6 miles this morning!

So, this was our Saturday coached run. It was at the Berkeley Marina which is where Justin & I ran 4 miles last Sunday. I got there a little early so I could meet with Mama Lisa, our asst. coach who is the primary person for injuries. I had emailed her about my knee and I was hoping she might be able to help me figure out what to do to keep it from hurting. I had to wait for her to finish taping up a woman's foot - from the taping job I guess she has plantar fascilitis - the entire bottoms of her feet were being taped. Once Mama Lisa was done with her, she took a look at my knee. She said that I have patella bursitis, which is exactly the same thing I had back in March when I tried to start running back then. She put some Biofreeze gel on it (topical analgesic) and then wrapped tape around the base of my knee so that my patella wasn't moving around. It felt better almost immediately which was pretty encouraging.

Due to getting taped up, I missed most of the prep for the run but was able to join the group for the final shout-outs (names of people we are running in honor of) and the moment of silence. Then we headed out. I was hoping to be able to run 4 miles - it was a very cool grey morning and not too windy so I thought it might not be as hard a run as last Saturday was.

Around mile 1, I caught up with Lisa, one of the mentors. She does the Tuesday morning run around Lake Merritt, and I've also been talking to her at the Thursday morning trainings as well. She was running at a nice slow pace, so I asked her if it would be ok if I shadowed her for the day. I would have been running with Blair but she is back in PA visiting her family and friends.

So Lisa and I ran - she was going to go for 6 miles. We got to the 2 mile mark where there was the water/gatorade station and we stretched. This was the first time I have made it to the water station on a coached run! I felt pretty good, so I decided to keep going with Lisa. We hit the 3 mile mark and turned around. Stopped again at the 2 mile water station and ran the rest of the way in. I felt great the whole time - no pain in the knee, we only walked 3 times (each for 1 minute timed by Lisa) and it took us about 1 hour & 10 minutes so get back to the finish line. When we got back, I still felt like I could have run a lot more which was very encouraging. I am simply thrilled that I ran 6 miles today and it almost felt easy! Yippee!