It's Coming Back!

Today I decided to try my favorite 4 mile route here. It has some challenges to it and I just wanted to see how I would do on it.

The first few steps resulted in pain on the outside of my right knee. More than any other time since the October 14th inflammation/injury. I told myself to just try until it affected my gait and hoped like crazy it was just my IT Band flaring up and not the lateral meniscus!!!

At a quarter mile it was easing up. At half a mile, my knee was a non-issue and I was off! At .62 mile I was warmed up and rolling up my rain jacket's sleeves. And off I went!

I took the pedestrian bridge up over the 205 Freeway just like old days. It is the second most steep incline that I use for hill and it wasn't as bad as I expected. I didn't need to stop at the top to catch my breath. I turned around and headed back.

It never felt like I was going fast. There was not one, but TWO times that I had a runner's high moment. I was there in my day-glow clothing, running in the rain giggling and smiling. At one point I was fist pumping and quickly learned the importance of insuring your fist isn't any where near the earbud cord. OUCH! LOL!

When I got home and downloaded my stats I found that I beat ALL my prior workouts (over several months worth) on that exact 4 mile route. WOW!!! I checked the GPS data to insure it didn't add miles (with elevation spikes or weirdness) and it didn't. That was a clean tracking on the map.

YAAAAAAAAAY!!!!

Those hills didn't slow me down today and hours later, I still feel great.

This appears to be one of those freak runs that make it all so worth while. I'll take it. :)