One week until the marathon and I'm falling apart. I needed the marathon to have happened about two weeks ago :) 

I've developed a mysterious knee pain. It came the evening of a rest day out of nowhere. Go figure.

I'd run 10 miles the day before and it was a really good run! The next night I was in the kitchen when I got a pain in my knee. I kept thinking it would go away; that my knee needed to crack or something. Not the case. When I got up on Wednesday and it was still hurting, I called the chiro's office. There's a (for lack of a better work) "regular" doc there too. She saw me the next morning. I hadn't run since the 10 miler on Sunday. Of course when I went in nothing was really hurting. I couldn't even really tell her where it had been hurting. She felt around and said that all the ligaments and the knee cap felt fine. Ice, ibuprofen, and maybe a brace.  She said to go ahead and give running a shot in the next day or two.

So after another day of resting it, I headed out yesterday (Saturday) for just 2 miles. It did not go well. The first 1/2 mile was great. I thought I was better. Then I felt a twinge and by mile 1 I stopped to stretch to see if that would help. I turned around and the second mile was maybe a little better. I found that shortening my stride helped a lot. So I guess it wasn't completely awful, but the fact that there was pain is frustrating.

I am so happy that the second 20 miler went so much better than the first. I am trying to keep that thought in my head as I make the decision to not do any running this week. I really did put in almost all of the training miles. I missed a 6 miler today and two 4 milers during the week. I'll miss a few miles this week, but I'm going to do some walking to keep my legs as ready as they can be for Sunday.

I'm considering a cortisone shot, but have read mixed "reviews" on going that route. I think I've finally found a brace that I like (after spending $100+ on 5 or 6 different ones!) and I bought some Salonpas patches.

I know I can do this, but I was hoping the pain would come at the end--not be there from the beginning. I keep telling myself that I delivered two kids with zero pain meds, this really can't be much more painful than that...right?

http://www.cff.org/LWC/CandyJohnson

I'm ready to be done with training. I'm starting to feel burnt out and am ready for a weekend when I don't have to wake up at the crack of dawn. Less than one month until marathon day. I'm super excited about that day. It's all these other days that are getting hard--especially the weekday runs. At least on the weekends, the long runs feel like an accomplishment. More and more often, I find myself looking at the purple bracelet I've worn since making this commitment and reminding myself why I'm doing this.

Of course my ultimate reason is to help find a cure--for everyone with CF and especially for Dean and his family. But in my heart, my biggest reason for doing this isn't for Dean, but for his mom. I'm amazed by her strength. I don't know if I could be as strong as she is if I had to wake up every morning knowing my baby had a sickness I had no control over. I want to do everything I can to help find a cure so she can maybe wake up one morning without that heaviness in her heart.

I'm proud to report that I've met my fundraising goal!! I hope to keep raising money over these next few weeks, but I have to admit that it's nice to know I reached my goal! Thank you to everyone who made a donation! I have some pretty amazing family and friends.

Another 20 miler coming up this Saturday. I'm looking forward to it and am hopeful it will go a little better than the last 20 we did! I've decided that long runs are kind of like giving birth. Right after it's over, you're exhausted and in pain and think you'll never do it again. You quickly forget how bad it was and start looking forward to the next one!

 

http://www.cff.org/LWC/CandyJohnson

I can't believe I ran 20 miles. Over four hours of running. Who in their right mind does that?!! All I can really say about it is that it was HARD! We were visiting my parents in Wisconsin for the holiday weekend. Emily and her family joined us. So at least I didn't have to run it alone. The route was pretty much flat and probably 95% farm roads. All we saw for hours was corn and cows with an occasional car speeding past.

The first 10 miles were really good! We got to the Varley's house at just over 10 miles and I was feeling great. By 15 I was feeling shaky, but had left some peanut butter sandwich cookies with the water jug we'd dropped on a corner and they seemed to help. By 18, the sun was hot and we were jelly-legged. But we managed to finish out the last two miles by setting small goals--run to that stop sign then walk a block or so; run to the end of this street, then another walk. It really wasn't pretty, but we finished it out with a run up a small (although it seemed giant at the time) hill.

We rewarded ourselves with a soak in the hot tub and lunch at Blue Spoon Cafe! Followed by an agonizing 3+ hour drive home. Ugh!

I have to say that this 20 mile run hurt less than the 18 we'd done two weeks before. We had to stop and stretch numerous times then; my legs and back felt really tight. During 20, I didn't experience any of that. Just pure exhaustion the last couple of miles! I'm not sure how I'm going to go for another 6.2, but I'm hoping after the next 20 mile training run, I'll feel more confident. 

http://www.cff.org/LWC/CandyJohnson