Because now it's getting serious

The Goofy Challenge is now 2 months away. Might as well be 2 seconds from now with the speed that time is ticking. While training has been pretty good, I can't say I'm totally happy about it. I have been plenty busy these past few months so keeping consistency has been difficult. Thankfully this is not the same guy that was training for his first marathon 2 years ago. I wouldn't dare call myself an "old pro" but it is definitely a wiser runner taking the road these days so I take things as they come in stride (pun intended). Like for example:

I'm having knee issues. Again.

Actually, It's the same issues as before. They never really went away but they had certainly subsided. It's funny because right around this time last year I was forced to visit a doctor and get an MRI and all that and here we are again.

3 weeks ago I went out for a long run and had no trouble whatsoever during it. The next morning though... ouch. I had to suspend the second long run scheduled for that day. It took a couple of days for the pain to go away but it did. When I tried to run the next time, I essentially limped for the first 10 minutes or so as the pain went away enough to run "normally". A painful start before everything kind of falls into place and goes away. I was starting to get worried but whatever happened seemed to work itself out. The knee still bothers me. It always does. But now it's back to "normal" levels of discomfort.

While it's not what I had planned, training for this challenge will happen without any speed work and at a much slower pace than anticipated. There will be a tempo run here and there sure, but I can't risk speeding up to the point where I make the knee worse. I have a pace, slow as it is, and I have to live with that so don't expect any PR's for the time being.

It has become pretty apparent that the knee "thing" is not gonna go away on its own and if I intend to keep on running over the long term (and I fully intend to by the way) I'm gonna have to stop, do something about it, recover and continue. What that "something" will be remains to be seen. Sorry if this post is a little "gloom and doom" but I guess that's the whole point of things like this. You show the good and not so good and yes, sometimes the bad but...

In other news: I hope you all got to see the latest trailer for Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens because it is the most awesome thing in the universe. I was pretty excited already but now... forget about it!

So I'm just gonna drop this right here...