Aloha!

Just got home a couple days ago from Maui. Such a nice place to relax in the sun. Too bad it was pouring rain. Well, in truth it only rained hard on two of the days. The rest of the week was partly sunny. Not as nice as last year, but pretty good.

My running plan kinda got put on hold, but I'm happy to say I weighed pretty much the same when I got back as when I left. It's nice to be away from home for ten days and not put on any pounds -- especially after the several juicy Maui cheeseburgers I ate, and the milkshakes.

I ran for the first day, but my knees were still hurting -- especially the weird pain I'd been having below the right knee. I was able to do my three minute intervals, but it left me pretty sore. Due to a combination of that, and the fact that I was getting up every morning at about 4AM and walking up and down the beach for several hours, I didn't run again until yesterday.

After ten days off, I didn't do too bad. I was able to run three 3-minute intervals and then I finished with a six-minute interval -- doubling the longest run previous to that. I found a nice easy pace that I felt like I could maintain indefinitely. It felt good to be running again, although I could still feel my knee pain. The weird pain below my right knee seems to be gone, however.

Strangely, today my knees don't really hurt at all -- even when I'm going up or down stairs. So I think the week off was good, although I need to keep building strenth in my quads and stretching my hammies to get my knees back in good condition.

My original goal was to do 20 minutes non-stop by March 31 -- that is tomorrow. As tempting as it is to try and do it, I think I will bite the bullet and pick up the program where I left off. I will do intervals of 5 and 8 minutes, and then try the twenty minute run next Friday. I don't want to cause further problems with my knees and end up derailing my running program for an extended period. As long as I take it easy, I think they will come around and the pain will eventually go away.