Good progress...but now in Covid recovery

Since my last entry here, I have made some good progress in my comeback from two knee surgeries. I've continued to run 4 days per week with a long run (that reached 8.1 miles on Aug 7) and a workout of "tread striders" where I was able to finish with 5 x 30-second repeats at 6:59/mile pace. Nice milestones for sure, but I just returned to running today after missing 8 days in a row with Covid.

I feel like trying to overcome the knee injury and knee surgeries is already an extraordinary challenge. It seems unfair that I also have to deal with things like illness, running injuries, work, a poor night's sleep, etc. But it's true. I'm subject to all the same issues any other runner has to deal with...maybe even more since I haven't run much in a few years, I have a surgically repaired right knee, I'm 57 years old, and I have a more-than-full-time job and family responsibilities. It's kind of like the movie Inception, but instead of a dream within a dream, I'm doing a comeback (from Covid) within a comeback (from knee surgery). Now if I get injured or sore during the Covid comeback, it'll be a comeback within a comeback within a comeback.

Anyway, I know that even if my return to running is ultimately successful, it will not simply be a straight line back up the mountain. I knew there would be setbacks. I just have to hope that I can climb a little higher each time I get knocked down a bit. 

Before I was rudely interrupted by a Covid infection (I likely picked up on a business trip), I was running a shade over 20 miles per week. I was lifting weights 2 days per week (without any BFR since my last functional cuff started to leak). I've also done a little indoor cycling as a warm up to the strength sessions and on the one day that I do not run or lift. I was making particularly strong progress on probing how fast I could run and starting the work on restoring my broken stride. 

Once per week I have been doing 30-second repeats on the treadmill with 1:30 jog rest intervals. I run each interval at slightly higher pace than the previous interval. My first interval of a session is usually just a few tenths of a mph quicker than my jogging pace. With each interval, I increase the pace 0.2 to 0.3 mph over the previous. When I reached my fastest pace for the workout, I tried to repeat it 4 more times. My first tread strider workout peaked at 7 mph (8:34/mile pace) and the last tread strider workout I did peaked at 8.6 mph (6:59/mile pace). I'm pretty surprised to have gotten that fast so quickly. However it was right around 7:00/mile pace where my stride started to fall apart before the surgeries. I suspect it will be a bit of grind moving forward to get faster, and I think I'll have to do this tread strider workout (or similar workouts) more frequently to restore neuromuscular control for faster paces. (Frequency and repetition are cornerstones of PT/rehabilitation...got to get them nerves firing again and again to restore strength and control.)

So that is where I am right now. I assume it will take me a couple of weeks to ramp back up to where I was before Covid struck. Then I'll go back to work...eking up the length of my long runs and increasing the frequency of short fast interval workouts to restore some speed. I still think I'll likely jump into a race of some sort by the end of the year. The winter will be a good time to do more treadmill workouts to improve my speed in a controlled fashion. If everything goes according to plan, maybe I'll be planning some longer races for the 2nd half of next year.