Lost For a Few Weeks...

I'm not sure if anyone was checking this during the week awaiting a new posting. Whatever the case may be, there's a very good reason for the lack of new info. I went out for some easy miles last Tuesday, and felt some pretty significant pain in my knee. I'm not sure about the source of this pain, but I am quite accustomed to running with/through muscular issues. What I was feeling last week was different - I'm guessing a sprain/strain of the MCL or issues with the medial meniscus.

I effectively took two weeks off, and went out on a little walk/hike/run today for the first time since my Longs effort on the 10th. I did so knowing that I would be hyper-sensitive to any pain, twinges, or 'off' feelings in the knee as I test things out. That said, my knee seemed (just) okay this evening with a few instances where things felt a bit unusual. I'm going to slowly work into it this week, while spending lots of time with the foam-roller and trigger-point ball.

In the meantime, I've been doing my best to hit the gym and keep active. It's a total long-shot, but I am still being blindly optimistic with regard to my hopes of running the North Face 50 while I'm back in Milwaukee next month. That gives me three weeks to test the knee out, recover some fitness, and make a game time decision on whether or not I am capable of running the race. I'm trying not to get my hopes up, but I am fully aware of how incredibly stubborn I can be. I just need to use sound judgement over the following three weeks, and really pay attention to my body as things hopefully progress. If I do end up running this race, it will be with an outward appearance of calm and an inner tank full of anger...

"Why anger," you ask? There are several reasons for this, none of which I will dive into very extensively. In short, I tend to get depressed and pretty upset when I am unable to run for any extended period of time. Likewise, I think anger makes good running fuel if you know how to utilize it and control it during a race. I am a very positive person overall, but I am not without my fair share of piss-n-vinegar, to coin a phrase. To top things off, my recent Tool kick has added a musical-match to the fire. I'm just hoping that I have the opportunity to pour some of this out over the 50-miles of Wisconsin kettle-terrain. We shall see...

Anyway, I don't have many pictures to speak of. I'll edit this post later to expound upon some of my non-running exploits from the past week or so. Until then, you'll have to make due with a short post and these YouTube links.