run

Free Run, Day 15

Wednesday, October 18th, 2023

Ok, there is good news and bad news. I’ll start with the bad because it’s not that bad but will likely affect today’s run, or lack thereof. 

I am sick. It’s not Covid, which I am grateful for, but whatever plague has been skipping around the coffee shop has finally claimed me. All day yesterday, it felt like there was this tiny cat who had taken up residence in my throat and using the tender flesh there as a scratching post. I was gearing up for a wicked sore throat for the next few days, but mercifully, the soreness has ebbed a bit, and now I just feel a little down and a little depleted. I called out of work because I’m working six straight shifts in a row, and I think if I rest today, I’ll be able to do the remaining five at a higher capacity. Dear god, have I learned something about rest and prioritizing my health?! GROWTH IN REAL-TIME PEOPLE. Growth, in real time. 

It’s not lost on me that I am 10 days out from this 5K, and I am taking another day off, but I don’t think a run today would do me any good. Really, I don’t. I think I need this day to rest and to hydrate like my life depends on it and to take in copious amounts of soup. I love soup. 

Alright, so, now the good news; PT was awesome, and my knee is, for the most part, alright! 

What a sigh of relief. I was so worried that Patricia, my amazing therapist, was going to tell me that something was really wrong, or that there was a tear, but she agreed that this was similar to what happened last year and my “strenuous and impressive training” – I’m getting that tattooed on my fucking forehead – likely aggravated it. We talked a lot about strength training and how that is something that we will be working on, as well as cross-training in general with running. Turns out, Patricia is also a runner! AND! She is going to be running the 10K the day before my 5K!!!! Sometimes, the synchronicities of life astound me, you know? And lately, the universe has been like, throwing me – not nudging, not lightly suggesting, literally THROWING me in the direction I need to be going and plopping people down in the middle of my path who are just supposed to be there and I’m at this point where I’m throwing my hands up and being like, chyeah, bb universe, I’m in your hands, you just throw me around, and I will go where I’m told. 

She is going to be such an asset in terms of working on cross-training, which I told her has been pretty much nil in these past several weeks. I think, the way my brain works with how it compartmentalizes literally everything around me, I think I assumed that running was just kind of self-contained in its own little bubble. If you run, you were running, and the muscles you were working were the only ones you needed to be activating. WRONG. I swear, I’m going to go back through this and get a running tally of the number of times I’ve just written “wrong” after me figuring something out that I thought I’d previously figured out. I would wager it is a large tally. But in all seriousness, I’m so excited to have her on my health team and to build a practice around strengthening my legs. Because, yeah, this thing with my knee, if left unchecked, will become a real problem. Without proper strengthening and building, it will continue to break down and freak out. And I can control this. I can build this. I can set myself up for, dare I say it, success. And that’s pretty cool. It really is. 

So, yeah. I think today is another day off. Tomorrow morning, if I’m feeling better and up to it before I go in to work, I might try to make it up, but we will have to see. I know that I will get a run on Saturday, maybe even on Sunday, if this plague keeps it to a low and mild simmer, of course. But what a relief to know that my knee is alright and that I have been given the OK to do this 5K next week. Though, truth be told, and y’all probably know this by now too, nothing was going to stop me from doing the 5K. If I had to crawl my way through it, it would be done. 

Even if I had to crawl. 

Like a baby. 

It. 

Would. 

Be. 

Done.