Two Domes

Thursday, January 26, 2012:

The Stillwater soccer dome is open for walkers, runners, and fly casters (!) from 6:00 am to 10:00 am every weekday morning. We three ran for an hour, and I tried something new - run the straights and walk the corners. That’s a LOT of corners, actually about 22 per mile, thus a lot of slowing to a walk and starting up to a run again, but the result was good - I heard nothing from the adductors at all. I did reverse direction every mile, as I would if walking.

Nothing was heard from the knee or the adductors, at all, but the sports hernia hurt all of the way, enough to make me happy to stop after the 60 minutes. In the past, it has usually calmed down after the first quarter mile or so, but no such luck today. Evidently I really did re-injure it Tuesday in the Metrodome. Oh well, it will get better, but I’m disappointed that I can’t run any kind of short race without reinjury. The conventional wisdom is that the only fix is surgery - oh my, I hope not.

Splits: 20:38 (2 mi), 10:04, 10:30, 10:14, 10:08, total 61:38, pace 10:16. That’s fine for a walk/run.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012:

We three picked up Jim and headed to Minneapolis to run in the Metrodome. I like running there, and so do 100 to 300 other runners every Tuesday and Thursday evening. The curves are gentle, the company is good, and the only problem is that the running surface is hard cement. So I won’t do a 20-miler in there, but shorter runs are fine.

Jim and I ran together for the first four of my six miles, which means that he loafed along while I was breathing hard. But that’s OK with me - I needed to find out whether my injuries would raise their ugly heads if I pushed beyond marathon pace. In fact, after the four miles, I alternated walking a lap and then running even harder for a lap, just to push it a little more. The bad news is that I felt pain in both the right knee with PFS (runner’s knee) and the abdominal wall strain (sports hernia), much more pain than in any recent marathon. The good news is that neither was bad enough to limit the running in any way. It’s probably good that we were done at six miles, though.

I didn’t bring my watch, but it took about 60 minutes to run the six miles, and that includes three laps (more than a mile) of walking. I suppose it’s not a masterpiece, but it’s fine. I’m happy.


Oatmeal peeking through. There are blueberries under there too. Berries were frozen. Most everything is organic: