Making strides

I've been treating my knee gingerly ever since it was injured a couple weeks ago, avoiding some speed workouts and running a bit slower than I might. But today I was scheduled to do 100-meter strides, and I decided I'd give it a shot.

The knee has been feeling better, and it's never been especially painful while I'm running, which is always a good sign. So I took off for an easy 8-miler, which would include about 2,000 meters worth of strides. I wanted to try out the track at our local high school, which I've only jogged around once. It's a great track, made of nice, springy rubber. Unfortunately, when I arrived at the school after a 4.5 mile warmup, the track was locked up. I decided to improvise and plotted out a course on a nearby greenway. Instead of running round and around, I'd run back and forth, like this:

Trust me, there's a greenway in there

I had to guesstimate the distance using the GPS. The course is longer than 100 meters because I cooled down and turned around between each stride. The knee felt good the whole time, but occasionally I felt a twinge in my glute in the other leg -- overcompensation? About halfway through I was tempted to quit early because it felt like I might be pressing my luck, but I decided to just dial it down slightly and finish the workout. I don't think I took it quite as fast as I have in the past, both because I wasn't on a track and because of the potential for reinjury, but still, it felt good to give the knee a serious test.

Let's try a new thing, embedding the Garmin data for the workout right in the post, below: