3K fartlek; doctor visit

This morning I met Adriana at the track at the U for a 3K fartlek. She's a student there, and I work there, so it was perfect. I took the bus to campus, and after our workout I walked up to work, and she walked to her class. We'll probably do this again, because it was pretty convenient.

She'd never done a 3K fartlek before, so as we warmed up (1600m in 9:43, with strides), I explained the workout to her. 1K hard, 500m medium effort, 500m hard effort, 500m medium effort, 500m hard effort. She got it.

We got started - I let her have about a 5-10 second head start, figuring she'd probably be faster anyway, since my legs were still hurting from yesterday a bit. I took an Aleve last night which really helped, but they were still sore this morning and the warm-up didn't feel too good. At left, a self-portrait at the track after my warm-up.

She was fast for the first 500m - way too fast - at 2:34! After that the workout wasn't too nice to her - 2:49 (OK), but then 3:23 for recovery, 2:5x fast, 3:30 (!) recovery, 2:5x and her total was just over 18 min (18:0x) - not bad for her first 3K fartlek! I passed her during her last recovery...and finished about 25-30 sec in front of her at 17:36 for my own workout. Slow, for me :(. I did 2:47, 2:53, 3:05, 2:56, 3:04, 2:53. Something close to that, anyway. My average HR was 162 and max 174, with ave HR on the last interval 171. I was working very hard, but I guess yesterday's 6K was too much for my pathetic legs. Arrrrgh.

***

Doctor visit yesterday: I saw my sports medicine doc, and she had a resident working with her. He took a very thorough and good history, and did a brief exam, checking heart, lungs, and muscle strength. My doc then did an exam as well, noting only that my left hamstring was a bit weaker than my right (it was more sore from my workout) but that overall my muscle strength was very good. 

They are waiting now on my labs from my family doc - they need a copy of them in order to figure out what tests have been done (I told them, but they still need the labs) and what they want to do. They want to check liver and kidney function as well as creatine kinase (measure of muscle breakdown), and possibly a couple other things. If they can't turn up anything, they will refer me to a neurologist and/or rheumatologist to see what more can be done.

I'm relieved that they are taking my complaint seriously, and hoping that they can find something easily treatable. I'm ready to feel better any time now.