Bad Romance

Sour grapes. Bitter lemons. Other normal food items preceded by negative adjectives.

There are days when I get down about things, and just feel like I'm filled with anger. Take yesterday. It was a nice day so I hopped on the bike and rode my maybe 21 mile ride. I felt better and rode faster than last Monday, so I was pleased. But it still doesn't feel right.

I then rode down to Fed Hill and was going to attempt a run. Since I just passed the 10 weeks mark, I was given the green light to run in the following format:

1min walk/1min run for up to 20 minutes

So that's what I did. I went up Cross St (uphills are tough, downhills just hurt). Picked up the bricks and went around Ritz Carlton and made it just beyond Rusty Scupper by 10 minutes. The first of the runners went by me and when Sanders caught up to me, he joined me in my little Galloway style run.

A few minutes later, Brennan, Pat, Jordan and Johnny Blatz picked us up and from there I just tried to "run" the rest of the way in. So it turned out to be 19 minutes all told, with maybe 11 minutes of running and 8 of walking, probably about 2 miles, maybe just under.

Boy, did my knee not feel good by the end. I rode my bike home and the rest of the night my knee looked...weird. I can't be sure, but it appeared as if my ACL was jutting out of the knee.

I obviously do not expect to be able to just jump right back into running, but man, when it hurts this bad, you begin to wonder if it will ever get better. Even when I had my other pretty serious injury, I was able to get back fairly quick.

The thing I hate most is being negative. There's really not much I can do about anything. I'm doing all I can. The one thing I'm very concerned about is my leg not straightening out completely. That's got to change fast or I'll be in trouble.

So as I focus on positive things, take today for example. It's super nice again, and starting at midnight last night ESPN is showing nothing but college hoops. Terps play tonight on CSN, there's games on ESPN2 and MASN. Great to have it back. I also got to attempt to serve someone, in the legal sense. I felt like Matthew Perry in that Serving Sara movie.

I'm going to attempt to run every other day for now, and ride a few times per week plus continue to swim as much as I've been. My hope is to be as fit as possible with riding and swimming and if I can run at some point next year, I'll try to race.

I head out to Arizona on Thursday, and I'm pumped for the swim at Ironman. I am feeling confident in the swim, and the idea of racing again is great.