The Life of a Runner

So I wake up this morning, climb out of bed (and I mean climb, it’s quite a tall bed for a short girl like me), put my feet on the ground, take a step and… oh no it didn’t! My left knee was sore as all get out! Somewhere between raving about what a great run I had and counting sheep last night my knee decided to play a trick on me.

So grumbling, I took some ibuprofen, grabbed an ice pack from the fridge and balanced my bowl of cereal while letting the offending knee get nice and cold. Finished, limped to my room and let it freeze a little longer while I read the Good Book. It still wasn’t happy with me, so I took a fresh ice pack to work.

While typing away, I rotated the ice pack on and off. My office mate came in about an hour later and I did my best to hide the evidence. He asked me how my run went (I’d eagerly told him yesterday how I’d been looking forward to it) and I raved about how great it was. He asked me how my knees were holding up! I swear, people can read my mind! I just mumbled that they were doing fine. Don’t give me that, they had been doing just fine.

A couple hours later, my email box tells me I have a message. It’s from the boss of the bosses. He’s the one that recruited me for the relay team (Santa Barbara marathon in November). He proudly announces that he’s running 8:42 a mile. I sigh in frustration. I’m going to be the youngest person on the team doing the shortest leg and going the slowest! What’s a geek girl to do!?!

The moral of the story is... if you decide to take up the wonderful sport of running, you will have days like this. You'll have awesome runs followed by days of aches and pains. No matter what you do and how much you prepare and listen to your body, it will still happen. Don't be frustrated, it's natural. Sometimes it's just your body's way of telling you that you did a good job or it's telling you that you need to back off. Learning to tell the difference is key to staying healthy.

P.S. The knee is feeling a lot better this evening ;)