I am so bad at keeping up with the blog. This is only about two months late.
Well, the awesomeness wore off pretty fast. In my haste to become a runner, I forgot about the fact that my knees were pretty banged up in former days. My left kneecap doesn’t track properly, and it wasn’t too happy with my idea of pounding pavement for several miles. It turned out that I inflamed the cartilage in both knees (the left much worse than the right), and I got to spend some time getting familiar with crutches. That was quite a buzzkill. The first week really sucked, mostly because I couldn’t stay off my feet as much as I needed to, but also because I wasn’t ready to give up on running. We went to Disneyland on April 20th and I had to rent one of the electric carts in order to get around. Putting around on the cart made me determined to keep exercising, because I don’t want to end up having to rely on one of those things to get around when I’m old. No thanks.
The kind of funny thing is that my time wasn’t all that bad. Even after nearly dying in the middle of the race my time was 52 minutes for 8k, so I felt relatively okay. I got to participate in a run to benefit abuse victims, which is a subject that is very sensitive for me (unfortunately, far too many people are victims of abuse, including one that is too painful to discuss). I ended up 15th out of my age group and, most importantly, did not die.
After a few weeks of recovery, I did get back into running. I got some knee supports to keep the kneecaps in place. I bought new shoes at Phidippides in Encino, and I highly recommend them if you don’t know what kind of running shoe to buy. They were extraordinarily helpful, taking the time to watch me run and comparing several kinds of shoes until I found one that worked well. I’m back to running 5 miles and my knees have decided to cooperate, though it seems a tenuous relationship at best. I’m looking forward to the Disneyland Half Marathon in August and whatever lies beyond!
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