And the verdict is...

...Runner's Knee! It was totally expected, so it wasn't a shocker. Dr. Bakman confirmed that my hips are tight (the main reason for my beginning yoga practice) and decided that my really tight right hip is most likely the reason behind my knee issues. He almost made me cry by jabbing my hip, but it was partially tears of joy because I am getting closer to solving this long-lasting knee problem!!! I'm taped up with the kinesiotaping method, some style from Japan, and I'm going to go for a run tomorrow to see how it feels. Then I go back to Dr. Bakman on Friday to be sure that it's my hip and figure out where to go from here. I just want to be able to run fast and far. I finally figured out my shoulder issue, and I'm good to go for climbing, so running is next! Hopefully I'll be pain free VERY soon :)

Goin' to the doctor

I decided to go visit Dr. Bakman in HB about my knees. They are feeling better today, almost painless, but there is still some pain that shouldn't be there. And when I try and stretch in certain ways, I get a pain twang. So I've heard great things about Dr. Bakman, and he gives a free sports evaluation to Team in Training athletes, so I'm going tomorrow afternoon. The only unfortunate part is that I recently switched from a POS to a HMO (since I didn't use the PPO part) so if I want/need to go back to Dr. Bakman, I might have to pay an arm and a leg. If he's as good as I hear he is, it might be worth it! I'm almost 100% sure that I'm experiencing the infamous "Runner's Knee" but so far no one else has been able to rehab it... my guess is that it's mainly from tight hip flexors, especially considering that's pretty much the only area on me that has been sore from the 1/2...
Cross your fingers for me!

Quickest Race Recap Ever

So I finished the OC 1/2 marathon about 2 hours ago, and yes I'm blogging about it. Eric is in the shower and I'm waiting to go eat something so I figured why not. LUCKILY there was NO rain! Yay for that 20%. It rained for like 15 minutes and then sprinkled some on the shuttle ride back which made me very glad I was not running the full marathon today. The race started off as all races do - very anti-climactic - as we walked to the start and then had to zig zag through the thousands of people to settle on our pace. As a result, we ended up running almost an extra 1/2 mile. Boo. The first few miles were uneventful and went by pretty quickly. At 7 miles we were just a little over an hour, so I figured we would be on our way to breaking 2 hours for Eric's first 1/2. I knew that I was going to hit a wall around mile 10 (of course I was with that attitude I guess!) so I tried to make up for the inevitable sucking by flying down the hills and trying to stay consistent uphills. Eric stayed pretty strong throughout the whole race, trying to go a little faster than he should have in the beginning, so I had to rein him in a couple times. Overall, he did great and I'm so proud of him :) The only low point of the race was during mile 12. We stopped for our walk break and I seriously thought I was going to throw up. Not like that fast 5K knot in your stomach kind of feeling, like I really thought my pre-race oatmeal was coming up. But it didn't, and we pushed on. Finally we reached the 13 mile marker and could see the finish line. I picked it up the best I could and then Eric took off chasing down some kids since I was "no competition" in the sprint contest.
Official time - 1:57:23 (for 13.58 miles, meaning if we hadn't have zig zagged and been crazy people, we probably would've finished closer to 1:52, since our average pace was 8:39, including a 1 minute walk break after each 9 minutes of walking.) This is 1 minute slower than my PR, but my PR is 1:56:25, and a 8:44 pace. So technically I broke my PR today, but not "officially". :( At least Eric set a PR and his first 1/2 was under 2 hours :)