Upon admitting to a sore knee problem at BeerWorks lask night, Jack told me a little analogy:
A small nagging injury is like having your shoe come untied during a run. You have two choices: you can stop, tie your shoe, and continue on with your run, losing only a short amount of time. Or, you can keep running, your shoe will eventually fall off and you will lose much more time having to go back and retrieve your lost shoe.
Moral of the story: Stop, take care of your injury now and be sidelined for a short period of time, rather than try to run through it and have your training derailed for much longer because you forced the issue.
Makes sense, right? Then why am I having so much trouble convincing myself that not running the hills tonight is the right thing to do? I certainly know better than to question Jack's advice, and I certainly don't want to injur myself further... but at the same time, it is KILLING me thinking that I might skip the hills. To be honest, I was hesitant to even write my blog about this today- somewhere in my crazy head I had come to the conclusion that maybe if I just didn't acknowledge the little twinges in my knee and I conveniently "forgot" that I had discussed not running with Jack last night, that I could just continue on with my Thursday run as planned, guilt free. Why am I so bound and determined to run the hills tonight? Maybe it's because while I was in Florida I didn't get many good runs in, or maybe it's because I can feel the pressure of the race building each day as April 21st gets closer and closer, or maybe I feel like I can, as Jack so eloquently put it, "put a few more pennies in the fitness bank." I'm not sure what it is exactly, maybe a combination of all of those things, but whatever it is, it has created within me this crazy, maniacal need to run.
The thing is, I'm really the only one stopping myself from running tonight. No one is going to get out there and physically stop me from hopping on the T and riding it out to Woodland and my knee doesn't hurt so badly that it will prevent me from running back into Boston. I know that the smart thing to do tonight is to stop and "tie my shoe" -hit the arc trainer at the gym and hope that whatever this thing is that is wrong with my knee will clear up with a little quality time spent off of the roads. I really can't say for sure if I will actually do the smart thing... we shall see. But, I can tell you one thing for certain- whether I'm out on the roads tonight or confined to the gym you can count on the fact that I'll be at Crossroads for beer and pizza once I'm done...
1 comment:
I'm a friend of Tyler's and he put me on to your blog. Love reading it!!! Hope you listened to Jack. I did not listen to Jack. I did not finish the 111th Boston Marathon on 4/16/2007. I flew back to California with a torn tendon and my foot in one of those boot jobs. I finished the Boston Marathon five months later during the Boston Marathon Jimmy Fund Walk on September 16th. Listen to Jack!!! However, do drink beer and eat pizza at Crossroads - an equally important part of training!! Good luck and be well. See you Marathon Weekend when I look forward to meeting all of the bloggers whose sites I visit regularly.
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