old knees

So I'm starting to train for the Kaiser Permanente Half-Marathon for this upcoming February '09 in San Francisco- so far, so good. My first week wasn't bad at all. Concomitantly, I am still doing my cardio kickboxing classes (don't laugh- the hour long class burns about 500-600 calories and gets your jabs and punches down to a T), so strength and stamina isn't that much of an issue. It's now just a matter of increasing my mileage weekly and strategically tapering off my running/workout schedule a couple of weeks before the race so I'm not puckered out.

...which brings me to the state of my knees...I triumphantly finished 6 miles yesterday evening and I was feeling really nice afterwards, but after dinner, my old-ass knees started acting up. They are sooo sore this morning! Omg...so sore. At any rate, I "hate to toot my own horn", but I am very proud of myself that I finished this distance under an hour (I gave myself an hour to finish). Thus far, for my first week, I surpassed the intermediate level of the training module, which suggests that I complete 12 miles for the total first week. I finished my week off running 13.5 miles. I was shooting for the advanced training schedule, which has one finishing at week's end a whopping 21 FREAKIN' MILES! Who has time to run all of these miles?!

I'm leaving you with a picture of my race number from the J.P. Morgan Corporate Challenge 3.5 mile run. It is symbolic on one of two counts: 1) First organized race I've ever ran with 4000 people, 2) Lats pointed out to me that my birthday number "7" is neatly sandwiched between his birthday number, "25". How 'bout dem apples?!


Do me a favor and say a little prayer that my old knees don't give out before the 12 weeks of training is over!

P

P.S. I watched "Penelope" last night- very cute movie...and actually a role that is befitting for Cristina Ricci.