I’m done

Last night I limped through a painful, depressing run. I thought my knee was improving, but it’s clearly not. Tuesday evening I ran 10 miles at a decent pace (around 7:25/mile). I know it was stupid, but after a couple of days off, and an easy run on Monday, I felt good, so I went with it. About seven miles into the run, my leg felt tired, but not painful, like the muscles around my knee were working harder than normal, but it didn’t hurt, so I continued running.

Tuesday evening through Monday morning, my legs were a bit tired, but not more so than normal after a decent workout. By Wednesday afternoon, I felt good and was ready to run. I made a point to run easy Wednesday evening. Even so, about four miles into my run, the knee pain was back. It wasn’t too bad, so I forged ahead at a slow pace. I finished my scheduled ten miles, but the whole time the pain only got worse. By the end, I was hurting and not in a good mood.

The bottom line is that my body is shouting at me, and I guess it’s time I listened to it. I won’t be running today or Friday for sure. Starting with Saturday, I’ll take it day-for-day. When my leg feels good, I’ll run an easy five miles. If the pain is completely gone, I’ll run again the next day. When I can string together a few pain-free days, I’ll see where I’m at and go from there. The difficult part is that when I’m not running, my knee feels fine, so it’s easy to convince myself that I’m okay to get back to it.