STUPID!!!!!

UHF is one of my favorite movies of all time. If you haven't seen it, you're missing out!!

STUPID!!!! That's what the voice in my head is yelling at me right now.

So I couldn't run last week. Since I've dealt with the ups and downs of training, I deal with that better than I used to. A little. I still get mopey and moody when I can't run, but I don't freak out about future races and future running like I used to. Last week, the weather was beautiful, so I looked at it as a chance to do some extra biking.

Monday I did 25ish miles on my own, mostly in an easy gear - except when I got in an impromptu race with this guy who passed me. There I was, riding easy on the flat bike path like a good little injured triathlete, and this guy flew by me. Sooo, I decided to challenge myself for a minute and see if I could catch him. I shifted into a harder gear, and not only did I catch him, I passed him. What's he do? He gets up behind me and absolutely sucks on my wheel for a good 2 miles. As soon as I slowed down for a second, he flew by me. I tried to catch him again but got stuck at an intersection and couldn't do it.

Stephanie Tanner says, "HOW RUDE!!"

That led to a discovery.....I'm a much stronger cyclist than I was last year. (Thank you, hours on the trainer!! UHF was one of the movies that got me through a boring trainer ride!!) I can ride in a higher gear (err...lower? I still get the terms mixed up!!) Two days later, I met up with a new(ish) biking friend - I remember her from a few group rides last year but never really talked to her much - and we did an easy 25. It felt awesome.

So, since that felt great, and since most of my Pig training friends were doing 20 mile runs on Saturday and I was madly jealous, I decided to bump up the mileage a notch. Saturday, I did 40. It was one of my faster rides ever. I kept it above 17 mph for most of the ride, and it felt easy, until I ran into some hills. (Yeah, I planned a ride that was half flat, half hills, on the wrong half!!) Since I rode from home, I had a 300 foot hill climb toward the end, which is unavoidable when you live uphill from most everything. My knee felt a little sore, but no biggie.

The next day was a group ride. I hadn't totally planned on it, since it was Easter and the group didn't figure out the time or route until pretty much the last minute. But when it turned out I could make it, I jumped on it. I miss group rides SO MUCH. They were doing an hour out and back, but it was a flat flat route (those do exist in Cincinnati!) and most of the cyclists are also runners who had ran 20 the day before, so nobody would be pushing the speed. I could do an easy ride, right? Oh, and since they were meeting up 6 miles from my house, I could ride there and back, too. Sure!

The ride was NOT easy. Well, the out was easy. Super easy. Because we were on the nice end of 15 mph winds. The 17 miles back was pure hell into that headwind. My legs were shot by the end of it; thankfully I got a ride home (in a car, not on a bike) because I was too fried to ride uphill back home.

So, two decently hard 40 mile rides within 24 hours. And three days later, I feel like Nancy Kerrigan. My left knee (left leg is also the site of the muscle strain) feels like someone took a baseball bat to it. It HURTS. And all because I was too dumb to realize that amping up the cycling could probably lend itself to an overuse injury as well. I'm all kinds of hobbly and I can't quite be sure which injury is causing it more. I tried to swim - to freaking SWIM - yesterday, and swimming hurt.

The plan now is to go back to the massage therapist today - I booked an appointment with him before all the knee stuff, to give him a chance to work on more of me than just the left leg (he spend an hour and a half on it last week), and now he'll probably have to focus most of his time on that leg AGAIN. Then I'm going to see a doc at the local running store's free injury clinic.

I'm still decently optimistic - my self-diagnoses are either patellar tendonitis or bursitis, and I'm half hoping that this is one of those things that a shot in the knee might relieve. I soooo want to get back to running!!

I'll be careful from now on. I promise.