Here’s a little known fact about me — I very rarely plan my routes. I usually just have a general mileage range in mind and then run wherever I feel like it. I do have certain routes that I know the exact mileage of and have actually been sticking to them lately in my recovery process, but today was different — it was time to run with absolutely no plans beyond getting to at least 6 miles.
So instead of starting from home, I drove to the local middle school to start my route. Then the goals starting coming to mind — hit some long hills, both uphill and downhill. Considering three months ago I was told to avoid hills as much as possible, I wanted to go out of my way if I had to in order to run hills.
Another goal was to not worry about my time at all. When I looked at my watch I made a promise to myself to just look at the distance and avoid looking at the current pace or time elapsed.
I also wanted to make sure I enjoyed this run — for the first time in a while I stopped and took several pictures, including this pony behind the Elks National Home in Bedford:
Things were going great and a few miles into it I decided I needed to do something to help my mind — run the hill where the pain started in October. So I ventured to that part of town and stopped and took this picture of it:
I posted it to Twitter with this simple message: “The hill where my knee pain started 5 months ago. Time to make it mine.”
I made it mine. And I made this entire 6.2-mile run mine. I ran it like I wanted today. I had fun. I didn’t think about my knee. I hit so many little goals along the way that I almost let my emotions get to me. It was like the finishing line of a big race.
Today I crossed a hurdle — I’m not injured anymore; I’m not in recovery either; and while I am training for a 10k in a couple of weeks, I am officially ready for the rest of the year with all these lessons learned in my brain ready to be utilized. I am, as many people on Daily Mile keep telling me, back.
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