Progress

AM: 28 mins. (3.5 miles)
PM: 45 mins. ellip.

The fact that I ran 28 minutes this morning is secondary. The real news is that I ran 28 minutes pain free. I don't know what happened between last week and this week, but I felt like a completely different person out there. From the first few steps I could tell the hip flexor had taken a turn for the better, and things stayed more or less the same throughout the course of the run. My stride felt much more natural and less gimpy than it has the past few weeks when I've tried to run, and my breathing was also less labored. As proof of this, I reached the turnaround point (Freedom Park entrance) over 30 seconds sooner than I have in recent runs. Trust me, I'm not trying to convince anyone (least of all myself) that I was moving quickly, but I do think this indicates that my running motion is more fluid. Taking the run as a whole, I would rate my discomfort level as a 1-1.5 on a scale of 1 to 10, as opposed to the 7-8 of the past few runs. There were actually a few times when I uttered an audible thank you to the big guy upstairs. (I never got any response, but I'm fairly sure it would've been something like "Look, I'm thrilled for you, but I kind of need to get back to something more pressing. You know, like Afghanistan or something.")

I'm going to take a day off, then repeat the experiment on Thursday in hopes of replicating these findings. I haven't felt this optimistic in a long, long time.

P.S. Forgot to give a shout-out to Tanya yesterday...she set a huge 10k PR (34:54) and finished 24th overall (20th American) at the US 10k Champs in Boston. After a disappointing race in Providence a few weeks ago she really turned things around. Nice work.