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I picked up a pair of Vibram FiveFingers shoes today, and they felt great.

Tonight I went on my semi-regular "run with the dog at the park" with the Vibrams and it was awesome.

You pretty much have no choice but to run "right", i.e. as if you were running barefoot. What this means is that you don't have the "heel-to-toe" stride that sends jarring impact up through your heel into the rest of your body. I just had a light springy bounce on the balls of my feet - which felt like a dream and brought back memories from childhood of running through the yard without a care in the world.

It was a little chilly and rainy out tonight, so before I got moving (and every time I had to stop for the dog's benefit) my soles got a little cold.

I'm also going to have to re-think wearing socks under them - something was a little off and the fabric of my feelmax socks got a little bunched up around a few of my toes, adding a little compression which became uncomfortable.

I can also tell the change in the stride/footstrike pattern is going to challenge my calves a bit more. Good thing I'm still in the gentle re-introduction to running where I'm already taking things pretty light for maximal injury avoidance.

So I ran again last night, hoping that my physical therapist was right - that I ought to be able to continue my run/walk routine without doing anything Bad to my knees.

But sadly, it seems that is not the case.

Or perhaps I'll feel better tomorrow or the day after.

Regardless, I'm having a lot of trouble walking around today, especially descending stairs.

Not good.

At any rate, I had been having fun charting new routes for running.

Here's where I ran last night:

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It's about 2.56 miles according to Google maps, but my Timex GPS says 2.698 miles. Of course, my Timex GPS suggested that I was running at 11 mph, too. So I'm still not sure how much faith to put in its measurements.

I was concentrating on widening my gait/stride/stance/whatever. So I was also jogging a little slower. All of which seemed to really fire up my tibialis anterior muscles. The ones near the front, but to the outside, of my shins. Which is fine - normally at physical therapists, if I get a really good fast pace going on the treadmill, I feel some lactic acid buildup in those. Fine, I'm probably just hitting some muscles I don't hit that often.

I got home and stretched, and then iced my knees. You know, as a preventative measure.

But then I woke up today, and I'm just having a lot of trouble moving around.

So I think I'll hold off on additional running for a little while. Because I need to be able to walk.

:(

I'm taking a break.

Yesterday I was fairly sore. A little too sore. More sore than I thought was reasonable.

In fact, I had to do a light jog to cross the road on the way to work this morning and my knees kind of hurt. So I started googling.

I thought maybe I had patellar tendonitis based on the pictures and descriptions there - the inside of my legs below my knees was hurting. Right on the big knobby part of my tibias. The tibial tuberosity? Something like that.

Maybe, maybe not.

So I made sure I talked to my physical therapist about it, and he determined that perhaps I was doing the whole running thing a little wrong. Like, here I've been running along on sidewalks and park paths, when in fact my feet are so in line that I could've been running on a balance beam or a tightrope without any changes to my gait. Which probably isn't a good thing. Which was most likely irritating my knees.

I had to run a bit for him, both the bad way as well as the 'right' way, and it felt OK to be running, but later in the evening I was still feeling pretty stiff.

So I figured I'd just play it safe and hold off for the night.

Tomorrow's another day.

Another day, another run. I think I might almost start to be enjoying this. But ask me again after a few weeks - after all, isn't it three weeks to make a new habit?

Turns out the heart rate I've been clocking at the fastest is right at the suggested max heart rate for my age, according to several max heart rate formula. Or around 95% according to yet others. Most of the web sites where these formula and the meanings of the heart rate "zones" suggest that it's 'elite athletes' who train at 90-95% of their max heart rate.

"Elite athlete" I am not, but I know I've hit that heart rate spinning on my bike. Granted I never keep it that high for very long (sure, I know how to coast and cool down on my bike) - but it's a heart rate I'm familiar with. So I don't think I'm going to worry about it too much.

And my speed is all over the place. I thought that based on my last run/walk, I'd hit about 2.7 miles, given about .3 miles per run/walk set over 9 sets. Well I did my 9 sets, but after I got home and mapped out my actual route (since I forgot a turn or two) I find out I only ran/walked about 2.44 miles. And that was in about 31.5 minutes. So that's about .27 miles per set on average, which is less than what I was hoping for.

