It is a battlefield out there on the pavement.  It is a war between me and running.  I know I once talked about how most people have a love/hate relationship with running.  Well, today I wasn’t feeling the love with running.  No, actually, we went to war.

First of all, I dreaded getting up the minute my alarm clock went off.  Wait, that happens all the time, right?  Well, today was a bit different.  I had more of a right to feel some lack of love towards running.  You see, I had just run a half-marathon on Thursday.  You know… gobble, gobble.  That was just 2 days ago.  Since my running buddy and I decided to be slackers and not run an extra 3 miles that day to fulfill our training requirement of 16 miles for the week, we had to do it today.  Actually, we didn’t HAVE to.  One of our running coaches told us that we would be crazy to do that and one of the other running coaches said to go for it as long as we took it nice and slow.  So, my running buddy who is way too hard-core for this ragged, old mommy made the decision to run the 16.  Guess what?  This mommy is a bit competitive so she had to run 16 too.  Therefore, when I woke up this morning I was already not so happy.

Well, this little thing I call “running” must have known I was getting a little bit of that hate churning up inside because she decided to throw some punches.  Yep, at mile 6 she decided to knock me down.  It wasn’t a very graceful fall either.  I nearly knocked my running buddies down as I stumbled over a crack in the sidewalk.  Yep, I crashed and burned right on my knees.  If you are runner then you know that knees are precious commodities.  My knees were bleeding and my palms were burning with road rash as I struggled to stand up (thanks to the help of my buddies who actually stopped to make sure I was okay).  Fortunately, one of the running coaches was with us, but I told them to go on ahead and that I would walk back to my car.  They could just check on me after they made it to the turnaround point and headed back in my direction.  So, after clearly stating that I was okay and that I could walk just fine, they headed off in one direction while I limped off in the other direction.  Oh, did I mention that I was bawling my eyes out?  Not because I was in pain, but because I felt defeated.  Running had won this battle… no, what was that stirring up inside of me?  Maybe a mix of madness, ego and pride… not sure, but it caused me to stop in my tracks and turn around.  Slowly I started running again.  My left knee gave a little, but once I got going it actually felt better to run then it did to walk.  As I ran to meet up with my buddies, I couldn’t help but think that maybe I was making a mistake.  I didn’t want to get injured this late in the game, but I also didn’t want to walk away and be defeated.  I wanted to win this war!

I met back up with my buddies and we all made the full distance together.  At the end, I was so thankful I had continued because I knew I would have regretted it if I didn’t.  Well, I wasn’t totally thankful because I could barely bend my left leg and I was walking around like I had just gotten off a horse.  At least the kind lady at Starbucks was nice enough to give me a bag of ice that I strategically placed on my knees while driving.  Oh, the driving part.  Yeah, the pain was a bit excruciating especially when I had to push in the clutch to shift.  I was yelling at the cars in front of me to stop putting on their freakin’ brakes!  Why couldn’t they just drive!

So, I am sitting here still slightly sore, but at least it is only my legs and not my pride.