Back in 2010 I trained for a half-marathon. Before that time I had no interest in running, but for some reason I woke up one day and decided to go for it. In the beginning it was horrible, and I hated every run, but something happened when I trained up to 5 mile runs. I really started to love it, I felt strong and confident in a way that I had never felt before. From that point on I loved training – something indescribable happens when you really start to push yourself physically. About 2 weeks before the race I could run 15 miles, you can’t imagine how great that felt. Well, if you’ve ever trained for a long distance run you probably know exactly what I’m talking about. Unfortunately, over the next couple of weeks I developed bad knee pain and wasn’t able to race. Needless to say I was really disappointed.
Two years later I ran Iron Girl and training re-aggravated whatever was going on with my knee two years earlier. When I realized my knee pain wasn’t going away I started physical therapy for patellofemoral syndrome. I’ve been doing it for about 9 months with little change, but I did see some improvement when I started taping my knee. Anyway, at this point I am really frustrated, and physical therapy is way to expensive for me to continue it. I love being active, and would workout most days of the week if I didn’t have so much knee pain. I remember what it was like to workout without pain, and it was soooo great. I don’t know if I will ever get back to that, but I have decided that completely accepting and celebrating myself also means I have to accept that my body is different than it was 5 years ago, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still be a fit person. I have let my knee pain get in the way of working out for a long time now, and between you and me, I’m over it. So I’m going to work on appreciating my body for what it can do instead of focusing on my limitations. I’ll let you know how that goes.
