The day after the 3rd jogging experience I was feeling some knee pain. I rested an entire day and then went back for the 4th time. I had some pretty good pain and thought. "well, this must be the growing pains" and I kept going. In the end, I couldn't keep up the pace for the rest of the route. I walked half of the way home in pain. I was in a little to a LOT of pain for about a week before I went to the doctor. Turns out I gave myself "ancerine bersitis" http://orthoinfo.aaos.org/topic.cfm?topic=a00335. She gave me a cortisone shot and said to ice it and rest it more. After a couple of days I felt back to normal but I was very wary of going back to jogging.
It just figured that I had put this off my whole life and then I hurt myself in 4 tries. Even the male nurse was like "you know, jogging may not be your sport." Just what I wanted to hear. I didn't even like it in the first place and then I had someone telling me I shouldn't bother with it. I was pretty ok with that.
My problem, however, was this nagging feeling that I should try again. I was working really hard at having a runner's stride and then progressing on duration and stamina. I thought maybe the "runner's stride" was a bad idea. Maybe I needed to just have a smaller, gentler stride and then continue working on the stamina portion.
So that's what I've been doing. Based on the testimony of my friend Luke, I downloaded an app for my phone called "Couch 2 5k". It does the same thing I tried on my own but it times the intervals for you. Armed with my new app and a new approach to jogging, I set out to be better than I was. I'm happy to announce that 4 weeks and 12 runs later, I'm doing great. My knees don't hurt, my stamina is improving and I actually look forward to each run to see how I do.
In addition to the jogging, I started a new gym routine. In the past, I would lift in a standard 3 sets of 10 reps with about 70-80% of a 1 rep max. I started my new routine with 3 sets of 20 (or failure) with about 45-50% of a 1 rep max. It's pretty tiring and I'm sweating my ass off so I think that's good.
The best evidence of the jogging and effect of my new routine and the regular dieting, is obviously going to be what the scale says. Much to my excitement, the effects have been quite positive. In the last 3 weeks, I've lost about 8 pounds! I was so pumped to break 210 but this morning when I stepped on the scale and hit 206.6, I was astonished. In theory, I could break 200 by the wedding. Go me.
Stay tuned for further updates.
As a token of my excitement and pride, here's some star wars humor.
