Running Journal 23

I didn't feel like it, but I did it anyway. Finally got around to running on Friday when my scheduled afternoon off got reduced to a couple of hours early quitting time, as I tried to extricate myself from things I didn't see coming. A conference call about a reformatted document while working from home, a mold remediation estimator poking around in the bathroom ceiling, first one thing then another. So I didn't get much else done around the house and yard, and pretty soon it's six o'clock.

When I put on my shoes and knee brace, I wasn't sure it was going to work out. I felt some pain in the left knee before and during the first quarter-mile, and then it miraculously went away. I still took it s low and easy for three laps around the pond at the Boyer Preserve and still had some gas in the tank on the way back down Park St., so even though it was less than three miles, it felt like a success, and I had time to go to the pool.

My rotator cuff rehab plan is to strengthen the external rotators and stretch the internal rotators, try to gain a little strength in the chest and back, and above all avoid the movements that aggravate the existing shoulder issues. It has become clear that backstroke and breaststroke are doing more harm than good, so I'm giving them up for the time being. I'm doing more stretching between laps and doing a lot more crawl stroke, so my crawl stroke is improving if nothing else.

The real weekend was just as compressed  as Friday, as I took the opportunity to give my daughter Zelda Golly's MLIS research paper a close reading, which for me means copyediting. Because I am more than a hired red pen on this project, I knew it would take some time, so I set aside Saturday and Sunday afternoons to do it right. Lo and behold, it took both afternoons, and it was well worth it. It's a really good paper - well conceived, well organized, well thought-out in comparing case study data from two libraries - I just smoothed out some of the rough edges. It was a pleasure to see the fine work our Zelda has produced.

The trade-off was less time to do yardwork, but I still was able to break away around six-ish on Saturday for a bike ride and a swim, and around six-ish on Sunday for a run and then a swim. The bike ride was about an hour out and back, followed by six or eight laps in the pool - all crawl. The run was about half an hour out and back, followed by a similar swim. For some reason I have stopped counting my laps in the pool now that I don't do every other length backstroke, but I still like the cross-training that ends up cooling off in the water before a nice dinner of salmon and endorphins.