...Gulp...

About 3 years ago I decided to run the Chicago marathon. I started my training and everything was going wonderfully. I was regularly running-about 4x a week-and often I would go out for 5, 6, 7, even 8 miles without blinking. My long runs on the weekends climbed to a high of 19 miles. All of this I did with ease, the hardest thing was getting going again after walking a few minutes. Well, unfortunately about 4 weeks before the marathon I was doing a routine run and my knee started to hurt the last few miles. When I was nearing the end, all of a sudden, my knee hurt so badly I could barely take another step. John had gone ahead to finish the run and when he came back, he found my limping along, crying because my knee was in such pain. I tried to rest my knee and take it easy, but it didn't help. When the marathon came along, I decided to try and go for it but had to drop out after 14.5 miles literally crying and sobbing, barely able to walk. When I sought medical attention, I was told I had a common problem to runners called ITB syndrome. Basically a ligament running from hip to knee became tight and thus put strain on my knee, which is why I was having pain. Sometimes this can get so bad the knee caps are literally pulled out of joints with each step. I spent the next year trying to recover from my IT injury. I tried every single treatment known to man. Honestly, if there was something some where that said it would help IT pain, I tried it. I was never able to regain my running to where it had been. The most I was able to do was about 2 miles. I decided that although I missed running so much sometimes I would cry, if I could just get out and run any distance on a regular basis I would be happy.

When I was halfway through my pregnancy I stopped running altogether. I didn't resume it until Anne was 6 weeks old-at that point I had taken almost 6 months off completely. I started back excruciatingly slow, running only half mile increments at a time. Over the past year I have been able to regain almost all of my running. And recently I have run 4 and 5 miles with complete ease and no pain in my knee (knock on wood) which I have not experienced in almost 3 years.

Yesterday I took a big leap of faith and signed John and I up for a race on Labor Day. This is a race we have done in the past and really enjoyed. And here comes the **gulp** It is 10 miles long! I am really taking a chance here that my fragile body and knees can handle this distance. I am feeling pretty confident since I haven't really had any IT problems since Anne was born. John and I are really looking forward to the training we'll do to prepare for this race and John especially can't wait to run it. Wish us luck and if you are a praying type, please pray for my knee and physical ability-that I will indeed be able to run this race pain free in 3 months.