Now, I really should have known knees would cause me trouble based on genetics. I distinctly remember when I was little, watching my paternal grandfather limp around on his notoriously bad knees. But noooo I'm young right? Only 28 (at the time of the injury at least)! No knee problems!
Ah, how naive. At this point I was still only running on moms treadmill, still no more than 4 minutes at a time but the runs as a whole being about 50 minutes long. I was also still not stretching prior to my runs. It's not that I didn't know I should - I'd just get so excited to hit that start button that I'd forget. Then the pain started. At first it would only appear after a run, and really not all that bad. It felt like pressure or water behind the knee cap or to the outside of the knee. Externally there was nothing to look at. Inside though the pressure wanted to drive my crazy.
I googled "running knee pain" rather than going to a doctor and asking about it. You'll see this is a reoccurring theme with me. The solutions I came up with included knee braces (one from Target and two from the dollar store), ice, rest, multivitamins, glucosamine and chondroitin supplements, and stretching. Ahhh stretching, I'm sorry I neglected you for so long! I dealt with achey, pressure filled knees for almost a month. It felt like soooo much longer! On March 2nd I posted the following to Facebook:
Slowly slowly slowly getting better at this running thing. Knees are finally starting to behave and allow me to run on schedule and Nike+ says my average time was 17'12"/mile tonight. Have to get that to 16'/mile for Disney but it's still good progress!I sure wish that would have lasted. Instead I ran a week later and my left knee felt pretty bad, so I decided finally that I would take a week off from my training, let them heal up properly, then give it another go.
The best of intentions, let me tell you. The day after I decided to let my knees rest up I accidentally locked myself out of my house. None of the neighbors I knew were home and I'm not the most social creature so I decided instead of knocking on a strangers door I would walk to my chiropractors office and call my mom. Only a mile, I thought. Thankfully I still had my coat on since I'd just gotten home so I started walking. About half way to my destination I knew my knee wasn't going to like it, but as I'd dealt with the pain thus far I figured it would be fine once I got home and iced it. Eventually I made it to (somewhat ironically) a physical therapists office, as my chiropractor ended up being closed for the evening and I called my mom. She picked me up, let me back into my house, and I put on a brave face as she left while my knee felt like it wanted to detach itself from my body. Holy balls. It hurt. A lot. I cried, and then I took my week off from running.
As quickly as the knee pain started it seemed to disappear. After my week off from running I was nervous as heck to try again. The pain from the night I was locked out was all too clear in my memory. Surprisingly it didn't hurt. Since that week off my knee has only bothered me once since (knock on wood) and I blame that on being so caught up in the race environment that I forgot to stretch. WOOHOO! Two injuries down! How many to go?
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