Normally I would try to hit the sack early the Saturday before a race day. But not tonight. Tomorrow will be my first DNS, my first no-show at a road race.
In my previous post, I mentioned that I will be going all in for my attempt at a PR-setting half marathon. Well, I indeed went all in but got wiped out.
When the early signs of ITBS came out after my Sunday long run on March 13, my kuya slash coach slash running guru advised me to take it easy henceforth. In fact, he told me to ditch my program and just run every other day. And all these runs should be E-Pace runs. So after that fateful Sunday, my next run was an easy 5.4k the following Tuesday. Since I was to run only every other day, I skipped Wednesday then ran again on Thursday. Unfortunately, when I got to the track, I just couldn’t help doing my usual mile intervals. I know, very low EQ of me. I did my usual 2k warm-up followed by some religious stretching then off I went. I felt great during my first set. In fact, I was averaging 5-7 seconds faster per lap. That’s huge in terms of speed workouts – that meant that my mile intervals were about 20 seconds faster than usual. I wasn’t even pushing myself much. The second set was more or less the same, although I found it difficult to maintain the pace on my last lap. At that point, I had forgotten about my ITBS and was more worried about not finishing my workout due to fatigue. After my 800m jog recovery, I went for my third set. However, less than 200m into my first lap, I felt some pain in my right knee. I decided to stop right away to prevent further damage. After jogging for another 800m pain-free, I did some extensive stretching. I thought the problem had been contained.
I took the following Friday off and decided to run an easy 10k on Saturday. When I got to the track, I ran at a leisurely pace to warm-up my muscles. But alas, I was able to run only 130m. I felt some sharp pain in my right knee that simply stopped me in my tracks (no pun intended). I decided to walk for 2 laps and do some stretching before going at it again. Unfortunately, the same thing happened. In fact, my second attempt didn’t even last 100m. I knew that there was something terribly wrong. I decided to rest for a while, hoping that by some miracle, the pain would go away on my next attempt. However, it was not to be. I made seven attempts in all that night, to no avail. I even tried all the possible combinations – I tried jogging, running at moderate pace and even at inteval pace. Nothing worked. Everytime, I would feel debilitating pain in my right knee just a few seconds into my run. I knew that it was time to throw in the towel.
The following day, I decided to pay a visit to a sports injury clinic in SM Megamall, which I found courtesy of my bud Julius Cervantes of Life is a Highway fame. The doctor I consulted confirmed my worst fears. I had to take a break from running. Surprisingly, I didn’t take the news that badly. After all, running is not my life. Heck, I’m just a recreational runner who gets a kick out of setting PRs. But I will definitely miss the training, most especially the high that I get from pushing myself to the limit – those MSS (masuka-suka) moments after every hard workout. And one thing’s for sure. I’ll be back. Stronger.
Good luck to everyone running the Globe R4H tomorrow. In the meantime, I’ll enjoy my beer.
Lawyer on the Run 