I learned a valuable lesson this past month. I've preached before the importance of finding a good pair of running shoes and sticking with them. I'm a perfect example of why. As most of you know I have a history of knee problems. Two of my three marathons I had to have steroid injections just so I could finish. Back in March I went and saw a specialist and found out my problem was my feet, so I had custom insoles made.
I was pleasantly surprised when the insoles fixed my knee problems. When it was time for new shoes, I felt with the insoles I no longer needed stability. Boy was I wrong!
The knee pain started pretty early but I was in denial. I ignored the pain that was starting to rear its ugly head because I didn't want to admit where it was headed. I kept wishing it away. After my runs I would ice my knee. I kept my mouth shut and never complianed about what was happening. On my 15.5mi run I tripped and busted my knees. During my run, I felt the familiar twinge and promised myself I would take a few days off and baby it. Which is exactly what I did. Then that following weekend I had a half marathon. At this point I didn't realize I had the brusitis. I pushed through the challenging course and ended up winning overall female.
During that run the pain got worse and I could no longer ignore what was happening. That Monday morning the brusitis decided it was really going to rear its ugly head. My doctor told me when I fell I broke a bursa sack in my knee and the half marathon was the straw that broke the camel's back. I could no longer ignore what was happening. I was finally forced into taking some time off. So I kept my knee tightly wrapped and was consistantly icing it down. About a week later I attempted a run. From the very first step it was extremely painful. I kept thinking as soon as my body warmed up, it would feel better. But I was wrong and .75mi in I made the decision to turn around. I talked to my doctor about it and he told me to keep resting, keep it wrapped, keep icing it and if it wasn't better in another week then we may want to consider another steroid injection so I could finish my marathon.
This was very discouraging. I didn't and don't want my goal for this marathon to be "just finish", I have my eyes set on BQing (Qualifying for Boston) in March and that won't happen if I can't do a marathon where I can actually PR (Personal Record). The thought at this point still had not occured to me about my new shoes. I was so use to a knee injury occuring every time I get over 15mi that I didn't think it could be my shoes. So I rested another week and then ran 3mi, the brusitis was healed and I was able to get through it relatively pain free. However afterwards, not so much. Walking up and down my steps and driving my Jeep was excruciating. So I finally gave into the realization that I was going to need another injection, just so I could finish my marathon. I made my appointment with my Sports Medicine Doctor and went back to resting and icing. The weekend before my appointment, my son and I had our 5k race.
The competitor in me wanted to race it so bad so my husband said he would run with Aiden while I raced it and after I finished I would come back and finish Aiden's race with him. My knee held out pretty well until after the race. This is when I felt my Sub 4 slipping away. I mean if I can't run 4.5mi pain free, how was I going to run 26.2? So with my appointment set for Thursday, I knew there was no way out of the injection.
On that Monday I was at the gym, pedaling away on the incumbent bike, when a thought occured to me. What if its my shoes? I wasn't having any problems until I switched to these shoes.
So I decided the next day, I was going to test my theory. I decided to go back to the gym and run on the dreadmill. I figured I would play it safe. I could make sure and keep my pace at a nice easy speed, no hills and most importantly; if I ran into any problems with my knee I could just hop off and not have to worry about how I was going to make it home. So I laced up my old shoes and I ran 6 PAIN FREE miles!!!
I could not believe it. I was in total shock, I could not believe that changing back to my old shoes could make such a huge ddifference with just one run. I wanted to play it safe so I went home and iced my knee and I even took the next day off. I kept waiting for the pain to rear its ugly head but it didn't. I wanted to push myself a little further and see if I had actually found the answer. So I set off early Thursday morning and ran an easy pace 9 miler...PAIN FREE!!!!
I was ecstatic! I knew I had found the answer to my problem. I had planned on running 10mi the next day but my son got sick and I had to postpone my run to Saturday morning when my husband would be home to take care of little man.
My training schedule called for 16mi at my marathon race pace. I didn't want to push myself to hard, to fast; so I decided I would take it one mile at a time and do my best to at least keep it a sub 10 pace. That is exactly what I did. There were times I would look at my Garmin and I was sub 9 and other times I was barely sub 10. As I got closer to the 16mi a huge grin spread across my face.
My confidence was BACK! I knew I was going to be able to reach my goal. I may not get my sub 4 next month but I feel confident enough that I will PR. At the end of my run, I felt strong enough that I could have ran another 10mi. I can not wait to kill this next marathon. T-minus 19 days. Bring it Savannah! I'm ready for you!!!!