At least the new route kept me guessing:

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If I can keep up those paces, though - I'll be doing about 2.7 miles next time I go out. And then that'll pretty much wrap up week 2 of the plan. Which means I'll move to week 3, which will be 90 seconds jogging, 90 seconds walking (no sweat so far), but then 3 minutes jogging (youch!) following by 3 minutes of walking (whew!). And then repeat that. Which means (if I keep my paces) that I'll only cover about 1.5 miles in about 18 minutes. If I repeat it a total of three times, it'll be 2.3 miles. Four repeats, 3.1 miles. However, my guess is that especially on the longer runs, I'll likely slow it down - so the real distances will be less. So I'm not sure what I'll do. But I've got a few days to figure it out.

BTW, I never got around to getting out the stationary trainer for my bike. There are other days, though...

So I'm not really sure what happened. After all my careful calculations, I ended up running and walking about 2.44 miles, at least according to Google Maps. According to my other Timex Ironman (the one that has a speed and distance GPS, but nothing to help me map my routes) I went a little over 2.5 miles - though I think it locked onto the satellites a half block before I started running.

I also tried to sneak a peak at both my heart rate as well as my speed every now and again, and all I have to say is that I'm not convinced the GPS is terribly accurate. At least at any given point in time. At least I don't think the speed of my walk varied from 3 mph to 4.5 mph. Nor do I think my jogging speed varied from 5 mph to 7.7 mph. All of these speeds made an appearance on my watch at various times throughout, and I'm convinced I just glanced at my watch before it was able to accurately average out the speed while between satellite updates. Or something.

But I think the heart rate part was pretty accurate.

Speaking of which, I'm going to have to find out if it's safe for my heart rate to be going as high as it was on the 90 seconds jog intervals!

The route I took wasn't quite what I had planned, but it was close. I had to make some last minute adjustments because I was pretty sure a road didn't exist where Google Maps said one did - a condition I should have spotted before I tied my shoes.

But I didn't go down the street because I was so convinced it was a dead end. What with the "Dead End" sign posted that I normally drive by every time I go north.

Regardless, it was a nice circuitous route with mostly right turns.

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My first two runs had mostly left turns, going around the park, so I decided my next two should go the other way.

I think for the next several runs, I'll plot a course with an equal number of turns.

Too bad there's no tool online anywhere that would plot these routes for me automatically.

So I think I have no choice but to run more than the program calls for tonight.

See, last time I ran a little over 2 miles by adding a set to the week 1 program each day. If I follow the week 2 program to the letter, I'll be running/walking 6 sets, and if my math and estimations are correct, about 1.716 miles in 20 minutes.

I feel like that's too much of a step back, even though each jogging interval is longer (90 seconds instead of 60).

And due to the limitations of the interval settings on my watch, I can't easily program 7 sets (or 14 intervals) - I can program up to 9 intervals and up to 9 sets. Actually, I guess I can do 7 sets of 2 intervals. Regardless, even then it's only 2.002 miles.

In any case, I'd rather move ahead, so I'll go right to 8 sets. If I keep the same pace for jogging (about 6.8 mph) and walking (about 3.5 mph), that'll be covering about 900 feet in 90 seconds for the jog interval, and about 610 feet in 120 seconds for the walk interval. Each set should be about .286 miles, and 8 sets makes for about 2.288 miles total.

I just hope I can do all that jogging :)

Not much to report.

My physical therapy for Thursday was cancelled due to the therapist not feeling well.

I ran again Friday. Was pretty tired of just running circles around the park, so I mapped out a route of about 2 miles (which is the distance I should've run if I had done 10 sets of 60 seconds jogging, 90 seconds running and maintained approximately the same speeds of 6.8mph jogging, 3.5mph walking).

As it turns out, I messed up setting the intervals on my watch (BTW, it's the Timex Ironman FLIX (similar to this one) that I think my niece Ann Frances and/or Ruth bought for me a few years back for either Christmas or my Birthday). So my watch only counted out 5 sets. I got confused after my fifth set because the watch wasn't counting down any more. So I had to wing it the rest of the way (since I didn't re-start the timer/counter immediately and had no idea how long I had been walking). I maybe didn't jog the full 60 seconds for some of the later sets, but I got to about the 2 mile mark at about the appropriate time.

I also suffered from a side stitch on some of the earlier sets.

Though as a punishment to myself for the screw-up, I ran another half length of the park and walked the other half length before I slowed down for the cool-down walk home. So the total was about 2.04 miles, instead of my goal of 2.01 miles.

