Diagnosis Without a Doctor

We have a local running store here in town that is a.m.a.z.i.n.g. Every Monday they do these speed session workouts on the track at one of the schools in town.  We try to attend as often as possible.  One of us usually does the workout and the other one has kiddos, but we always go together as a family. It's great to have a reason to be outside and hang out together. Anyway. My mom was in town and she volunteered to watch both babies while we speed sessioned it out (yay!).  I wasn't sure how my knees would hold up, but I hadn't ran since last Tuesday so I thought maybe the knees be okay since they should have been well rested.  Wrong. I couldn't do the workout so I just jogged along the outside lane of the track instead.

The owner of the running store is the one who puts on these speed sessions and comes up with the workouts and whatnot.  He asked why I was running in the outside lanes and I explained that I wasn't doing the workout because of my knees yada yada yada.  He started asking questions about where and when they hurt and immediately let me know that I had patellar tendentious and needed to do eccentric exercises to fix it.  Ummmmm.....eccentric exercises? I don't know what that means but in my head I pictured someone sporting bright pink hair, a hula skirt, tall socks from the 70s and some sweet sunglasses doing jumping jacks.  Eccentric, right? Apparently that is not what this form of "eccentric" means. My bad.  An eccentric exercise is like when you do a bicep curl but it's the part where you bring your arms down; not the part where you bring the weight up.  Or something like that. Google it.

So I'm supposed to do lots of reps (like 50) on the quad machine at the gym with minimal weight and go really really slowly on the 'eccentric' part of the lifting. I don't know if I worded any of that correctly but I know what I'm trying to say and that's what counts :)  I haven't had a chance to do the eccentric exercises yet but I'm sure by the end of the week I will.  And then cured (hopefully)!!

**Side note about Rush Running (our local store).
Running stores and runners and workouts put on by running stores for runners can be super intimidating for people who are not runners or not in shape.  But that is so not the case here in Bentonville!  I don't think I've ever seen or heard of a more welcoming place for runners of all abilities.  And by all abilities I mean even people who aren't runners at all.  I just wanted to let you know how cool it is to have a place and a group of people who truly are judgement free, welcoming, and above all else, encouraging of everyone! It blows my mind in the best way possible.