18 miles was on the plan for Saturday so I spent all day Friday drinking water. I had a nice pasta snack before I went to bed and was feeling good on Saturday morning. We had a nice gang of people running and it was a lovely morning, cool and sunny.
We decided to follow as much of the marathon route as possible, which is always a good idea. Everything was going great till around Bushy Park, 9 or 10 miles in, when my knee started acting up. Sore and annoying. A quick stretch helped in the beginning but by the time we got into town it was pretty sore and I had to walk. Going downhill was actually worse, so I walked down the hill in Christchurch, back on the marathon route. By 13 miles I was nearly calling a taxi to get back to the car; my running buddies wanted me to. I begged them to go on as I had delayed them enough and I knew where I was going at that stage.
But I didn’t feel comfortable flagging a taxi. I was slightly panicking about my ability to do the marathon at all. Then I realised I can walk! Loads of people run/walk the marathon! It’s not ideal I know, but at this stage I just want to do it and I certainly don’t want to quit without a fight. I was 4-odd miles from the car so I started to run as much as I could and then walk when the knee screamed too much. The really annoying thing was that I was feeling good mentally and physically apart from the knee – would have had a great run otherwise. But I decided I was going to get back to the car and see how the knee was and then decide how to deal with the whole thing, whether that was a mistake or not.
I could feel tension up and down my right leg, crystallising in pain in the bottom right of my knee cap. I ran and walked the last 4 miles or so and I had walked a bit with the watch off so I reckon I did 17.5 miles. I put ice on my knee when I got to my mother’s house and had a cold bath when I got home.
My knee was sore yesterday; I can still feel it a bit this morning but will try a few miles later on. It’s a bummer – I never had one knee issue last year. The body lets you away with less and less as you get older. So I have to focus on stretching and strengthening now, and see how I get on. There’s always something!
