Oh, no. Here comes the pain again...

I am now more than halfway through what seems like the most ridiculous training program of all time (sorry, Hal, I love you, but you’re killing me). I was very proud of myself for making it through my first 50-mile week, but alas, not unscathed.

I did a 19-mile run on Sunday which took an eternity thanks to a million hills (welcome to San Francisco). I could feel my knee tightening up a little, but nothing crazy, so I did what any runner would do: ignored it and kept going.

My training schedule called for a 4-mile recovery run on Monday, but I decided to give myself the day off to be safe, and get some ART done at the Chiropractor (where they rub my IT band with a metal thing until my leg is all black and blue—but hey, whatever works!).

Tuesday I went out for a 10-mile run and 3.5 miles into it, when I got to the Golden Gate Bridge, the pain started again. I could feel the side of my left knee tightening, where the IT band attaches to the bone. My right knee was sore (courtesy of patellofemoral syndrome, but that pain I can live with). I decided to cut my run short and stopped after 7 miles. I don’t even want to describe what I was feeling, I’m sure you can imagine. I did not come all this way to get obliterated when I’m so close to the final stretch! No way.

I went in to see my sports medicine doctor today and she made it very clear that she did not approve of my training program (great). My program has me building up mileage steadily before dropping it for an easier, “back off” week, and then going up again with a bang for a 50-mile week, then another 50-mile week, then back down to 38 miles. This goes on until I’m at 60-mile weeks (!).

Apparently, that is not the best way to do it. In fact, it’s a terrible way to do it! Whaaaat!?! According to my doctor, I need to be building up gradually, increasing the distance of my weekly runs and my weekend runs by a mile at a time or so. Alternating between 20-mile Sundays and 12-mile Sundays? Not a good idea. My long term goal, supposedly, is to have a year-long training program, where I can slowly build my strength, fitness, and endurance to the point where I’m pretty much always training at a high level. Hmmm…

So now what? I mean, I’m happy to tweak my program and follow her recommendations, but my race is in less than 2 months!

I ended up getting a cortisone shot on my (inflamed) bursa, on the side of my left knee. I don’t mind shots and it only hurt for a few seconds. I felt fine walking around afterwards and took the bus back to the office. An hour later, after the lidocaine wore off, the pain started, a pain similar to the worst IT Band inflammation I ever felt—back in college, when I had to take a year off from running. This pain is no joke. It means business. There is no running through this kind of pain.

I couldn’t resist the urge to freak myself out even more by doing Google searches on cortisone shots and possible adverse reactions. Oh boy. Bad idea.

I called the doctor and she said it should go away in a few days. She sounded very calm and matter-of-fact about it. We’ll see how long I can delay the onset of sheer panic and all out freak-outage…