This has been a pretty fulfilling week in terms of running, even if it has been kind of off-schedule from what I would normally do. Essentially, the simple fact that I’ve been getting to do ANY running has made my week after taking some time off for sickness.

Looking back, I was basically sick through ALL of December (cold, sinusitis, bronchitis, flu). And it sucked! While I am probably not all the way back to where I can say “I feel great!” yet, I am feeling a lot better. Better enough to get out and do some running.

I forced myself to keep all the runs shorter this week, I told myself I wasn’t going to run more than 2 or 3 miles on weekdays. This was for a few main reasons:
1) I didn’t want to push my body too hard after it has been weakened fighting off viruses and bacteria.
2) I had to travel to Utah for work this week and I didn’t want to stress myself trying to get in a lot of mileage while there. My days always feel so “booked” when I’m there.
3) Uh… Utah is cold. I didn’t want to pack enough layers to run outside and I didn’t want to run very long on a treadmill! 🙂

On Saturday I got to do a “long” run at home, I’m still keeping my distances capped around the 10K mark for a while. The morning was crystal clear and pleasantly chilly, 38 degrees when I started and 42 when I finished. It felt great the whole time and I ended up with 6.6 miles (slightly misjudged distance on an impulsive turn).

Overall, a total of 16 miles for the week. It’s about 50% of what I was doing earlier, but going from basically nothing to this level seems like a pretty good jump. Now I’ll try to adhere to a general interpretation of the 10% increase rule, no need to push it too much or too hard when I’m not training for anything in particular.

I’ve been snapping photos of myself before, during or after each run. I hope to continue doing this all year, it would be kind of (dorky) fun to put them all together into a (boring) slideshow at the end of the year! I’ve been using the freebie GorillaCam app (thanks for the suggestion Lindsay!) to take them due to the timer function… and due to the FREE price tag!

The only bummer about this week is that I have some weird bruising on my left knee, it just showed up last weekend and all it has proceeded to do is get darker and darker and darker. I’ve always been prone to easy bruising, but I don’t even know what it’s from (I can’t think of any kind of impact that I’ve had around that area). It’s now starting to affect my running a little because it is actually contributing some pain, more pain AFTER the run than DURING. Can some kind of internal running injury manifest itself via bruising?