Two wrongs make a right

Over the last few days, I've been getting a little frustrated with my running.  My race is just over 3 weeks away, so there's not a lot of time to mess around.  At this point, every run is very important.  There aren't any spare days to make up missed runs.

Last Saturday was supposed to be my last 20 mile training run, and last long run before my tapering was to begin.  I headed out for my run, and was doing fine until about mile 8.  At that point, I started to feel a sort of grinding sensation every once in a while on the back side of my right knee.  It wasn't really a pain, just sort of an annoyance.  I was coming up on a point in my run where I could either turn to head away from my house, and continue on my long run, or turn and head home.  I made the decision to head home.  I thought to myself, I'm only 4 weeks away from my race, and it's better to not force myself to run through injury and possibly hurt myself.   So I ended up running about 10.5 miles.  Pretty upsetting.

I rested my leg for a couple days, and decided to continue my training on Monday, with 8 half-mile sprints.  I was on sprint number 5, and started to dry heave.  So, that ended that run.  I was planning on running later in the day, so I hadn't really been eating properly in the morning.  Then, a change of plans had me running earlier than I expected.  I think that's what caused the almost puking episode.  Regardless, still upsetting.  That makes 2 bad runs in a row.

Today I was determined to have a good run.  I knew that I was more than capable of completing my scheduled run for the day.  It was just a matter of if my luck would continue to go South or not.  I headed out on my run and felt pretty good.  I did my normal 5 minute jog, followed by 5 minutes of stretching.  I was then to do 1 mile in 8:09, which I did in 7:44.  Then I was to do 5 miles at a 6:48/mile average.  Well, I ended up averaging 6:41/mile.  There was a couple times during this run where I felt that grinding again, but I just said screw it.  It was a short run, by comparison, today.  And, I'm taking the next 2 days off.  Hopefully with enough rest, ice, compression, and elevation, I'll cure what I'm assuming is tendonitis.

So, normally two wrongs don't make a right.  However, after 2 bad runs, I finally had a good one.  Yeah!