A trail of iron oxide

That's the funny colour of water behind me this morning. Rust, flaking off my joints. The swim was a bit clunky this am, but slowly got better. Swimming with two other people that are just a bit faster, so I had some incentive to try to keep up. 45 minutes. Shoulders a bit stiff.

Then the run this afternoon. I was thinking about this all day, trying to see what my legs would think. In the end I just went. Thinking about exploding eyeballs of pain. Walked 10 minutes. Stretched a bit. Ran really easy not quite 10 minutes, then stretched a bit. Nothing hurt, lots of niggles around the knees, but I could feel things settling into a stride. My legs felt more tired than anything, though hams and calves didn't want to go much harder. The next 20 minutes was gradually getting better, and felt pretty good. I could never turn my brain off and just run, and I certainly didn't have light feet, but this is the best it's been since mid-Feb.

Things got sloppy for a few minutes, and I was thinking I should shut'er down, but then I was trying to think what I'd say if someone asked just why I quit early. Did some posture and stride checks, tried to relax, and things settled down a little. There's a bus stop with a bench that is 4 houses more than 1 K from our house. So I noted the time, and tried to run easy and relaxed, just like I'd normally run, perhaps a bit slower than my half IM pace. It turned out to be 6:50 or so, which is right in there for my relaxed running pace. So I am cautiously optimistic.

I had time for a few minutes of stretching, then off to yoga. Lots of leg stuff, and forward bends. I suck at Clamshell. The girl next to me just about broke her nose flopping it onto the mat. Overall it felt pretty good, and my legs seem to be happy with it. Going to ice the hams and calves a bit. Just in case.

Oh, and my Road ID arrived on Tuesday. I've been wearing it during workouts, just to get into the habit of wearing it. Not that I'm likely to fall off the trainer and be discovered by some stranger. Very comfy, shouldn't be any problem with the wetsuit coming off over it.

It's certainly a relief to know that LuMu is still there. I guess if you'd left your blog up, some of us (not mentioning any names) would just hijack it and start a conversation of our own on it. Hope you could keep a copy of the text, or archive it somewhere, there was some pretty good writing there. Looking forward to regular comments!