Buddy Run February 21, (Week 3) - From Gimpy to Running 30% Max

Sophal and I met at the Campbell Track, as running the trails in the dark did not seem that appealing tonight. The track is fairly well lit and went from being packed to very comfortable. It also has a nice assortment of upper and lower body equipment for extra strengthening exercises. Overall, training went well, but I'm not sure which one of us is the worse influence as we're both competitive and did our speed walking and jogging, each of us pushing the other, which is fine unless you happen to be injured, which both of us are. I'd say we were pretty even throughout the night until we decided to put to rest the question of "who's faster?" and did a 50 yard sprint, which was an enormous mistake as the tendon in my foot that had been fabulous all night in the athletic tape wrap started throbbing and I slowed down the last couple steps. We had been neck and neck, but Sophal had me by a stride or two, that's ok I'll get her next time.

We ran 30% of the time, which was all the PT and coaches agreed I should do, and except for the sprint it went great. The only problem I had was the next day, when we had a small show in the office, as I couldn't walk for the first couple hours until the many ice treatments and ibuprofen kicked in. It was pretty funny to see me hobbling around the office as several coworkers think I'm crazy for doing this because of the pain, which will go away once my body gets accustomed to running as I've already learned the hardest lesson of running the hard way and that is that athletically fit and running fit are completely different and just because you can run really far in the beginning from being athletically fit doesn't mean you should as you should ease into running long distances.