Ineffable!

For a variety of reasons, I ran my usual distance running pace today, so I did the 1.3 miles in a little under 13 minutes.

My knee twinged the whole time, but it also felt noticeably better at the end than at the beginning.

One of the reasons I ran slowly was because I had a meeting at 8 and didn't have time for a long cooldown run, so I had to not run fast enough to need a long cooldown to fend off a post-run crash.

Speaking of which, I googled post-run crashes quickly yesterday when I was writing my update, and I found "postural hypotension." Apparently your blood pools in your legs, and while your heart rate is high, that's fine because it's working hard enough to pump blood into your brain. If your heart rate drops while your blood is still pooled--boom!--dizziness and nausea, risk of fainting. That's why a cooldown run helps: it keeps your heart pumping at a rate that can get blood to your brain while your blood distribution slowly equalizes across your body.

This makes so much sense! It feels exactly like the postural hypotension I've had since about age 10. The number of times I have either fainted, greyed out and had to sit or lie down quickly, or just felt alarmingly and miserably like I was going to faint or grey out, are beyond what I can count. Dozens, and maybe hundreds. It was bad enough that I had my doctor investigate at one point. She found nothing wrong, said it was benign, and I should just be careful and avoid my triggers. Of which apparently running is one, as it is for many runners.

So I guess a good cooldown run is, in fact, the way to go, as well as maybe investigating sports drinks (and better hydration in general) for longer runs.

landofnowhere, this is presumably why you're able to end your runs at home: you're not getting your heart rate up to a point where you need an additional 15-20 minutes of gradual renormalization of blood pressure just to not pass out.

Side note: I tried stretching my hamstring, or rather what I think might be the bottom of my gluteus maximus over the thigh, last night, and I did notice less pain this morning. It came back over the course of the day, naturally, and I have to be careful about not overdoing the stretch, because it rotates and thereby strains the injured knee. (Stretching my glutes is how my very first knee pain came about; I think that probably weakened the knees and made them injury-prone afterwards.) But it is good to know that that stretch might help. Anything that isn't "It hurts and we don't know why or how to make it stop" is good!

I'm gradually coming to the conclusion that I have two extremely tight muscles on the back of my left thigh: a tight hamstring in the center that responds to massage but hasn't fully healed, and a tight lower gluteus maximus that doesn't respond to massage but may respond to a stretch that targets that spot. Unfortunately, there are only two types of stretches for that spot: there are about 8 stretches that involve twisting the knee, and one downward dog that messes up my back (or at least I can't figure out how to do it without messing up my back). So I haven't been able to do any stretch long enough to seriously attack that spot. But even the prospect of a little, occasional pain relief is good.

I also just have more confidence now that pushing through pain isn't going to disable me. Tight muscles are the least worrisome type of injury I get. I had tight foot muscles for 10 years and once I found the right solution (sleep posture), they got better, no lingering pain.

I also wonder if the tight gluteus maximus is pulling on the end of the hamstring and making it hard for the middle part to loosen up. We'll see. I'm going to focus on stabilizing my knee, with occasional hamstring massage with the massage gun, and then see about glute stretches.

Oh, knee update: it's been mostly okay but occasionally twinging lately, and this morning it twinged (as expected after the stretching I put it through last night) at the beginning of the run, but settled down after about a quarter mile and then didn't bother me again for the rest of the run.