Waffle

I just went on a 15-minute run through my neighbourhood. As you may know if you read this blog, I have a knee problem which has so far prevented me from doing any serious running, but today I tried a change of approach. For the past couple of years, I have always aborted any attempt at running the moment the knee started giving me any grief. It's not that I can't handle a bit of pain, it's just that I treated any pain as a sign that I was over-straining the knee and that a lot of pain would be forthcoming if I continued.
What caused me to reconsider this was my experience with the cycling trips. On those, my knee would occasionally act up, but the pain wouldn't get to any serious levels, and between trips, it wasn't getting any worse. The knee, evidently, can handle quite a bit more strain than I've put it through while trying to run.
So today, I just decided to accept the level of pain that I could normally tolerate, and see if it got any worse if I went on running. It didn't, so for the first time in years, I ran more than a kilometer (but don't ask me how far I ran - I just zipped through the streets of Groningen towards the Noorderplantsoen, then zig-zagged back over the canal, turning back home a few hundred meters from market square).
I even got a bit sweaty! It's great to be able to do this again. I'll build it up from here.