8K

I got up this morning and got ready to go walk, and when I went out the door I slipped on my porch steps, which were covered by ice. I fell quite hard, and my lower back hit the bottom step. I sat there for a few minutes, stunned and hurting. I shook it off and got up, and I felt OK; elbows were sore, and back was bruised, but otherwise no apparent damage. So I got in the car and drove to Kelly's house.

I was to do 10K today, depending on how I felt. Kelly was to do 25K. The weather was decent - sunny and about 30F (-1C), and the Jordan River Parkway was mostly clear with some icy spots (we were slowed down significantly on just one 500m section).

However, Kelly was feeling really ill - she was having trouble with her breathing (breathing really hard when we weren't going that fast), and her lower back was hurting a lot. We stopped for a quick leg check at 3km so that I could be sure my leg was doing OK. It was :)! But Kelly was feeling lousy. At 4K, she said she needed to turn around and call it quits for the day at 8K, because she felt too bad to continue. I was all right with that, because I figured I could do 2K more when she was done.

But at 6km or so, I noticed my right hip was feeling really tired. I wasn't sure if it was from slipping on the porch steps, from walking after a long time off, compensating for something in my left leg (which felt fine, by the way), or something else. Regardless, I decided that there was no reason to push things, and so at 8km I stopped with Kelly. My left leg has felt totally fine all day, which is great! My right hip has been sore, but it just feels like muscle soreness. I am probably not using my left glutes enough after the layoff, or something like that.

We were really fast today. Aside from the 2nd 500m and the 2nd to last 500m, our splits were all close to 2:55-3:00. The others were a bit longer because of the ice on that section of the walkway. Kelly kept telling me I was going really fast, but oddly I didn't feel like I was working that hard, so we just kept going that speed. I asked her if I was legal, and she said yes, that my knees were good.

Total time: 47:52 for 8km for 5:59/km with average HR 138.

Garmin data here.