It finally happened this week. After 13 years of running, I feel like I may have had my first serious injury. It happened on my Friday run, just a twinge of pain in my left knee toward the end of a 9-miler. I didn't think much of it for a few hours until it started to ache a bit more. At that point, I poked and prodded a bit, and found that the pain was in one very small place on my knee. Thinking it was something minimal, I did what every runner does - I ignored it.
It didn't get better. Friday night, I felt pain every time my knee was pressed flat against the mattress, and on Saturday, that really small spot had grown into a line across the left side of my knee. I began to worry more, about my long run on Sunday, and also about the marathon I am to run in two weeks. I made the mistake of telling my wife, who then alternated between "Don't stress too much; it could be nothing" and "Boy, this marathon could be a complete blowout for you". Ah, the love of a good woman *sigh*.
Sunday, I was filled with trepidation - My long run was to be 13 miles, and I woke to a sore knee again. Would I be able to finish the run? Would I do more damage to it, and actually worsen the situation? Would I wind up walking 6 miles back to my car if I followed my planned run on a flat out-and-back course? At least the last one I could control, and I changed my route to allow me no more than a 2-mile distance between me and my car in case there was real trouble.
I can say that I didn't feel any pain as I started to run....at least no pain for the first 300 yards. After that, the (clearly injured) muscle in my knee announced it's presence, and stuck with me for the entire run. It was a pleasant running partner, keeping me aware of it without yelling at me; just a friendly challenge to my normal Sunday stupor. I normally listen to a few podcasts during my runs; today, they only got half my attention.
I found that running on level ground was OK, running uphills was good, and running steeper downhills was ... unpleasant. They're normally my best friends, but I guess even best friends have a falling out once in a while. After a few miles, where the pain got no worse, I decided to stick it out, and use this as a chance to develop my mental toughness.
So much for that. By mile 8.5, I knew 13 was out of the question. My mantra had gone from "Believe and Succeed" to "Rest, Ice, Compression Elevation", to which I added "medication". Just past mile 9, I was within sight of my car, but turned left instead to finish a 10 miler. By know, the pain was more pronounced, and I had the start of what would become a limp later in the day. The good news: once I stopped running, the pain receded. The bad news: it came back not long after, more than a little miffed at me for having roused it from slumber. I wished it back to sleep, but as yet, it's still crying like a baby (and so am I).
It's early yet, so I'm going to try to stay optimistic. I will rest and take my runs more easily this week (I am tapering after all), and do the RICE techniques that I need to (but don't want to). I have two weeks to get healed, and no expectations or targets about this race - if it takes me 5 hours, that's fine by me. If I have to bail at the 1/2 marathon turnoff, then this just wasn't my race. I'm not going to drive myself into the ground for one race that I KNOW will not be a PR. I'm in this for the long haul, and if DNFing saves my legs for the rest of this running year, that's what I will have to do. Let's hope it never comes to that.
For those of you following Tim's training - he's joined a running club, and is now running a few times per week. He's also got big brother Ian running, who's already seen some pretty significant improvement. I'm not pushing either boy into running, but Tim seems to like it with or without me.
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