Trying Out Some Tape

On the way home I stopped off at a pharmacy and picked up some sport tape. Last September, when I was suffering through a bout of runner's knee on the left side, I went to the physio and was told that I could use taping as a means of providing relief from the pain (as long as I did the hip flexor and butt exercises to take care of the actual problem). Well, I never tried this back then, but tonight I decided that it might be a good idea if I was to test the knee on a short run.

The first thing I did was to shave a 4 square inch patch right under the knee cap because I remember the agony of pulling off the tape that the physio had put on showing me how to do it. Then I applied the tape and it was amazing how much relief this offered instantly! My current ailment is at the stage where I don't feel any pain when I walk, even down stairs, but I feel a twinge when I tighten my quads and pull the knee cap up as high as possible. Well, once the tape was on even doing this didn't hurt at all.

So, with the knee secured, I headed out into the -13.3C temperatures to test myself on the road. I intended to run an easy 5k, but it actually ended up being 5.5km in 34:46 for an average pace of 6:19/km. My average heart rate was 136bpm, definitely in the "easy" range.

At the beginning of the run I must admit I had my doubts about getting the whole thing done. The knee felt a bit weird and I think I was compensating way too much for this, changing my natural running form in the process. As the run progressed I decided to just run on feel, though that was not easy to do *. I tend to over think the whole running form thing a little bit and perhaps that is doing me more harm than good. I want to be able to just run like a kid, not worrying about anything except moving forward from point A to B. This may never happen, but I will give it a shot.

* Of course, it was particularly difficult to run "on feel" tonight since my pants kept falling down! I couldn't find the belt that I usually use to hold up these things and decided that they'd probably get caught somewhere on my hips and not slide down too far. Boy was I wrong! I guess I have no hips, which may help to explain the lack of hip muscles. It was all I could do to keep the sweat on my...

Ummmm... On second thought, let's not even go there and just say that it was freezing cold out.

Garmin don't lie.


View Larger Map