The Yellow Birds First Flight

Only two more sleeps until I can run in a tank top and shorts.  YES!  I cannot even begin to tell you how. flipping. excited I am.  This winter has sucked the big one.  The only thing that would have made it worse was if we had a ton of snow.  Thankfully we haven't had too much.  It's just been grey, cold and generally miserable.  I need to see the sun and bask in it's warmth.   But for now, it's two more days of cold and grey.   Yeah yeah, I know, I'll shut up now.

Despite the grey skies outside, things have been looking up.  I had another really good A.R.T session yesterday morning and that, coupled with the 90 minute hot yoga session I did on Sunday has really helped to loosen everything up.  On Monday, I even managed to do 3 sets of 8 reps of squats with no knee issues.  I used a much lighter weight than normal (65lbs vs 80lbs) and I felt great.  No pain, nothing.  WOOHOO.   The only pain I felt was in my glutes the next day.  Proof that I actually used my butt muscles!  Yeah!

The real test for me would be when I hit the road for my run groups Tuesday Tempo session.  My training plan had me slated to run 13km with 10 of it at 4:35/km's.  Tough considering I hadn't done any speed work in about 10 days.  I figured I was going to suck some serious wind.  My PT had taped both my knees up so I was feeling really good about letting loose.  In fact, I was absolutely chomping at the bit to go out and run fast.  I wasn't going to be stupid about it obviously.  If I didn't feel great, I wasn't going to push it.  But if I felt good, then I was going to let the dogs out.

I was also going to be taking these babies on their maiden voyage outside.

The Yellow Birds

I got to the community centre early and a dynamic warm up and then started my 3km warm up.  My plan was to get back close to when the club left so I wasn't standing around too long.  I started out slowly resisting the urge to push the pace.  My knees felt a little weird but I think that was due to the tape.  My right one was bothering me a bit so I started thinking about taking the tape off when I got back.  But once I hit my turn around point, it had stopped and I didn't think about it again.  I got back about 10 minutes before we were scheduled to leave.  Most of the group had arrived and I made sure I stretched and tried to keep limber because I knew that as soon as we started, it was hammer time.  I had hoped that at least one of the fast guys was going to be there so I could have someone to chase and sure enough, Steve was there.  On these runs, he's always in front of me by about 300m or so which is perfect.  It's close enough that I never lose the motivation to keep up the chase.   I figured the first 2km would be the test for me.  If I felt alright in those 2km then I was going to give 'er.  That 2km came and went and I felt amazing.  Well, as amazing as you can feel when you're pushing the pace.  My legs felt strong, my footing was sure and I was confident in my stride.  The Yellow Birds were flying.  I felt great until about 10km in, then I really started to feel fatigued.  The lactic acid was starting to build up in my legs and any uphills I hit became a bit of a challenge.  Guess that's what happens when you take 10 days off running.  I shut the whining down and focused on working through the hurt.   Pushing the limits just a bit farther.  With 500m left, I really pushed the pace, hitting 4:05 km's.  I was hoping to sneak under an hour for just over 13km but I didn't quite make it.  I was close.  The Yellow Birds had an excellent maiden voyage.

BOOM!

It's official.  I'm back.