Birthday disaster

Well it's about time I update! So, on Thursday, my birthday, I got all ready for a long run. I was planning on doing 20km or more if I felt ok. If I had been sticking to my plan I would have been at 26km but that wasn't realistic after being sidelined from an injury for a bit.

So, I start my run, feeling good...going...going...going...a little bit of soreness in my right knee but ok....going...going...going....for an hour...10km away from my house, then the unthinkable happens. My knee starts hurting. At first not too much but I thought it best to turn around. I ran 1km down the road (on bad uneven dirt road unfortunately) and it didn't let up. It was my left leg, not even the one that was hurting a bit on the way out. When I say knee, I don't mean knee though...it was the IT band. The bad thing. The thing that stops my running almost immediately and puts me back to the beginning. So, I stopped and walked. Felt a bit better. Started to run...immediate pain. No good.

So, as I was 10km and an away running from my house, I became so angry. There was absolutely no warning of this in the first 10km. Usually there is something. But no. So, I walked the 10km back to my house since I had no money, no phone, no way of getting back to my house otherwise. Unfortunately, my knee still hurt when I was walking. It took me almost 2 hours to get home and it hurt the whole time. Sad but true. I wondered when I'd be able to run again and felt that my legs might as well be broken.

The next 3 days after were very unpleasant. I was in pain a lot and once in awhile I'd move my leg the wrong way and it would be like electricity through my leg. It still hurts. This is familiar from other years. Fortunately I don't work very much and was off for almost 4 full days after the run. I haven't run since and just yesterday tried a swim. It went ok and so today I did a 4.5km bike ride which irritated it a bit, but it's a good workout for me since I can't run right now. I've still been doing my regular workouts. I have 2 different workout plans that I do after a run or after a swim, isolating different parts (abs or arms usually). I'm going to try running again on Thursday or Friday but this is a huge blow.

So, it's back to the beginning for me. At this point I'm not sure if the marathon is a possibility anymore. I have 5 months left and a long way to go if I have to start at the beginning. It took me 5 months to get to halfway. So depending on where I can start again, I may or may not be doing my marathon. It's a shame when you've come this far, done everything right and because of one stupid mistake (the 5km race) that I didn't even think about, I may miss out on what I've been planning since December. There's always the half I suppose. Right now, I'll just be happy to be able to run again.