were begun on 4/15, to help raise the upper limit of aerobic fitness I’ve built so far. Today was the third such session, and the work interval average of 4:52 (3 minutes rest in between) compares quite well with the benchmark of 4:47 set in an identical workout last 11/5. Based on this performance, I estimate I should be able to do ~21:45.

Volume totals from 2/15 through today are 286.1 miles in 38.75 hours.