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