Which do you want first?  Well the Good News is that I went to the doctor on Monday and she cleared me to run.

The Bad News is that she wasn’t like, “you are healed” but more like, “give it a try and see what happens”.  Well after 2 runs totaling 3.5 miles the verdict is that my knee swelled a little and is hot to the touch so there is still something wrong.  Ugh.

I ran 2 miles with Brad at Fort Snelling’s Pike Island coincidentally on National Running Day.  My knee felt stiff, but it didn’t really hurt.  I didn’t notice anything abnormal when I got home, but we also biked pretty hard from Snelling to home.

On Saturday, a program I run had a booth at the Midtown Farmer’s Market.  I have to help set it up and tear down, but a student and their parent are in charge of running the actual booth, so I decided to run home after helping setup and then we went back later to tear down.  It was a 1.5 and most of it was on the Greenway’s dirt trail.  I felt fine on the run; my knee actually felt a little better than on Wednesday. But after wards it felt a little more swollen and was quite noticeably hot.  So that’s not good.

On Tuesday I did my first ever open water swim.  A few co-workers are triathletes and are going to do weekly swims at Lake Nokomis.  I didn’t have anything else to do, so I went with and had a good time.  Open water swimming is so much different than pool swimming.  It felt really weird at first and even though I could touch (my hand actually hit the bottom once or twice) it was still a little scary feeling at times.

On Sunday, my friend Brad was running the Minneapolis Marathon.  Brad also just had a baby on Tuesday morning and was extremely exhausted.  He decided at Mile 18 to drop out of the race.  I can’t imagine how getting very little sleep would impact your marathon performance.  Great job Brad!  I had a lot of fun riding around on my bike cheering him and other runners on for the race.  I ended up knowing 4-5 other people out there.  I wore my Team World Vision jersey and one of the racers was wearing his and talked to me a bit.  His name is Jesse and he ran a 5:07 even though he tore his meniscus (again) before the halfway mark.  At mile 18 he said, “I’m going to finish, even if I crawl.”  After Brad dropped out, I decided to not ride back downtown to the finish, but met my wife at Lake Calhoun.

On the ride there I got into a small pack of bikes and we were nailing 20 mph for 4-5 miles.  It felt good.  I ended up with 35 miles for the day. Crazy!

This week’s stats are:

Running – 3.5 miles

Biking – 71 miles

Swimming – 450 meters

This week’s One Post is Running with Music in my Ears!

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• Minneapolis Marathon 2010 Course Breakdown (slideshare.net)

Gorgeous weekend after a crappy (rainy) week.

Rode a total of 33 miles on Sunday!  I did the first 19 miles solo around the southern half of the Grand Rounds at a decent clip.  I stopped to take photographs along the way.  I hit Midtown Greenway, Lake Calhoun, Lake Harriet, Minnehaha Parkway (skipping Lake Nokomis), Minnehaha Falls, and the West River Road.  The falls and river road were full of people enjoying the day and raising money for the MN AIDS Walk (which raised almost $350,000.  In the afternoon Christy and I rode to the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Sebastian Joe’s, Lake of the Isles, Cedar Lake, the Sculpture Garden, Loring Park, and a local co-op for groceries before having a nice bonfire at home!

The rest of the week was busy work stuff and lots of rain.  I felt like it rained almost every day! I totaled 51 miles on the bike for the week!  Good times.   I did go to physical therapy and he gave me a few more exercises.  My foot is feeling pretty good for the most part and my knee feels fine with maybe a little tenderness here or there (which reminds me I need to take my drugs).

On Thursday night a friend and I joined other friends watching the TC 1 Mile downtown.  This is always a fun event.  Check out some of my pictures.   The winning elite time was 4:04.  The winner of the open wave was 5:58 by a 10 year old!

How was your week?

ONE POST: is a Foto Friday of Gooseberry Falls!

Another week in the bag.  Lots of pills taken, feeling a little better. I’ve been feeling pretty good actually, both my foot and knee have been feeling a lot better lately.  Not that my knee has hurt too much since the swelling went away a few weeks ago, but there has been some slight pain and tightness when I bend it too much.  The biking has been going really well, though after two hilly rides my knee hurt a little more than usual.  It is also hard to remember to take my antibiotics, though I’ve only actually forgotten once.  On Friday I’m not sure why I decided to ride to work, it was raining and in the 40’s.  Obviously, I got soaked and even my windbreaker pants got soaked through.  Good thing I had planned on changing at work.  The ride home was still cool but not raining.  Then on Friday and Saturday night we had frost/freeze warnings out, yuck.  Actually, during the day on Saturday there was hail/snow coming down occasionally. Check out this picture a friend took in northern MN.

On Sunday, I finally got my lazy butt out and off the bike and went to the YWCA and did some aqua-jogging, using a belt.  The doctor wants me to avoid the impact of running but is fine with me aqua jogging. I didn’t think to do any research, but strapped on the belt, hopped in and started jogging in place.  It is actually rather boring, but it helped that I started doing little circles in my lane.  I jogged for 10 minutes and didn’t feel my heart rate really coming up at all, even after I increased my turnover so I swam for 150 meters before jogging for 5 more minutes.  After any good pool time a hot tub is a must and that felt relaxing!  Have you ever aqua jogged? Got any tips?

Weekly totals:

Biking – 29.7 miles

Swimming – 150 meters

Aqua Jogging – 15 minutes

This week’s ONE POST is my race review of the 2009 Lake Minnetonka Half Marathon