12km

I knew there was a hammer waiting to fall after Sunday's 10km. My knee started acting up at night, when I got up to assist my son: I got out of bed and it was kind of stuck for a few minutes, and the same happened in the morning again. This didn't happen again during the week, instead I had a pinpoint pain behind the knee cap which on Thursday my PT attributed to irritated cartilage. If I'm not mistaken, this should be what's also known as "runner's knee".

I didn't run for the whole week but I got the thumbs up to do it as long as I stayed pain-free, so I went out today for the 12km I had scheduled for tomorrow with little hope of completing the whole workout. To my surprise, I had no problems and was able to run the distance pain-free, with just very minor signals from my right foot first and from my right hip later. Both lasted for about one km each, and I think this may be connected to the inserts. I now feel like the right one may be a bit too high under the ball of my foot, I'll talk about it with the sports doc on Monday.

Got home and everything was good, and it stayed so until I made what I now believe was a mistake: I spent some minutes on my knees while bathing my son. I can't say if it started right when I got up or shortly after that, but now both of my knees (left more than right) hurt in a new spot: inner side, below knee cap, on what I just learnt is called the medial condyle of the tibia. As always, let's wait and see what happens tomorrow.

This week I sent that email to ask the Stockholm Marathon organizers what my options are if I can't run it this year, but I got no reply so far.

I'll keep going on with my program as long as it works (and this week it got very close to failing), but I already have a plan B: half marathon in October and Stockholm Marathon 2013. Like this I should be able to increase the mileage very gradually, which may be what my body is asking me to do already now... I guess I just need to hear it one more time.