I have been handed some lemons....let me tell you the sad history of my knee. If you have been following my posts then you know that my right knee has not been good to me lately. What started out as a squeaky hinge is now a rusty, falling apart, piece of junk. It used to be that my knee would bother me on a run, but just a bit. Just enough for me to think "...gee, that's not the most comfortable feeling, in fact in kinda hurts". But after the workout the feeling would be gone and I wouldn't worry too much about it. It has only gotten gradually and progressively worse over the past 2 weeks despite my efforts to make it better.
I iced, I stretched, I even rested--I took a break from running, especially this week. I rested Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and my knee felt just fine. Thursday morning I worked out at Curves and my knee felt fine. Thursday evening I did my usual 4 miles and it hurt--a lot--the entire run. Afterward, I got in the car and it was painful to move my foot to hit the gas or the break. Surprisingly painful. I got home, stretched and iced. Rested Friday and Saturday. Felt better.
Today I should have run 15 miles with my team, setting a new personal distance record. I dropped down a few pace groups to take it easy a bit, but I felt some major pain right away. I stopped after the first mile and noticed that my knee didn't hurt while walking, so I walked. In fact, I POWERWALKED! I was mad, and I was going to get my workout DONE. I went at a good pace and worked up quite a sweat. In fact, I even passed some runners. I didn't walk the whole 15 miles, because I didn't want to injure myself further, but I walked as long as my knee felt good, which was about 10 miles.
Walking long distances is much more difficult, mentally, than running. And it is lonelier. In fact, the idea of WALKING 26.2 miles rather than running it is pretty scary. I didn't sign up to walk a marathon. If running it might take me 5 hours, just imagine how long it would take me to walk!
But I AM going to finish this thing, because it is just too important for me to give up, even if that means I have to walk. I can say that and still hope I don't have to walk it, right?
Sooooooo, after all of this I looked down at my knee while stretching, realized it was pretty swollen, still hurt and wouldn't allow me to walk up or down a set of stairs. I went to urgent care. Long story short, I have some water accumulated in my knee but it's not clear why. I have a referral to an orthopedist and took some x-rays that he will look at. The Dr. I saw said to rest it: don't go for a walk, a run, an elliptical, bike, or anything else that will use the knee. She did approve swimming, though :-) She was very optimistic that I would be able to run again soon, and even run my marathon on Oct. 11.
What will I be doing in the meantime? Swimming to stay fit and not go crazy, stretching and icing and resting my knee and being thankful that I am healthy enough to complete something as challenging as a marathon...even if I complete it while walking.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment