IT Band strikes again. and again.

Well, my running freakout was certainly justified. Unfortunately. However, I did complete my first official 5K on Saturday!! It was just a fun experience in general to get a number and line up and run with lots of people you don't know. Plus, there were some fabulous costumes which provided on course entertainment. :)

Awkward pre-race, sun-in-my-eyes picture.
At least it proves I was there!

Blurry action shot

I'm not sure what my official time is, but the clock said 33:10 when I finished. I'll update when I find out the official time. (UPDATE: Apparently the official time was 33:19... Don't know how that happened but maybe I saw the clock wrong.) My knees were in a world of pain though, and not just the right one. By mile 2 they were both hurting, but it was really the left one that was killer for the duration. It feels like it's the IT band on that side too. Sigh. I think it was caused by a combination of things, mostly that I hadn't run in a while and the entire course was pretty much uphill. They were pretty swollen on Saturday night and when I woke up on Sunday, my left knee was so swollen I couldn't bend it all the way. I iced them on both Saturday night and Sunday morning, but I'm not sure how much it helped. Any kind of motion that involved pivoting was super painful. I cleaned the apartment last night and just vacuuming was pretty painful.

Of course, the swollen knees prevented me from my long run yesterday and now that the half is only 5 days away, I think I just need to focus on getting my knees back to normal and will run it without doing a last long run. I'm definitely looking forward to the race, but I'll be happy when it's done and I can go to a doctor to get my knees checked out again. I think I may pick up an IT band strap for my left knee as well, since the right one seems to give my knee some relief and that knee recovered much quicker.

For some reason, if I have a long run scheduled and I can't fit it in, I just skip it instead of doing a shorter one in its place. With finals coming up, I definitely won't have time for long runs (long being 9+ miles) but I'm really hoping to squeeze in 3 or so 3-5 mile runs a week, focusing on speed. Then when finals end, I can start working on distance again, hopefully to do the DPHM. :)