How Much is Enough?

After I signed up for my first half marathon in November, it dawned on me that I would need to be able to run 13.1 miles in less than four months. At that point, I was probably doing 3 to 5 miles on a given run, so extending that total another eight miles seemed almost insurmountable. On more than one occasion, I thought that I cannot possibly run a half marathon and I'm only going to make a fool of myself. After talking to a few friends who had completed a half, I began to come around to the notion that I could complete a half marathon. I found myself bragging that I had signed up for the race, which usually garnered responses like "Wow, that's amazing." Past a certain point, I decided that failing was not an option, even if I had to crawl across the finish line, I WAS going to finish.

That left me with my original dilemna, how do I get there? My answer, like most runners in training, was to gradually extend my distance. And so, I set about doing what I thought was gradual training and, indeed, I managed to extend my distance up to 6 miles and then 8. I was running almost every day, sometimes twice a day. Like many inexperienced runners, I decided that more was better. Boy, was I wrong.

On Christmas Eve day, I went for a group run and hit an enourmous road block. We were going for a ten mile run. This was more that I had done before, but I decided I could drop out if I needed to. The first part of the run was fine, although the pace was faster than I was comfortable with. I gravitate around a 10 minute mile and we were doing about 9:15. I stayed with the group feeling an occasional twinge in my right knee. About mile 6, I felt a shart pain in my knee and had to stop. I waved the other runners on and hobbled for a half mile. I tried to run again and the pain returned. I managed to get back to my car with my knee throbbing and the worst shin spits ever. What the hell was wrong?

I layed off Christmas day, but decided that I would try again the next day. At first, the knee felt okay, albeit with the same twinge. At two miles, I had to stop and walk. It was too painful to run another stride. I hobbled back home and my wife hustled me off to the doc-in-a-box. All kinds of dire thoughts filled my head. Stress fracture? Mensiscus tear? After some x-rays, the doctor said there was no fracture, but told me no running for a least two weeks and lits of ice and ibuprofen. While I was happy about the absence of a fracture, my thoughts immediately turned to my half marathon training. Two weeks as an eternity. It was going to completely derail my training. As it turned out, I ended up not running for five weeks. In the meantime, I kept my endurance up by taking up spinning and, for the first time in decades, getting back into the pool to do laps.

At the end of the five weeks, I got a green light to run again with the admonition to "take it easy." However, despite the pain and my worry that I would not be able to run the Shamrock Half, my knee proved to be stronger than ever. Also, I walked away (no pun intended) with an important lesson as a new runner. GIVE YOUR LEGS TIME TO RECOVER! Running too much might be worse than not running enough. Since that time, I try to give myself at least 24 hours between runs and I try to alternate my workouts to include low impact exercise, like spinning and swimming. For me, it has been a valuable lesson in how to train.