Mile 12

Mile 12. The last full mile in a half marathon. And the mile that did me in this past Saturday.

I suppose we should rewind to Saturday itself. When I woke up and thought to myself, “Wow only 16 miles today. I’ll just fly through this run and enjoy the rest of my day.”

Right.

I certainly flew through the first 12. And then something strange happened.

Let me insert a quick side note here. Of the 8 years that I played volleyball, I had a lot of injuries. Some bad (fractured vertebrae)  and some mild. But never my knees. I always had an extreme fear of injuring my knees, probably from seeing so many torn ACLs/MCLs/Meniscuses, etc.

me playing vball 

my knee.

So of course, 5 weeks out from the New York Marathon and 4 miles from home, something goes wrong with my knee. And without much of an option, I limped/jogged/hobbled/swore/walked/cried/crawled the whole way back home.

Before I get you guys too sucked into this emotional roller coaster of a soap opera episode, let’s fast-forward to today, when my knee already feels a lot better.   A lot.

I will be OK.

Lucky for me, Andrew’s uncle is a fantastic doctor. Who quickly diagnosed me that same night. Nothing is torn, it isn't swollen. The most likely diagnosis is Bursitis, which is:

Bursitis (bur-SY-tis) is a painful condition that affects the small fluid-filled pads — called bursae (bur-SEE) — that act as cushions among your bones and the tendons and muscles near your joints. Bursitis occurs when bursae become inflamed.

The most common locations for bursitis are in the shoulder, elbow and hip. But you can also have bursitis by your knee, heel and the base of your big toe. Bursitis often occurs near joints that perform frequent repetitive motion.

So what do I do? I stretch, I rest, I take/eat anti-inflammatory things in all forms. I keep the joint moving with some cross-training, and I ice multiple times a day. I don’t run.

my work ice pack

Ok, I can do that. 

So the rest of the weekend pretty much involved the above activities. I was surprised by the fact that at no point following ‘the injury’ did I really freak out and have a sobbing meltdown. I sent a semi-frantic email to my coach, who agreed that we should meet for lunch this week to re-evaluate.

I walked down to the lake that afternoon, and sat and wrote for awhile.

I also read multiple articles on foods that help to relieve inflammation, and immediately went to the store to buy every anti-inflammatory food that I could get my hands on. In all seriousness, I think that they’re helping. I cut out caffeine from my diet for the week as well, since that has been known to aggravate inflammation.

So as of yesterday it’s a lot of green tea, berries, pineapple, sweet potatoes, avocados, broccoli, etc. Supposedly these two spices are suppose to come in handy as well:

putting both in every food possible.

So there we have it.  

I’ll be fine, I’m confident.

In other news, Happy October 1! It was so chilly this morning that I wore a sweater to work (first of the fall) and even had to turn on my heat in my car for the first time in months. It felt great!

Cheers to a health, healing week!