A Couple of Runs and Squeezing a Tennis Ball
This week is almost at an end (well, the working week anyway) and I managed a couple of runs after skipping Tuesday's due to discomfort in my right knee (more on that later).
After walking to work on Wednesday I ran home for a total of 6.2k. It was pretty nice out, all things considered, though the city seems to be putting down way too much salt on the sidewalks for my liking, making everything all slushy and gross. My running was very slow and even because I had a pretty heavy backpack on, but overall I felt pretty good. The right knee gave me less trouble than I'd expected.
On Thursday I made it home in time to make a quick decision about fitting in another run before picking up Owen from his school. I ran a total of 6.8k and again felt pretty good. Though my pace continues to be super slow (as in right around the 6:00/km, or 9:30/mile range), I am not worrying about it right now. My focus is on listening to my body and slowly building up my weekly mileage. I really want to have a consistent year of running rather than the up and down, off and on sort of thing that happened throughout 2009.
As far as the right knee is concerned, I think I have found something that might help. As I continue to read up on all the potential causes of the dreaded "runners knee", I came across an article that talked about a potential cause that I hadn't encountered previously: lateral quad strength out of balance with medial quad strength. Everything else I'd ever read just referred to overall quad weakness as the culprit, and so I continued to work on hip flexors and glute meds, all the while completely ignoring the inner thigh. For the last couple of days I've been doing a very simple exercise that seems to be helping. I squeeze a tennis ball between my knees while in the sitting position. And let me tell you, those muscles are not very strong!
So far, the knee seems to feel better while running, but it's only been a few days. I look forward to trying other exercises for the medial quads, especially once my gym membership kicks in and I have access to all sorts of fancy equipment. I think the technical term for this motion is adduction, but I get it screwed up with abduction. Either way, I figure a little of both is in the cards. (I also look forward to having treadmills at my disposal, which will hopefully help in the process of gradually upping my mileage at a nice controlled rate.)
This weekend I have a run of between 8 and 10 kilometres on the books for Saturday, and then we are off to cross-country skiing for Sunday. Looking forward to both!
After walking to work on Wednesday I ran home for a total of 6.2k. It was pretty nice out, all things considered, though the city seems to be putting down way too much salt on the sidewalks for my liking, making everything all slushy and gross. My running was very slow and even because I had a pretty heavy backpack on, but overall I felt pretty good. The right knee gave me less trouble than I'd expected.
On Thursday I made it home in time to make a quick decision about fitting in another run before picking up Owen from his school. I ran a total of 6.8k and again felt pretty good. Though my pace continues to be super slow (as in right around the 6:00/km, or 9:30/mile range), I am not worrying about it right now. My focus is on listening to my body and slowly building up my weekly mileage. I really want to have a consistent year of running rather than the up and down, off and on sort of thing that happened throughout 2009.
As far as the right knee is concerned, I think I have found something that might help. As I continue to read up on all the potential causes of the dreaded "runners knee", I came across an article that talked about a potential cause that I hadn't encountered previously: lateral quad strength out of balance with medial quad strength. Everything else I'd ever read just referred to overall quad weakness as the culprit, and so I continued to work on hip flexors and glute meds, all the while completely ignoring the inner thigh. For the last couple of days I've been doing a very simple exercise that seems to be helping. I squeeze a tennis ball between my knees while in the sitting position. And let me tell you, those muscles are not very strong!
So far, the knee seems to feel better while running, but it's only been a few days. I look forward to trying other exercises for the medial quads, especially once my gym membership kicks in and I have access to all sorts of fancy equipment. I think the technical term for this motion is adduction, but I get it screwed up with abduction. Either way, I figure a little of both is in the cards. (I also look forward to having treadmills at my disposal, which will hopefully help in the process of gradually upping my mileage at a nice controlled rate.)
This weekend I have a run of between 8 and 10 kilometres on the books for Saturday, and then we are off to cross-country skiing for Sunday. Looking forward to both!
posted by Vava at
8:48 AM
2 Comments:
Continuing to strengthen the areas which support the knee is a good thing and will definitely help. Glad to hear things are feeling ebtter. Keep listening to your body and slowly work your way up.
Glad to hear the knee is holding up.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home