Chickity Check Yo Self

I'm finally ready willing to talk about what went wrong last week. Monday's run went off without a hitch, I was still adhering loosely to my training plan. I say loosely because instead of run/walking for thirty minutes I've extended my route to three miles and run/walk however long it takes to finish.

It took about 36 minutes. That is a long time to run three little miles. Let me do the math for ya. That's a twelve minute mile. My great-granny can run faster than that. And she's dead.

I was feeling slow. Discouraged. Very frustrated. I told myself that it was all psychological. That I was afraid of failing and that fear was holding me back. See, I found and signed up for a last minute 5K that's two weeks earlier than my planned 5K on Oct. 16. I figured it would be no big deal and I wouldn't even really mention it to anyone. Just a "try it, before you buy it" kind of thing to test the waters to see if I was ready.

Until the very moment I mailed that check, I never really cared about my time. I was perfectly happy to be running the prescribed amount of time on my plan. Suddenly, all this doubt started creeping in and visions of crawling to the finish waaay after everyone else had moved on to other Sunday afternoon activities played in my mind. Instead of making me feel good, running had become my overlord.

At the same time, I was reading Ultramarathon Man. Then I watched this amazing video. So inspired, I started thinking...if Dean Karnazes can run all freakin' night and eat a pizza and a cheesecake while he's running, I can run THREE miles in less than 36 MINUTES! If Ben can start running weighing over 350 pounds and finish an Ironman in a year's time, surely I can manage to shave a couple minutes off a three mile run. I mean, c'mon!

My ego mended (and maybe a tad overconfident as egos tend to get sometimes), I set out Wednesday believing that I could run...fasterish. And I did. Only it wasn't exactly what I had in mind. I imagined that I would run my first two miles at slug normal pace then kick it into high gear for the last mile. Instead, I made it to the mile mark in 10 min. and some odd seconds - almost a full two minutes off my normal time. Wow, ow, ow, ow.  My right knee was screaming in pain. Awesome. I walked a little, then tried to run. No go. I walked some more. A lot more. Knee started easing up a bit, so again I tried to shuffle run. Not happening. I limped home.

The pain was in the same knee but different than before. This time it was right on my kneecap. I iced it, which helped and the pain subsided somewhat. When I got out of bed the next morning it hurt. A stiff, must be going to rain kind of hurt that I imagine people with arthritis suffer. Walking down the stairs was excruciating. Down anything was bad. Interestingly, going up almost felt good. Sitting for any length of time was painful too. Having my knee bent was not an option here. After searching the internets, the only thing I could come up with was runner's knee, which made me laugh. I run less than ten miles a week and I have runner's knee? WTH?

So I didn't run. I did some HCC and baked some cookies and ate some cookies and all the remaining chocolate chips because I was certain it would make my knee feel better. Too bad I hadn't seen this post first. Who knew?

I'm running again, happily. I'm not worried about my time. I have plenty of time to get faster. Why rush things? Why wreck myself?