On Wednesday The Pupeteer had me scheduled for a track workout, including some 1000 M intervals "for time" (I'm not really sure what she does with my times once I've submitted them too her - she probably just sits back and has a good laugh!).
Track work is, I'll freely admit, not excatly my favorite, but at lunchtime I headed down to the local school track to try to do as I was instructed: Warm-up; 8 x 400 M splits; a mile at Half Marathon pace; 3 x 1,000 M splits. Quel horreur! The track was closed for some sort of maintenance. I don't know of any other tracks local enough to get to for a lunchtime session so (secretly smiling to myself) I headed home to at least try to replicate the planned session on some local flat roads. This is where the trouble started....
As soon as I started warming-up in my driveway I could feel some sort of tightness under my left knee cap. My concerns were amplified when I started a gentle warm-up run. Uh oh.... on every left foot strike I could feel my left knee. I wouldn't describe it as pain - more a discomforting pressure/"tweak". With the race less than two weeks away I didn't want to push my luck, so I walked home (still feeling the knee) and abandoned the workout.
At this point I'm a bit concerned and sent The Puppeteer a message to let her know. We agreed that I would try a 45 minute aerobic session on the bike trainer that evening, and I felt a little better when I finished that without any difficulties or discomfort.
Yesterday I had a seven mile run with intervals scheduled. I woke up without any discomfort in my knee but it was, never-the-less, with some trepidation that I set out. I walked 0.75 miles before I started and threw in every warm-up move that I could think of... high steps, lunges, twists, jumps, strides, backwards etc. I went very "gingerly" (~10 min/mile pace) for the first mile to test things out... nothing! Yipee! Pushed the pace from there and was happy to finish the seven miles without ever feeling my knee. Color me happy.
I am increasingly realising that this type of incident is probably something that you just have to live with as an "older" triathlete. I have absolutely no clue what the problem with my knee was and I likely never will. The Puppeteer has me working on all sorts of things to improve core strength and flexibility - this sort of incident just reinforces to me how important this stuff is!
This is a great site for anyone who's interested: http://www.coreperformance.com/
Two hour run scheduled tomorrow... fingers crossed!
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