Accepting What Is: NYCM

One week ago I ran pain free, confident that I would have enough time to rebound before the New York City Marathon. On Thursday during a recovery run with the Lululemon run club I started feeling twinges in my knee again. I slowed down but soon enough my knee just flat out hurt. I tried running again on Friday with KT tape on with no luck. I spent the rest of the weekend having panic attacks about what I was going to do.

I bounced ideas off of everyone I could find, trying to figure out what to do. I so badly want to run this marathon but my training hasn't exactly been ideal. My midweek runs have been really solid but it's the long runs that have left me less than confident. I'm not going to sugarcoat things. I've only done an 18 miler as my true long run. Between being sick for a couple weeks and just going through a really hard time in my life lately I missed a run here or there. It wasn't a big deal and I had full confidence that with another couple long runs I would be prepared to tackle 26.2 miles.

Then this knee thing happened. I'm in denial about this being an injury, in case you were wondering. To be honest, if this were any other race I would likely take the DNS. But this is New York and this has long been a dream of mine. Plus $255 is a lot of money to just toss down the toilet.

So after much deliberation and talk with my coach Mike, my parents, and my best friend I am going to try to run the New York City Marathon. My last run was on Friday and it was only around 10 minutes. Between now and the marathon I am going to be doing biking, swimming and aqua jogging to stay in shape. I don't know if I will run at all before the marathon but my hope is that by staying off of it I will be able to run on November 3.

Before the NYC Marathon last year.. before it was cancelled

I know this may not be the smartest idea but I'm at least going to give it a shot. At this point my only goal going into this marathon is to have a great experience that leaves me wanting to run another marathon. I am going to play everything by ear and if at any point during the marathon the pain escalates I will not hesitate to pull out of the race.

So there it is. The New York City Marathon is a go. It may not be pretty but hopefully it will at least be fun.