One Step Back....

Sometimes they say you have to take one step back to take 2 steps forward, right? Well, I have decided to take off a few days because I have been dealing with a left knee irritation (I can’t even call this an injury) for the past 10 days. After the Ft. Lauderdale marathon, I took off 6 days before attempting to run again. I ran 5 miles without any problems. I didn’t run again for another 5 days, but this time, I ran for 10 miles. I had no problems during the run, but when I went inside my house and sat to eat breakfast, I noticed that my left kneecap felt sore, and then really started to stiffen up. I took an anti-inflammatory, iced my knee and the symptoms were gone by the end of the day. The next morning, I felt absolutely nothing at my knee…everything seemed to be back to normal. I decided to run the following day, and again I felt perfect at the knee, but when I got to the 10th mile, it started to bother me, so I decided to walk the rest of the way home…just being very cautious. It is one of those things that if it happened during a race, I could’ve just run through it, but since this wasn’t the case, it didn’t feel like it was worth it. So again, I followed my same treatment as a few days ago, and again it was completely gone by the next day.
I decided that this week I would run shorter distances, and run slower, so as not to put too much pounding on my knees. The discomfort has not been as bad after the runs, but I’m still getting that stiffness under the kneecap after I finish…. So I feel like I had to make a decision on my running…. But…..
I usually can’t think straight when it comes to myself. Other people? Yes. I do that for a living, and I feel completely comfortable making decisions for others and telling them what to do, when to do it and how long to stay away from their training routine. But I just think that I have a very difficult time making decisions because I love to run (just like everybody else that‘s a runner) so your judgement gets a little cloudy when you are the patient. So you know what I have to do?
I thought of the last patient I treated, with a similar problem to myself, and look at how I treated that person, and I have decided that is how I will deal with my problem…..crazy, huh? So, with that said, I will not be running tomorrow morning; instead I will be doing the bike for about 90 min. (the same length of my scheduled run). I will not attempt to run until Tuesday at the earliest, and I will substitute all of my runs for bike sessions until I am fully back to normal. Will keep you updated.