Safety First!

It seems that this has become my new tag-line.  Overly aggressive reflective gear?  Safety first!  Head lamp on before the sun sets?  Safety first!  Having no shame in awkwardly breaking out into quad and hamstring stretches at work?  Safety first!  Being Fleet Feet's most needy training program participant?  Safety first!

My knee has been bothering me during the past few runs and I assumed it was my IT band injury welcoming itself back into my life.  My new best friends at Fleet Feet suggested some sort of strap thing to help it.  Well, wore it on my long run on Saturday and it did nada.  Went back to see my BFF's yesterday and they suggested I try this:

Pink, obviously.

KT Tape.  The science mumbo jumbo behind this baffles me.  All I know is that I spent a solid portion of my night watching instructional videos on their website.  After feeling like I was basically a certified physical therapist, I followed the video to tape up my knee.

Do I look like a real athlete now?

I don't know if it was all mental, or if the tape really worked, but my knee felt awesome during and after my run tonight.  Real test will be my long run on Saturday -- fingers crossed!

Tonight's run was 3 miles.  Because I feel way more badass when I'm mapping my run than I do when I'm actually running my run, I threw in quite an intense mile-long hill at the end.  That quickly turned into 13 minutes and 4 seconds of regret.  Make your last mile your fastest?  Nah, I'll make it my slowest.  The first two miles flew by since I had my fave running buddy with me and we were chit-chatting along the whole time.

Reflective vests + Running buddy = Safety first!

Here's the stats from the run.  Please note the artfully taken picture intended to show off my new hot pink shoelaces :)

Boom.