Days 184 - 190: Training vs Turkey (and pie...)

I tried really hard to rest my bum knee this week. I figured yoga would be good to stretch it out, so Monday I grabbed my Groupon and headed to the studio I'll be using until I go back to Cleveland for Christmas. It's a hot yoga studio, but it's not all Bikram... they have a lot of "Power" classes that are vinyasa-based. The Monday class I did was a "Power hour," and it was pretty hard. I haven't done hot yoga in awhile, and I had forgotten how much more tired it makes you feel at the end.

Since my knee held up Monday and we weren't running on Tuesday (both due to my injury and because we needed to recover in general from 21 miles before trying to race on Thursday), I decided to go to another yoga class. I wanted to adjust to going to bed early and getting up early so that I would be able to fall asleep Wednesday night and wake up bright and early Thursday morning ready to race, so I decided to go to the 6 a.m. power class. It was actually a great way to start my day, and nice to have my afternoon off for mad Thanksgiving cleaning and baking, so I did the same thing Wednesday.

Thursday: race day! The Atlanta Thanksgiving half marathon, my 2nd anniversary. My trick for slightly readjusting my body clock worked, so I was up on time and ready to go. Chris and I met where he was house sitting and walked the mile to the starting line at Turner Field. It was so foggy... we couldn't see the tops of the buildings... very creepy. The course was different from last year, and it was HARD. Terrible. We were constantly running hills, which I know are unavoidable in Atlanta, but it is possible to plan routes with flat parts or fewer steep hills. The good thing was, although my knee was a little stiff and achy, it held up until mile 12. But our time was pretty awful... 2:37:19. My worst time ever. The only thing that eased the pain was that there were somewhere between 12,000 and 15,000 runners, and only 8,866 finished. So in the end, I'm just glad we finished, and that I didn't destroy my knee. I celebrated with way too much food and 3 pieces of pie (what's the point of running so much if I can't eat pie?).

Friday was a day off to spend time with my mom and sister who were visiting for the holiday. Saturday I went to a walk in and work out belly dancing class to make up for the canceled classes Wednesday (don't want my belly dancing muscles to deteriorate!), followed immediately by an hour and a half of hot yoga. My abs were sufficiently sore.

Since our "long" run was Thursday, Chris and I did 7 miles this morning. My knee is still achy, but it's not a sharp pain anymore, so I can still run on it, and least for these shorter distances. I'm just hoping it will hold up for our 22 miler Sunday...