Back on the Bandwagon

After taking a week off from running, I was itching to get out and just run yesterday. The weather was great, the week was finally over, and I felt that my knee joint had enough rest. On top of that, my brother-in-law, who is in town for the weekend, was out with my wife and my girls, hiking around Torrey Pines State Park, so I had some time on my hands. So, I went out on my usual 6 mile loop around my home. It's an out and back (3 miles out and 3 miles back) with some hills and lots of scenery (mostly smaller mountains in the background). Since I don't usually run with music, I paid careful attention to how my knee was feeling. For the first mile, everything felt great. I started off at a 9:20 mile pace and took it easy. From there, I played it by ear and just tried to run smooth and easy. The next mile was a little quicker, 9:00 mile, but I did start to feel some soreness in the knee joint. It wasn't a pain or ache, but I could feel it starting to complain a little. From there, the rest of the run was similar to mile 2 and just for the sake of stretching out the legs I ran the last mile at an 8:30 mile pace. Here are the totals for the run:

6.0 miles 53:36 time 8:56 mile pace

This morning, I can feel some dullness at the knee joint, but certainly not as bad as the last run I had. I'll probably go for a run some time this weekend and see how things go. With marathon training starting in a week, I want to make sure that everything is working fine.