I'm RUNNING!

Lindsey, my physical therapist, thinks I'm special.

And not in a good way.

When I saw her for the 3rd time this past Monday, we started looking at my leg length. When I stand up, my legs are perfectly even. My pelvis is in perfect alignment and everything is "square."

However, when I lay down, my left leg is a full 1 inch longer than my right. Lindsey has NEVER seen anything like that. Great. Glad to be your first, Lindsey. ;)

She gave me one more exercise to help "place" my femur into my pelvis more correctly. (Or at least that's how I understood it.) She warned me that this would be worse (meaning "more embarrassing to do in public") than the "Suzanne Somers" exercise she gave me 2 weeks ago. It looks like this:

It's hard to see from that image, but I'm basically squeezing a small ball between my knees while slowly "setting" my left leg back into my pelvis.

The best part of that new exercise? Well, that'd have to be the fact that the only ball I have that is about that size was one I bought a few years ago to use when I play with my cousins during the holidays. And that ball looks like this:

So if you ever stop by and find me rolling a pink "Girls Rule" ball between my legs, please don't look at me funny. Thanks.

But I'll do whatever Lindsey says because my running is progressing nearly pain-free!! If you'll remember, I "tested" it 2 weeks ago with a little speed on the treadmill. Last week, I took it easy (so I wouldn't over-do anything), and I tried my first outdoor run in a long time. This week, I've already had 2 runs that felt great during the run AND there was no achyness the next day!

On Monday, I did a treadmill tempo run. I warmed up for 1 mile, and then I moved straight into 4 miles at 10.0 mph (or 6:00 / mile). Around mile 1.5 of the tempo, I didn't know if I could hold it (but my heel was feeling fine). I ended up doing the 4 tempo miles in 5:59, 5:59, 5:59, and 5:51 (bumped it up to 10.5 mph [5:42 / mile] for the last 0.5 mile). That was 23:51 total for those 4 miles. I forgot to bring a "good" running shirt to the Y, so my cotton shirt was a little sweaty when I got done:

And then yesterday (Wednesday), I did a longer, easier run (again on a treadmill). I did 6.5 miles in 48:07. That's my longest run since the end of January when I got injured! I started easy, and bumped up the pace every 0.5 mile for the first 2 miles, and then just held it at 8.5 mph (7:03 / mile): 8:37, 7:44, 7:03, 7:02, 7:03, 7:02, and 3:32 (last 0.5).

With both of those runs, there was a little heel ache around mile 1.5, but that went away quickly and never returned. (It was like a 0.5-1.0 on a 1-10 pain scale.)

Tomorrow afternoon, if the weather lets me, I hope to do that "Duathlon Workout" that I've done a few times in the past. It's the one where you set up your bike on a trainer at the track, and basically do 4 intervals of 10:00 on the bike followed by a 1 mile run with transitions as quick as possible. (The bike is 30 sec hard, 30 sec easy, repeated for 10 minutes each time [well, for 9:30 each time because you're supposed to skip the final "easy" 30 sec].) If it's raining, I might try doing it out of my garage and just run down the street. Whatever happens, I feel like I NEED to get in a solid brick workout, because the first multisport race of the year is in 9 days!! I hope it stops snowing by then. Sheesh.