Okay, on Tuesday, I stressed the left leg a little more than I wanted to, when I moved some step rubble with a wheelbarrow through soft lawn. Yeah, the leg rightly complained about that and I stopped before it got too grumpy.

Due to the way the leg felt on Tuesday, I shut everything down on Wednesday. Well, almost, I still had to move all that rubble from the steps. However, instead of using the wheelbarrow, I used the lawn wagon and it worked quite nicely, but best of all, it didn’t bother my leg. I was able to get things cleaned up with about 10 trips to the scrap pile and put the (new to us) steps there.

The best thing is that the left leg felt pretty good all day. However, I was conservative and didn’t attempt to run or bike and kept my walks shorter than usual.

Today (Thursday) my leg felt good, so after lunch I was able to get out for a run. We are in the middle of a major house renovation and I have to stick around to answer questions or discuss changes to the plan.

The weather was my first really warm weather run with 75* and 70% humidity with a nice breeze out of the South. So I knew that I was going to sweat a lot.

I wasn’t sure of what I was going to do, so I started out slow and ran completely by feel. I focused on quiet landing keeping my arm swing compact. The first mile went by without any issues from the left leg, so I decided to keep going.

At that point I could keep doing laps on Philbrick or head down back. I wanted to see how the RA Max v1 did on the dirt. The grip was very good on the dirt road and I even purposely ran on a few of the rocks to see how they protected my feet. No problems my feet felt fine.

When I got back up on the tar, the leg was still feeling really good and I decided to keep going. I never really purposely pushed the pace and kept up a nice 9:00 minute pace throughout.

Overall, it was a nice 3.0 plus mile run, where my leg did not bother at all during the run. Yes, I was tempted a couple of times to pick-up the pace a little, but as soon as I started, I cut it back quickly. Right now is not at all about speed, it is all about running comfortably, not having any pain or discomfort in the leg and re-establishing my base a bit.

I did use the Milestone Pod and the results are exactly what I expected and the change from the Zoom Flys on the Leg Swing is pretty dramatic. I am back to strictly a medium leg swing.

Today, I think I accomplished that. The leg was a little sore after I got done, but I expect some soreness as part of the recovery process. Soreness and pain are different beasts and I have had enough experience recovering from previous injuries to have a pretty good idea of the difference. Soreness is a good thing and a sign that things are going in the correct direction.

I am just going to listen to my body and keep the mileage between the 2-3 mile range for a while and take days off when things start to get beyond the soreness point. Gotta be smart. I know Harold being Harold usually tops being smahter, but I am getting better at it – slowly but surely. At least I think I am – others I am sure will disagree.

The bottom line is that I am running again and that makes me a very happy runner.