You Get What You Wish For…

After Thursday’s brutal, ultra scorching run I wished for a nice cold rain. I also decided to go back to getting up in the wee morning hours to run so I could avoid the oppressive heat of the January Guayaquil days. So Friday I set my alarm to an ungodly 4 am and gamely went to bed at 9 pm.

And tossed and turned before drifting off somewhere around 10:30. (sigh) I am going to have to work on this.

Anyway alarm clock one blared, alarm clock two blared (I have a system you see) and at 4:05 I rolled out of bed. And my right knee was sore.

Dammit.

For those of you who haven’t been following, I have been in a slow rehab following a knee injury from last year.

So I debated with myself while I had a quick cup of coffee about what to do. I actually had a menu of choices of what I could do depending on how the knee responded following yesterday’s stressful workout. In the end I decided to head out for an easy 1 mile jog, see how that went and go from there. After all, I was already dressed. (Hint, if you wake up early to work out, immediately get your workout clothes on before anything else, it is easier to get out the door that way).

And I opened the door to a shiny world. Obviously it had rained the night before, a few puddles, the concrete and asphalt was gleaming in the reflected lights of the houses and street lights. Best yet, it was a lot cooler. The gauge said 77 deg with 74% humidity. Uncomfortable to many’s standards, but after the 91 degrees of yesterday, and with a mild breeze, it felt crisp and cool.

Almost no traffic. I owned the road. Outside I remembered how much I loved running in the early mornings. Years ago when I first started running I did most of my workouts before sun rise, just me and a slumbering city.

The knee still was sore as I walked for a few minutes for a warm up, but then eased up and actually felt okay as I worked into a slow jog. I decided I didn’t want to push it, though, I settled for doing a bit over a mile – 1.23 miles, actually according to Mr Garmin.

Better yet, knee discomfort didn’t cause me to have to stop once. My mind even played with going longer, to enjoy the solitude of the wee hours. But I made a wiser decision to keep it short. My goal is to build up my creaky knee so I can get into marathon training mode in April. Jogging slowly for better than a mile the first week in January? This morning, still in knee rehab mode, I’ll take that.

And to thank my knee for keeping up with me, I treated it to a nice ice bag when I got home :)

Have a magnificent Friday all.