Ice Packs, Knees, and Frozen Peas

Last week was a rough week for me, as I continued to be nagged by my knees.  Just when I think I have reigned in my IT-band issues, I get some tightness and discomfort in my left knee.  This inconvenience (not a pain yet) is located on the inside of my knee a little below the knee cap.  I haven't seen much information about pains in this location, but my 0 days of Med school tell me that it's just tightness.  It is a nuisance for the first mile or so of a run, but it subsides to a point where I don't really notice.

So last week I took a total of 3 days off, which really bugs me since I have to get my mileage up for this marathon I have already paid for. 

Friday's run was a sprint interval workout with Amy.  A lot of people don't like these workouts, and some neglect them, but I kinda like doing some sprinting.  It takes a lot of monotony out of the workout.  Amy and I run the 2 miles to the Vandy track, do the 800 Yasso repeasts, and then run the 2 miles back.  It makes for a good opportunity to get a good warmup and cool down period.  The Yasso repeats are designed so that you run each 800 at a pace predetermined by your expected marathon finish time.  You take your predicted marathon time and just switch the hours to minutes and minutes to seconds.  For example, if you hope to run a 4 hour marathon, you should be able to do each 800 repeat in 4 minutes.  I really haven't decided what time I expect in my marathon (I did put down 3:40 on the entry form), but I've tried to do my Yasso's in 3:30.  I was excited that even after my knee problems, I was able to do my 5 repeats in 3:27, 3:30, 3:31, 3:31,3:35.  I held out a little bit on the last couple and I think I could have done one or two more if my schedule told me I needed to. 

Saturday was an 8 mile run at marathon pace.  Again, I haven't really decided what that exactly is, but I finished the run with 7:55 splits.  Probably a little too fast, but the last mile is downhill, which I had a 7:30 split.  

Sunday was the famed 11.2 mile loop in Percy Warner Park here in Nashville.  I really wanted to run this loop because I'm trying to plan out my running schedule for the remainder of 2009.  I am very interested in doing the Flying Monkey Marathon in late November so I wanted to make sure I could actually finish this extremely difficult course.  We ran it at a pretty steady 9:25 pace, which i was happy with especially since there is a 1500 foot climb throughout the route.  Amy has her own insights into this run on her post today.  

I'm still a little sad they didn't review the last Cardinals play in the Super Bowl, but I doubt it would have been overturned anyway.  My chili was extraordinary, however.

Favorite commercial:  either the career builder commercial where they punched small animals (I believe it was a Koala with glasses and a cup of coffee) OR the E*trade commercial with the talking baby and the skins beatdown.  HA HA.  Shankapotumus.