Adventure Sneaker

Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation.  Not exactly the way I want to be spending my time.  But, my little left knee has brought everything to a screeching halt right now.

Two weeks ago, I fell in the middle of a 14 mile trail run.  Not an unusual occurrence for me at all, and pretty uneventful.  Trip over root, fly through the air, land in the dirt, dust it off, and keep on moving.  Finished the run just fine, and ran/biked the rest of the week  with no problem.  

Fast forward to last Sunday – did a long run on the airline trail in Colchester, nice flat dirt trail, and was feeling great.  10 miles into our almost 18 mile voyage started to have some knee pain.  Not bad at first, but stopped me in my tracks with about 4 miles or so to go.  Luckily, it eased up and I finished without incident. 

Since then, it’s all been downhill  (and not in a good way).,  Rest, ice, do some shorter runs I thought… it will be fine, right?  Easy 5 miler with the dog made it a little sore, but nothing a little ibuprofen couldn’t handle.  3 days off and a massage later, I should be good, right??  

Not so much.  I had conquered one of my biggest hurdles – getting runs in while working my monthly stint of night shifts.  Woke up in the afternoon 2 days ago feeling great – headed out for a run with my lovely bike escort husband so I could do a little trail running….. and was stopped dead in my tracks 3 miles in.  Walked the 2 miles home, feeling crabby but fine, until I hit the hill up to our house and nearly couldn’t make it up due to the stabbing pain in my knee.  Not good.  

I’m no stranger to pain – you don’t run ultras without learning how to keep going when something hurts.  I’ve been running long enough to recognize “ok” pain from “bad, bad, bad” pain – this definitely made the little “bad, bad, bad” hairs on the back of my neck go up.  Walking should not be a horrifically painful experience.  

And so here I am, hobbling through my night shifts, RICE-ing myself, and hoping for the best.  I’m very hopeful I’ll at least be able to do some biking this week…. as for running, I’m very hopeful this isn’t a very long hiatus.  I seriously don’t have time for this!

In the meantime, I’ll work on getting on the bike, some strength training, and writing some race and gear reviews for your viewing pleasure.  Fingers crossed, I’ll be hitting the trails again soon.