A Pain In The...Knees

Friday was the San Diego Send-Off Party at Pepe's Restaurant in Goleta. It was great to see everyone outside of training (I didn't recognize some people sans pony tail and spandex!) and the excitement in the air was just about tangible! The coaches, captains, and mentors all spoke, giving us practical as well as inspirational advice. After hearing all of that, I realized that as glad as I am to have an extra month of training, I'm a little jealous that they're done with training, their race is so soon, and there's so many of them doing it! Good luck San Diego and GO TEAM!!

Erin and her famous purple wig!

Coach Neal offering his words of wisdom, giant margarita in hand : )

Coach Tek brandishing the TNT "wand of wisdom".

This week was a taper week after our super long runs last weekend so that meant just 60 minutes for San Diego and 90 minutes for Seattle/Alaska! This would have been a breeze except for my knees (didn't mean to rhyme!). Like I mentioned before, my joints, especially my knees, were really hurting me last weekend - most likely because my shoes had worn out. So anyway, they became inflammed and have remained so since, despite lots of icing and meds : ( I bought new shoes (the updated version of my old ones) on Thursday and my goodness, what a difference! They are sooo much more cushioned! I guess it took a comparison to realize what I was running on. The run Saturday still hurt though. The new shoes definitely helped, but they obviously couldn't do anything about the inflammation that was already there. After the run Coach Nicole helped me get a good, deep stretch which helped quite a bit. Slowly but surely they're starting to feel better! And on the brightside, at least it's not a serious injury! Oh, and we were also joined by the newest team for the fall season - running just 30 minutes! Hah!!