An Unexpected Change of Plans

“You must listen to your body. Run through annoyance but not through pain.” -Dr. George Sheehan

Yesterday was a very rough day for me. I was anticipating running the SC 24 hr track race in hopes of logging 150 miles and having a shot at qualifying for the U.S. Men's team; unfortunately, I was not able to race due to a knee injury. Of course, I had it all planned out and I knew I'd be able to build off of the 120 miles I ran at Delirium.

About 3 weeks ago I completed a great track workout that consisted of 2 mile, 1 mile, 800 and then 2x400 with each distance at a faster pace.  It was the first true track workout I had done in a few weeks, and I was extremely happy with it.  My body felt great and responded well considering it was just over a week after Delirium.  About 4-5 hrs after I finished the workout, I stood up at my desk at work and could barely walk because the inside of my knee was hurting so badly.  I thought it was just sore so I took a couple of days off expecting it to get better.

Over the next couple of weeks my knee was starting to feel better, so last Saturday I decided to go on a test run. I knew that if it hurt during that run that I would have to drop out of the 24 hr race. Sadly, I was only able to run 7 miles before it started to hurt so I made the difficult decision to pull out of the race.

Looking ahead, I really need to make sure I fully recover from this injury. I am taking another complete week off from running and will reevaluate the situation next weekend. Hopefully after that I can start running again. As far as my racing schedule, I would really like to my next race to be either the Blind Pig 100 (April 12th) or Fort Clinch 100 (April 26th).  I am leaning towards running the Fort Clinch 100 simply because it will give me an additional 2 weeks of training.


I hate not being able to run and I am going stir crazy but hopefully taking an extended break will really let me recover so I can have a big rest of the year running.