I have now done two runs in a row of three miles or greater where I have had no pain in my right knee. I am cautiously optimistic that maybe whatever was wrong has finally healed.

What I Have Done
• Strength work! I’ve tried to do this every day, but things come up (Bonnaroo, I’m looking at you) and I don’t always. But some is better than none!
• Limited my running to three days per week. I noticed the knee would start hurting sooner in the run if I ran two days in a row, so I decided to only do three runs a week (with at least one day of recovery between each) until I noticed some improvement. As soon as I start being able to manage higher mileage on those days, I will increase back up to four days per week and see how that goes for a while. I have no plans to go back to five per week at this time.
• Ceased running within half a mile of feeling pain. I didn’t want to be stupid and make it worse by trying to run through it (not that I really could after a certain point). This is why I haven’t really done any running longer than 3.5 miles or so in the past month, except the five mile race.

What I Need to Do

• Keep strength training! I have a tendency to stop as soon as my injuries go away, which is probably why I keep getting injured. (Duh…)
• Physical therapy? I’m still contemplating going to physical therapy, just so someone can actually tell me if something is improving and to watch me run or do my strength work and let me know how I can improve.
• Low heart rating training? I mentioned that I wanted to try this eventually. Maybe now is a good time? It would keep me slow (and I mean sloooooow), which would hopefully keep me from getting too much ahead of myself.

I’m going to attempt a longer run this weekend. The true test!