Jacked Up Knee

So far my taper is less active than I had hoped. Before the 30K last weekend my knee was hurting, but I didn't take it too seriously. After the race, it hurt a little but not much worse. And I knew my tapering was starting, so I had lots of recovery time.

Well, fast forward to Friday. I went for a 10 mile run with a friend of mine, just an easy loop around town lake. A mile from the finish I had to pull up and walk it in because my knee hurt. It's a new pain, I'm not sure what to make of it. It hurts all the time, not just when I'm running. It's not a sharp pain, its a dull nagging discomfort. It feels kind of swollen, but it doesn't look swollen. And it cracks when I walk. It can't be good going into a 100M run.

So, I'm taking it easy (read: not running at all). I'll probably do very little running before Tahoe. My thoughts are that I could screw something up running on it, while not running will have very little short term impact on my goal, which is to run well at Tahoe and to finish.

There was one other notable experience this long 4th of July weekend. I took Micah running in his baby stroller on Thursday. He's been on lots of walks, but that was his first run. It was his 5 month birthday. It was surprisingly tough to run even small hills while pushing a stroller, especially since you can't really use your arms at all.