"Feeler Bet"

  So today was basically what you could call a "feeler bet".  The term feeler bet is a poker term and basically describes a situation in a hand of poker where one player is trying to gauge the strength of his opponent's.  In order to do it the player will make a small bet and see how the other person reacts.  A raise from the opponent generally means they are strong, while a fold obvious means that their hand was weak.
  So today was my feeler bet ... with my knee.  I have been feeling great for last 48 hours.  My activity has been back to normal and I was able to walk up / down stairs & down snowy streets without the least bit of discomfort in my knee.  Now I know that I have been saying I am going to take a full 2 weeks to get better ... but ... I think like everyone who is training for a race this big I started getting inpatient with waiting around and letting time go by.  So I decided to try a "feeler bet" ... which for me ended up being a short run to see how my knee would react.
   I got geared up in my winter running gear and headed out.  The weather wasn't that bad for the run.  It was 23 degrees, clear and there was about a 10 mph wind.  The problem was that last night we had a storm that dropped about 13 inches of snow on us.  This made the run difficult since the snow piles in South Boston are getting pretty out of control.  Since the sidewalks were a mess I did my run down the main roads in South Boston.  I ran down East Broadway to the end of West Broadway and then back down 1st Street.  The run started out great, I felt strong and attacked the first big hill on Broadway without any problem.  After about the first mile and a half I felt the first twinge in my knee.  It wasn't bad, didn't really alter my run but it was just enough to let me know that the knee wasn't as good as I thought it was.
   In the end, this run ended up being more of a tempo run.  I didn't do a long distance, only 2.5 miles, but I was able to do it at a pretty good pace.  I ran the first 2 miles in 18 minutes, which is faster than my long run pace.  Then the last 0.5 miles of the run I was able to speed up to a 7:45 min pace.  In total, I was able to do 2.5 miles in just about 22 mins.
   So my feeler bet didn't exactly work out as planned.  I think the fact that my knee wasn't completely better let me know that it still has some healing to do.  After the run, I iced down the knee and currently it feels fine.   I will probably end up going back to my plan of trying to hold off on running until the first Sunday in February (if the knee was fine on this run I was going to do 5 on Saturday).   I need to keep reminding myself that the goal of this process isn't to do a long run in Feb or March, but to complete the marathon in April.  I think taking the time to heal now will pay dividends in the upcoming weeks.