They See Me Rollin'

It's been a rough couple of weeks on the running/training front. Between miles 4 and 5 of my 10k I started feeling some pain in my right knee, so I walked a bit on and off and didn't think much of it. The next day every time I bent my knee it hurt enough to make me gasp and stop whatever I was doing. Not good! It was especially bad when I was laying in bed and switched from my side to my back or whenever I had to twist my leg a little bit. I would literally have to freeze for a few seconds and slowly rotate things until the pain stopped multiple times throughout the night. I thought this was pretty strange for a knee injury, so I looked up my symptoms on some running sites and asked a few people at my local running store what they thought was going on, and the resounding conclusion is an IT band injury, which technically it is not just a knee injury, but more of a hip to knee injury. So I have been taking some time off running. I did a very very slow run a couple days ago to feel things out and see how my knee is feeling and that went pretty well. I ran 2 miles walking every 5 minutes or whenever I felt any little twinge in my knee, and did not have any pain the rest of that day or the day after. I have two 5ks coming up in a week that I really want to be able to participate in, especially since in one of them I am a running buddy for Girl's on Track, so I'm trying not to push myself too far too fast.

Behold my new B.F.F.! I call her Gloria.

I shelled out some cash at Gazelle Sports (my awesome local running store) to buy a foam roller and as I told my husband "It hurts so good!". I have been using it about three times a day and I seriously felt like my leg was better after using it just one time. Between the foam roller, doing some stretches I was shown how to do at Gazelle, and just taking time off I am confident I will be back running at least every other day within the next few days. I also picked up some of that seasonal Peppermint Stick GU while I was there that will have to wait a few weeks for a nice long run to try out. I do love peppermint!

Since I have not been running I have been getting in some serious reading and knitting. The books I am currently reading are Compulsively Mr. Darcy by Nina Benneton (on my Kindle) and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer (no I have not seen the movie yet). I'm enjoying both of them very much and I'm hoping to finish them up in the next week or so to make time for some Christmas reading.

As far as knitting goes, I knit up this fun and adorable little vest this past week for a very good friend of mine who will be having a baby boy at the end of the month.

I really like this vest a lot, and I had forgotten how much I actually like to knit cables. The hardest part for me was wrapping my head around the fact that when I look at the front of the vest, my right is the vest's left. I'm not sure why it took me a few minutes to figure that out, weird. Anyway the pattern is Pembroke Vest by Kirsten Kapur and I used almost a whole skein of Patons Classic Worsted Wool, I have about a walnut sized ball of yarn left. This is definitely a pattern I would knit again, I loved it!