Easy Knees-y

How do you distinguish between the "normal" pain of getting stronger - pain that should be pushed through - from a "bad" pain that requires R&R? Having raced my bike for a number of years now, I've gotten pretty good at recognizing normal pain and good pain. But that's on the bike. I'm discovering running is a differnt animal altogether.

I started Week 2 of my 8 week program this past Monday. My experience with the 1st week was very encouraging - I started off slowly (though it's a "couch-to-5k program, I'm not exactly coming off the couch) and felt good, with only minor soreness - and that from running in icy conditions and overcompensating. So I knew what I did wrong.

But Monday was a different story. Although the running portion was ramped up only by 30 seconds (to 90sec intervals from 60 the previous week), and there were fewer running intervals, my knees really felt like they took a beating. Tuesday they were still pretty sore. Fortunately, by Wednesday they seemed back to normal, so I did a 1/2 workout on the bike Wednesday night. No problems.

So yesterday morning, I did a full workout on the bike. This is the "E1" trainer workout - the easiest in my program (E1 is used on recovery days later in the program). Despite that, my knees were super sore and tender for the rest of the day and are still pretty sore today - the left one feels like I whacked it on a table & I don't remember any such whacking...

So I took today as a "rest" day and since I'll be out of town tomorrow for a convention, I won't be working out tomorrow either. But I *will* be walking/standing on concrete floors all day, so I'm not looking forward to it.

I'm just trying to figure out whether this is something I can expect to pass & I should work through it and continue my program, or if I need to dial things down even further. In the meantime, I'll probably at least throttle back to what I know - the bike. Though even that seems to betray me lately!