Ouch! That Hurts

Today I was at mile 10 of an 18 mile training run when I stopped running and starting sobbing. Allow me to tell you from first-hand experience, this activity tends to garner stares from concerned passers-by, yet none concerned enough to stop.

I'll back up. I am training for a marathon, just five short weeks away. No big deal. It is hard to have a conversation without finding that the person with whom your speaking is running or knows someone who is running. But for me this is the fourth try to run a full marathon, a dream since my teenage years! Count 'em: four. My first attempt ended in a bout with pneumonia two weeks prior to the marathon. Needless to say, I did not lace up the sneakers for that marathon. Year two: Welcome back, pneumonia. It came a little earlier this time, so I did manage the half-marathon. The third time would surely be the charm, not so. A stress fracture turned into a break turned into three months of no running, which turned into a pregnancy with nine months of no running.

What are you doing during training you might be wondering? The first two years, I did not heed the warning to rest post-long run and not get around germy crowds. When you teach school, germy crowds are hard to avoid. The third year, I ignored the nagging pain in my ankle until it began to sear.

This time, though, attempt number four, I am older, wiser, and well, wiser. I started increasing my mileage weeks before my training program began, I cross-trained twice a week, I rested at least once a week, and I listened to my body this time. If I hurt, I took an extra day of rest. No sniffles, no aches, nothing, until the 16-mile training run on Christmas eve. This is when the trouble began.

I noticed a slight pain in my knee at the end of the run, so I took a few days off. When I resumed running, no more pain. Then on Saturday, I decided it would be okay to go ahead and attempt my 18-miler. Mile ten is when the pain became unbearable, so I did what any good runner would do, I called my husband to see what he would do. Secretly, I was hoping he would say, keep going and see what happens. He didn't. Instead, he and A picked me up at mile 12 and drove me, freezing, crying, and aching back to my car.

And here I sit, trying to figure out what to do next, while trying to maintain my optimism and sense of humor. Clearly, anyone who has attempted four separate tries at a marathon, including all those months of grueling training, has a sense-of-humor, but I'll be honest, it's waning. I think my strategy is to see what my orthopedic doctor has to say. The last time I visited my orthopedist, he laughed when I cried at the diagnosis that I would not be running 26.2 miles. Clearly, he had never trained for and not run three marathons. If anything, I'm tenacious. I now have a new doctor who I hope will be more sensitive. Until the appointment, I guess I'll just have to wait and see....