Ouch

Have you ever noticed how hard it is to recall exactly how painful something was? You of course remember that it hurt, but the precise feeling of pain is quickly forgotten with the passage of time. Maybe you were just being a big baby and it really didn’t hurt THAT much. When it does return, though, it all comes flooding back to you like the day it first began. Any memory that involves pain is not quickly forgotten.

I am convinced that this is why women give birth to more than one child, why people get tattoos and why I insist on “running through” an injury that is desperately stabbing my body parts for the attention it rightfully deserves. Last Saturday, Adam and I ran a 10K (6.2 miles) in a nearby village and memories of the pain I was once in came flooding back to me.

The funny thing is, I remembered being in this exact same pain—I just couldn’t place the pain in a specific time or location. Injury amnesia, perhaps? It took 12 hours of laying on the couch with various bags of frozen vegetables strapped to my outer knee for 20 minute intervals before I had my much-anticipated “ah-ha moment.” Adam and I both ran a half marathon in May in Indianapolis, which is where this all began. While moseying along the streets of downtown Indy, I made a regrettable rookie mistake.

I was caught up in the moment and instead of focusing on where I was going, I settled intently on being irritated that I was surrounded by runners whose pace was slower than my own. As my frustration grew, my left foot landed on a loose piece of pavement, skewing my leg in an unnatural position and irritating the heck out of my IT band. The IT band is a large bunch of muscle fibers that run from your hip flexors down to your calves. They cross over the bone on the outside of your knee, and when irritated and injured, begin to rub against the bone, creating an intense stabbing pain on the outside of the knee. This began during mile 5 of the 12.1-mile race back in May. I spent the remainder hobble-running and pretending I was not in intense amounts of pain, which I actually was.

After all was said and done, I nursed the injury with frozen veggies, stretched and rested, which seemed to do the trick. Fast forward to Sunday and mile 4 of the 6.2-mile race. The aching, stabbing pain slowly resurfaced and I began mentally assessing the situation. I quickly realized I was making excellent time (8:30 miles) and could easily finish the race in less than 50 minutes if I revved my engines a bit. Revving only made things worse, much worse, and I shifted by focus to simply continuing to move as I was passed by people twice my age and some man speed walking. He was taunting me with his stupid speed walking that far outshone my feeble attempts at running. I was not going to walk, I told myself. I could do anything else but walk.

Since I had established that walking was not an option, I cried instead. The last half mile, I winced, screamed and sobbed underneath my oversized movie star sunglasses until I passed the finish line in just under an hour’s time. As I struggled to stop crying like a hyperventalating15 year-old who was just dumped by her boyfriend, I realized what an idiot I was. In my painful rage, I’d managed to convince myself that finishing a measly 10K in under 60 minutes was more important than preventing further injury to an already painful injury. What was more important, I wondered: finishing a 10K in less than 60 minutes OR being able to run for the rest of my life?

Once my competitive spirit had died down, the answer was painfully obvious—literally. It’s so easy to get caught up in a single moment and to tell yourself that this is the most important goal you’ve set for yourself and not achieving it would be disastrous. Really? A 10K is the most important thing I had going for me that day? No, not really, but it was easy to tell myself that while watching a person pass me WALKING. He may have been walking quickly, but he was still walking. That hurts the old ego, no matter how you spin it.

Besides, when did I become so tough? I am a humongous baby. I cry bloody murder over paper cuts, stubbed toes and anything else that reaches my tremendously low pain threshold, yet somehow I convinced myself to power through pain that made me cry (which I rarely do, also)? I need to make up my mind on this whole being a baby thing.