I AM BROKEN

:'(

Well, unfortunately I've come to the point where I have to admit I'm broken and I apparently can't fix it myself. After my decent week back in early May I played soccer with Brandon outside on the field. A good hour and half worth of slinging the ball around. It was fun, I didn't feel anything too bad while playing, although I'll admit my knees ached with some vigorous twisting to kick the ball hard. The rest of the day I felt more or less fine. Legs a little worn, but nothing major.

Something that has been weird about my recent struggles is how when I fuck something up it doesn't affect me right away. Often it will take two or three days before it is at its worst. Almost like the delayed muscle soreness after a marathon. Anyways, two days later I was pretty much limping. It was really frustrating. I wasn't even really running, I was just kicking a soccer ball. The feelings were pretty much the same though. I took the whole week off and went nine days without a run.

When I got back to it I noticed I was even more out of shape. It's pretty frustrating to have 9:15/mile feel hard and leave you panting. By my second run back my legs revolted again. It was at this point I called it. Something needs to be done! My hamstring theory didn't really work. My hamstring is much better, still a little tight, but that didn't work at all. So something else is going on.

Anyways, there is probably some sort of muscular-skeletal imbalance. Weak hips or overpowering quads or who the fuck knows. Something is jacked up and it's primarily affecting my knees. The my knees themselves feel fine, they don't hurt when I run or anything. So I don't think it is anything with the knees themselves. But whatever is out of whack is putting a lot of strain on the muscles and ligaments around my knees so afterward they swell up and complain.

It kind of makes sense, because the imbalance wouldn't really get better by taking time off. Maybe if I lay in bed until I withered to nothing and restarted from scratch it would. However, appealing as that may be, it is not an option! So it's off to the doctor to get referred to a specialist and then hopefully get some sort of physical therapy or exercises to help fix what is wrong. I just want to know what is wrong. Hopefully it won't be too hard for them to figure out.

That's it in a nutshell. I need to schedule the appointment but I'm afraid of how much this is going to cost. I've had a lot of expenses recently, and although I have plenty of savings, I don't really feel like blowing a ton of money. Hopefully must of it can fall under normal visits to the doctor/specialist, which are just co-pays of something like $30/ea. Whatever it is though, I'll bit the bullet and do it I guess. Running is key to me staying in shape and a big part of my social life, so I'll miss it even if I won't miss it... if you catch my drift.

Guess what? I have a race tomorrow! Yay! Probably my last one for a long time. It's the Rum Run, year FIVE. Holy shit! You know what's great? I'm totally going to fun run it. I'm not going to give a single shit. Just enjoy myself and hobble along at whatever is easy. Should be fun. Actually kind of looking forward to it... no pressure!

Anyways, posts to this blog will probably become much less frequent. Not that anybody reads it. I'll keep you abreast on the whole diagnosis/rehab thing though. Just about every running blog ever has that stage, so onward I go!