Well, there's another day that just drifted away. They slip past almost unnoticed, one by one by one. And they're busy days, full of work and family and everything else that matters. Until you suddenly sit up and think, hey, it's nearly the end of April, that's another month lost by stealth, another month without running. And you start to realize what it means, that yet another season is just going to pass you by. It's a cold feeling in the pit of your gut, to face up to the fact that all those races you had hoped to enter for the first time in, what, 3 years? will be run without you. Oh, just checked, 4 years. This will be my 4th year without a single race from the spring/summer program. But it's not even the racing, or the CI of a sub 6 minute mile before Lori - it's the horrible thought that I haven't run since early February. What? How? Why? And I've worked on the phlegmatic and I've worked on the philosophical and I've worked on the optimistic and I've done all the XXXXing boring exercises that the physio reckoned would sort out this sore knee in 8 weeks.... and you start to lose hope when there's just no traction, that, actually, it's not improving, that it's not making a difference, that, if anything, it's getting worse. Going down stairs, going up stairs, any kind of knee bend, but especially, yikes, especially, the dreaded pistol squat, gives the distinct impression that someone is trying to lever off my kneecap with a crowbar. Knee tracking problems, apparently. Weak quad muscles, they reckon. But giving it a name and a diagnosis and a whole heap of corrective strengthening exercises hasn't changed a damn thing. And so the sense of something slipping away increases. Oh, I plug away. I keep doing the fitball core stuff, if only because a six pack at my age is no small achievement. And I stand dutifully on the slant board, though more out of habit that any sense that it will be of any immediate use. But it's so frustrating, because it seemed so close to realizing the dream of just being able to run and run and run...
Sorry, very depressing post. Needed to get it off my chest.