Everything Counts

I'm sorry you continue to battle the knee pain Riley. Don't throw Boston out quite yet and get that IT band scraped if you can.

Not trying to be a jerk, as I've run through stuff in the past, but have pretty much always regretted it...

In the real world (outside FRB) it takes at least 2 weeks to recover from a marathon. Maybe more, especially off a really good performance. You ran your fastest marathon ever on a bad knee and weakened immune system due to the virus, so you were very compromised to begin with... your body stepped up on the day of the race and held it together, but it hasn't even had a chance to fully repair itself yet from that effort yet. Throw in a couple medium long runs and an all-out anger mile last week, and your knee probably needs more than a day or two off to heal.

Obviously I don't know how bad the knee pain is, but I'm assuming pretty bad if its causing you to stop and walk.

Just something to consider, as I'm sure you already have a million times.

I agree. Pain, fatigue, sickness etc is the body's way of asking us to slow down or rest a little. If we don't "choose" to listen, then ultimately injury forces the rest upon us. That is my two cents worth, but I am a pretty crappy marathoner, so it ain't worth much. BTW nice job on the marathon. I enjoy following your blog.

I knew this was a very risky run this morning. But I felt ok taking the risk. My thoughts are if I do Boston I want to do well; I don’t want to go and run 2:30 or slower because I’m coming off a lot of downtime and low volume. In order to do well there, I really need to get some volume these next three weeks. BUT, I have to travel for work tomorrow for the next ten days and will struggle to get running in during that time, especially a long run. So, today was the best time to get a long run in before I leave.

I figure if today sets the knee back again then I would likely just call off Boston and take some good downtime while I’m travelling for work, since it’s hard to fit in running anyway. If it didn’t set me back, it would set me up to get a good week in still, despite traveling.

I don’t have anything really on the schedule after Boston, so I can take time after Boston if I make it there, or if I can’t get this training in these next three weeks I can take more time now and not have to rush back. Hence I was willing to take the risk this morning. It will be interesting to see how my knee feels tomorrow, since the inside part that has nagged for 1.5 months now isn’t what hurt this morning, but rather the outside part.

I don’t know much about muscles, tendons, nerves, & stuff like that. But after I got my massage last Wednesday my knee pain had subsided by Friday and I was able to run with very minimal pain, and then after Saturday it felt great (it did hurt a bit during the run for like three miles and then went away). But Sunday I woke up and a muscle on my inner quad felt sore, the kind of sore you get when you haven’t used a muscle for a long time and then taxed it pretty good. So, I wonder if that muscle was really tight (pulling on tendon in knee) and wasn’t really being used, and then the massage loosened it and relieved the knee pain some and got the muscle firing again. But since it hadn’t been fully functional for a while it got sore from a longer run. It was that same muscle that caused me to walk it in this morning, well it caused me to stop and rub it out and then once I tried to go again my outer knee hurt for the first time in this whole ordeal. So does this sound like a plausible theory? Like I said, I’m kind of uneducated on this type of stuff, but that’s my current uneducated theory.

For now, I will play it day to day. But by the end of this week I will make the decision on if I can go at Boston or not. If the answer is no, then more downtime and rest will be scheduled and I will look for a race in the June timeframe maybe or maybe not even do another marathon until the fall.

Yeah it makes sense. I don't know the etiology of your injury, but it sounds like the current problem is some sort of compensation issue. Which makes sense, given the circumstances.

Don't take what I said as heavy criticism. I understand as much as anyone that training is ultimately a series of calculated risks. Sometimes they work out in your favor, and sometimes they don't. I just was pointing out an objective viewpoint, without knowing all the facts.

Here's a refresher on muscles and tendons :-)

http://kidshealth.org/kid/htbw/muscles.html#

I see where you are coming from. Good luck.