I'm still debating whether or not to repeat this one (maybe with 11 sets instead of 10) or just to move ahead to the next weeks plan. I'm leaning towards moving on since it's not easy to program 22 intervals (11 sets of 2) on my watch. But I guess I'll figure that out before this evening.

The route, including my usual warmup and cooldown:

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I'm a little upset with myself regarding getting out on my bike.

I didn't get a good nights rest Friday night, and Saturday morning I scheduled poorly and got all messed up with errands and such - by the time I should have been getting out the door, I wasn't feeling 100% and I was practically falling asleep. So I skipped out on Saturday. Sunday, I missed out again. I slept late (making up for the night before), and so would've gotten out late, and subsequently would've been gone too long. I also wasn't confident of my ability to ride 40-50 miles on my bike in the morning and still be able to run a few miles in the evening. And honestly, I just don't see enough of my sweet little son throughout the week to justify being gone while he's not napping.

I'l probably setup my stationary trainer downstairs and spin through a few TV shows over the next few days.

I didn't do a single solitary thing yesterday. Walking was enough.

My quadriceps and gluteals were so sore from those crazy walking lunges that I had trouble just moving around. Yesterday. Today I just felt a little stiff. I was also (a little surprisingly) sore from my last pyramid set. All considered, resting on Tuesday was probably wise.

Physical therapy today was fine - my regular sadist was out, so today I just had a physical therapist who I guess had pity on me and basically had me do a lot of stretching, and showing me a few new core exercises.

Which left me plenty of energy for running this evening!

I did the 9 intervals of 60 seconds jogging and 90 seconds brisk walking, and I kept careful count of how many times I got around the park - a little over 5. So after mapping it out, I see I travelled about 1.81 miles. In 22.5 minutes. Which is an average of 4.8 mph. Roughly.

Same boring route:

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Assuming all my jogging and walking speeds were constant with each other, and assuming I was walking about 3.5 mph, 9 sets of intervals made up 1.81 miles. Each set made up about .201 miles, or 1061 feet. Walking at 3.5mph for 90 seconds should be about 460 feet, which means I ought to have covered about 600 feet in a minute. Which is about 6.8mph.

So now I know about what speed I'm jogging. With a lot of assumptions thrown in there.

Continuing on this line of thought, at that pace I might be able to run a 5k (which is about 3.1 miles) in about 27 minutes.

So, the pyramids on Tuesday, physical therapy on Wednesday and Thursday, the doctor appointments for Matthew on Wednesday and Friday, altogether had me feeling pretty beat up.

And the the remnants from Hurricane Ike breezed through, flooding streets all over the place, but more importantly raining all weekend. I don't think I've mentioned this, but I really hate riding my bike in the rain. So no biking this weekend.

But a few weeks ago I stumbled on something that peaked my interest - the Couch-to-5K Running Plan. Work up to being able to run a 5K in 9 weeks. What is it with me and all these exercise-for-some-goal-to-reach-in-X-weeks plans?

This one seemed easy enough - especially when compared to the 100 push ups in 6 weeks. I had a sneaky suspicion that the plan outlined on hundredpushups.com was a little ambitious, to say the least. (I'll still go back to it at some point, though - I still think it would be a neat goal to reach). I'm still trying to decide if I want to actually run in a real 5K in mid-November.

So back to the running plan. All I really needed were some running shoes. A shoe recommendation from a marathon-running-coworker and a subsequent rainy day trip to the mall took care of that.

Then I just had to work out where I'd go, how long, and then program some timers into the interval timer on my sports watch.

The first step was to figure out a route to take that would be about 5 minutes at a brisk pace and lead me to the park. Easy enough - from the treadmill they chain me to at physical therapy I know that I can probably maintain a decently brisk pace of 3.5 miles per hour for the 5 minute warmup, and that works out to about 1540 feet, or about a third of a mile. Google maps to the rescue again, and if I go counter-clockwise around the school on the next block I'll arrive right at the park. And then I estimated that I'd jog about 420 feet in each 60 second interval and walk briskly about 462 feet in each 90 second interval. Eight sets of 60 seconds jogging and 90 seconds brisk walking ought to have me at about 1.3 miles total.

I think I jogged a bit faster than I was intending to, because after all was said and done, and if I remember correctly that I got around the park nearly 5 times (I kept losing count), then I walked/jogged about 1.6 miles, according to Google Maps.

The route I took was pretty boring:

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After I finished, I stretched out again and felt pretty good, except that my quadriceps were a little sore.