Yeah, I should have checked that...

So looks like I was in for a post-run surprise today (not a bad season injuring kind) when I finally gathered the courage to see when my marathon schedule officially starts. I typically count down the days until the official schedule starts, but with the bum knee it felt much more like opening up the vegetable drawer to see that "oh, yeah" those tomotoes had turned bad weeks ago. So I ripped off the bandaid, and found myself looking at schedule that was already one week done. And what was on tap for today? An 8 miler, which is what I ended up putting in. Noice. And with my 3 mile speed run yesterday, that got me up to a 22 mile first week, which I'll take gladly. The run yesterday was as flat as can be:
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=4537210
 I was aiming for a 7min/mile, but ended up just shy with a 21 minute run and 2.89 miles logged in. Evidently my careful gmapping was all for naught, as I *thought* I'd done exactly three miles. Le sigh.

Today was a great day for a long run, and by mile 7 I finally found my elusive stride.  It was a mish-mosh of all my runs earlier this week, and yes, I am rounding up to eight on this bad boy (deal with it!):
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=4540267

It was a 69 minute and 45 second jaunt through the rolling hills of the French/Swiss(Frish or Swench), which averaged out to a 8:45min/mile. Now that I'm in my schedule, it'll start getting interesting - I'll be ramping up to more than 30 miles a week starting this Tuesday. The plan is to keep it flat until week 4, keeping as much pressure off the knee until I've got a strong stride back and then I'll go into attack mode - hitting the hills on long runs, sprint work in the neighborhood 15%'ers and start racking up the miles. Huah!

Putting down some tracks

Ok, we're officially day two on the Don't Call it A Comeback But It's Totally a Comeback Tour (DCIACBITACT for short), and I managed to get a nice 5.7 miles in - noice! Not only that, there are signs of life in my legs and I managed to run this bad boy in 44mins:
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=4536339 

That's right, for all you math majors and others with calculator (apps), 7:45min/miles today. I'm still avoiding the hills as much as I possibly can, which is no easy feat living on the side of a mini-mountain. And yes, does that route look familiar? You betcha, I ran almost the exact same thing two days ago. But, the big thing is the mileage, and I'm looking for a nice fallback 5-6 mile route that I can just do whenever I need to get a run in, and the Feigeres hill (the kick-ass huge hill from earlier posts) is off the table until I'm convinced that my knees are completely good to go. But if you read this post (and I know my one follower totally does), then lose not hope. There will be longer runs, twists and turns, and maybe even some fence hopping and river jumping later on. Or not, but let's not kid ourselves, I'm not running from the law, nor do I want to give the law the impression that I'm running away from them. And this is why I avoid late night posts.

And we're back!

After a long hiatus from lacing the sneaks and hitting the streets, mountain marathon training has resumed! I do have a confession; I have put in runs since my last post, but they haven't been anything to write home about - obviously as this is the first written words attributed to them and they are now over. In short, I'm now working with some pain in my knee and I'm trying not to overdue it. Easy runs (i.e. no hills) and yoga are in my short term horizon until I'm 110%, but no matter, I still had a decent run this evening, albeit sans hills:
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=4531692 

It's a comeback run, so I didn't exactly sprint, but instead had a steady 8:40min/mi. pace for the 5.3mi journey. The Marathon Schedule is quickly approaching, so I'm keeping my eyes on the prize and going one day at a time.