Once A Runner…

Another Evening Walk

I didn’t feel very well rested this morning when the alarm went off at 5:15, so I shut the fool thing off and crawled back under the covers. I guess I needed the extra hour and a half of sleep because I felt great when I did get up.

I spent most of the day finishing up in the garage, this time unloading the overhead, loft-like storage area and going through some boxes and hauling a few into the den for my wife to go through at her leisure so we can repack what’s to be kept into storage bins and carry them out to the shed, which we also reorganized today. It’s a fair trade. My wife finally got me to help clean up the garage and storage shed and to haul a ton of stuff off to donate to Goodwill, and I got half of the garage for the weights and benches.

While we were at finishing up in the garage, I decided I wasn’t pleased with the flexibility of the smaller bench I have — it’s not built to decline and will only incline to 45 degrees while I like to occasionally take it to 90 for seated military presses, etc. So, I donated the one I had and bought another. I also bought a weight tree to store the Olympic plates and bar better than just stacking them on either side of the big bench. If I’m going to keep it, I have to keep the “home gym” organized.

For this evening’s walk, I started a little slower than usual and gradually picked up the pace over time. It felt pretty good. I only had a couple of times there that the knees complained and they were much less bothersome than normal even when they did.

Calories consumed this time was a bit lower than usual. Two good reasons for that I guess:

• I had to dial down my weight to 192 pounds because that’s what I weighed this morning
• The pace was a little slower on average than usual

Still, take off another 299 calories towards the 3500 calories deficit I need to rack up for each pound I want to lose. I’m not counting calories with the changed eating regimen, but not eating processed foods, staying away from snack foods like chips, crackers, and cookies, and keeping to lean meats and fish, veggies, and fruit I reckon I’m probably cutting down my daily calorie consumption by a couple of hundred at least. That reduction taken with the calories burned by walking should be coming in right about 500 per day which is sufficient to take off a pound a week — what most physicians will tell you probably a safe rate of weight loss.

At this rate, especially not running yet, it’ll take me most of a year to make any appreciable headway, but it took me longer than that to put it on in the first place, so I’ll take it. I gotta believe adding in weight-training — now that the “home gym” is finally about set the way I wanted it — will help towards that even more.

Okay, So Now I Have A Strength-Training Home Gym

And I no longer have the excuse for not using it because of not being able to get to the bench and weights for all the clutter crowded in around it. I’ll sit down later and draw up a light general strengthening program, and I know I’ll be including a few sets of work on my quads.

This evening’s walk was pleasant enough — except that the sun is always at an awful angle at that time of day during this time of year around here and it makes seeing oncoming traffic a bit difficult sometimes. On the other hand, the sun full in my face pretty much guarantees I’m lit up well enough for the drivers to see me, I guess!

I varied the route a bit and still came out at about the same distance as usual. The knees didn’t hurt too badly — only a twinge here and there. Mostly, my tibialis anterior muscles were tight and painful. That’s plain and simple needing to get them into shape and nothing I can do but keep on trucking.

I stretched a bit longer than usual afterwards since I wasn’t pressed for time to shower, cook breakfast, and get ready for work like I am in the mornings. Regardless of the time crunch in the mornings, I love getting the walk in early so that I feel more charged during my workday.

So, overall, a good walk and I felt pretty good despite all the labor the wife and I put in on the garage cleaning today.

Knee Aches and Pains

EDIT: A lot of people land here after searching the web for information about their knee ailments. In fact, this is now probably the single most visited post on my blog. Jump over to my other post Knee Pain for a link to a site with a whole lot of information on the topic. (The link is also in my sidebar under Links.)

Okay, got up this morning as usual and did the loop around the neighborhood at more or less the usual walking pace — no jogging thrown in at all since yesterday included some. Overall, about normal, or as normal as can be expected this early into getting back into some semblance of shape.

The knees, however, are a little sore and there is a slight ache that come and goes. The bad part is that there is a spot on each knee at the top of the tibia — forward of or near the region of the medial collateral ligament attachment to the tibia — that is tender to the touch. Hard to isolate precisely, it could also be a little bit higher, in the area of the medial menisca. Either way, the pain is damned sharp when I tap in the area with a finger, so I’m a little concerned.

As I wondered about the source of the pain, I noticed my feet were still in a much worn pair of New Balance 1023 shoes that are about three years old. I don’t wear my new Nike+ shoes except for my walking and jogging, after which I putz around in the old New Balance shoes in the house or yard, at work, out and about town for shopping, etc. There’s no way those old shoes still have any appreciable cushioning remaining after all that abuse.

So, while my wife was shopping for last minute stuff for our granddaughter Halee’s birthday, I looked for a new pair of knock-about shoes to replace the old, worn-out ones. I finally settled on a pair of New Balance 661s — cushioning, neutral foot. I can continue in the Nike Air Structure Triax+ 11 shoes for my workouts where their cushioning and stability will come in handy and then switch to the more neutral, but still cushioned NB 661s for the rest of the time I spend on my feet.

Maybe they’ll help keep my legs a bit fresher than that old pair. My knees felt a little better while in them today, so we’ll see.

I AM My Own Worst Enemy

For some absurd reason, I decided to sleep in this morning and take my walk later along Perimeter Parkway after dropping my wife off to work. I guess I just wanted a change of scenery. Yeah, that excuse will do as well as any.

Lots of folks staying at the Doubletree Inn or living in the two apartment complexes there use Perimeter Parkway for walking or running, so it’s not a bad stretch of road for that purpose — except for the construction along there for the Bobby Jones/Interstate 20 flyover turning parts of the shoulder to crap. Yeah, I’d forgotten about that.

Regardless, there are parts further down near the back side of Doctor’s Hospital where the shoulder is still smooth and level. And it’s at these parts that I thought it would be a good idea to ratchet up from an ambling walk to a bit of a jog this morning. Except for my knees, it was okay. It felt really good to try to stretch and stride more smoothly, but I know it only felt like I was smooth — I know I was just jogging.

The right knee was a bit twingy and the left chimed in a few times, too. I still have to hold back a little, even though it was pleasant at the end of my walk to hear Joan Benoit Samuelson congratulate me for a new “PR” for the mile. (Yeah, I know. Not really, but I’m starting all over so it will have to do. The slate is clean and the past just don’t matter in that way now.)

My knees don’t ache… yet. If they do later, I have only myself to blame, of course, but it did feel pretty good to try to jog a bit. I can’t wait to drop a little more weight and for my muscles and knees to get stronger. I know I have to wait a bit longer, though, if I want to keep going for the long run.

I’m probably going to tackle the garage this weekend and get a space cleared for the weight bench. I seriously need to start strengthening my quads to better support my knees, and a general strengthening program would be a good thing to settle into anyway — especially as there are four really good benefits to be realized from it:

• adding muscle mass will increase calorie burn since muscle needs more calories for maintenance
• stronger muscles can do more and do not tire as easily
• strengthening opposing muscle groups can help prevent injuries
• stronger bones — weight-bearing exercises are proven to increase bone density

If I can get started on a good general fitness program and maintain the aerobic activity, I can probably see increased weight loss which will lead to stronger, faster running sooner than just walking/jogging alone. That’s the theory anyway.

In the meantime, I have to take each day as it comes and every little bit of progress in stride. This is a challenge, to be sure, but the real challenges are a long way off, mere dreams at the moment. Of course, there is always the challenge just to keep going, and that’s the one that can make or break everything.