Trail Run #4

Update: correction, as it turns out, this trail is just over 2 miles long each way! On the map, I saw the 1.3 miles, but it's 1.3 to a junction, and then another .7 to Fox Hollow road. I have amended the entry below accordingly. Yesterday I did another trail run, on a new trail (to me) in the Ridgeline system. It started at 52nd & Willamette, and did some serious undulating for 2.1 miles over to Fox Hollow. So 4.2 miles total, which took me a painful 50 minutes on the dot. As a comparison, the trail we've been using the most so far, is 3.6 miles and we do that in the same 50 minutes, although I am running probably closer to 4 miles, as I double back at points to re-connect with my wife (which I suspect is not going to happen much longer, as she's improving fast). After my last run, some spots below my knee had been hurting as I mentioned in my last post. I figured they'd be ok by now, but after walking for the first 5 minutes to warm up, upon starting to run, it was a rude awakening to that pain still being there, and in force! Ouch. At first I worried about it, thinking, should I not be running right now, will this do more harm than good? I decided to just go easy a bit and see. This trail turned out to be a bad choice. It's constantly up and down, and has a bunch of steep spots. It's also extra narrow in places, with a lot of low overhanging branches and such. For an experienced trail runner, it'd be fine I'm sure, but it's just not for me yet. Regardless, I kept going. Things seemed to loosen up a bit and I felt I was working through it. I made it to the end of the trail (in one direction) in 27 minutes. Yikes - not that I'm a speedy runner yet, but this shows how much walking I was doing during this "run". The trip back was better though, and I ran more, and the pain wasn't bad. The return trip was 23 minutes. Overall a really cool trail scenery wise, and would be fun for hiking. Today I'm feeling ok actually, and thinking I'll run this afternoon (on something a bit more mild :). But, I think the pain is actually reduced, so I'm hoping that I just need to run more and condition my knees/joints to those stresses. Hell, my arms and shoulders might be more sore from playing a bunch of Wii boxing last night! (I'm not even kidding!) So, now I'm scouting out trails for this afternoon's run...