Friday, April 12, 2013

Quitting Running

Something occurred in my mind during my 30k.

I was in an extremely pessimistic state of mind during the run and thought "Should I quit running?". Briefly I decided that I would.

Quickly after I decided there is no way I would quit running.

Why would I quit running? Well although I have the body shape and type to run, I honestly do have some physical impairment with my running. I think it is either my bone structure or my tendon/ligament strength.

I do not overtrain. But I have had constant injuries. I have seen some doctors and they say nothing is wrong, or they refer me onto another doctor, but in the end I am just told to "stop running for 2-3 or 4-6 weeks". Then after I am healed, I go for a run a few more times, and then I am injured again.

I am tired of this constant fight with my body. I have gone through so many pairs of shoes, because I think the shoes could easily be the problem. But I just can't find a solution!

I have a half marathon on May 6th in Toronto. I haven't ran since my 30k on March 24th... other than no more than 2k, because then my leg/hip and/or knee starts hurting. I can't run!

I literally cannot run.

So whenever I attempt to run and I literally can't, it gets me down and makes me think I should quit.

Soon after that I think "Why would I ever quit? I love it!".

But the truth is that I think I am harming my body more and more. I don't want to quit.

Since I am on running rest, healing up before my half-marathon, I ask myself "Should I run the half marathon?". I should drop out of it. But I know by then I will be fine (or at least usually I am fine in 4 weeks). But my running time will be off. The purpose of me doing the half-marathon was to get an improving time, from september. I wanted to run it in under 1:45:00, compared to my first half marathon which was at 2:01 something. During my 30k, I hit 21.1k around 1:55:00 (approximately). So I know I COULD run it faster. But the thing is, if I am not training for weeks, waiting for myself to heal, my time might not be that good.

I think I will stick it out and do the half-marathon. But my time might be horrible compared to september. I know I can at least FINISH. Even if I have to walk the last 8k of it, I will finish.

But after the half-marathon, I think I am going to take a bit of a break. I don't want to, but I want to give my body a lot of time before I kill it again.

After that, I think I am only going to go for a run once a week. I still do cardio at the gym, of course! But I am only going to go for a weekly run.

I think that having these timelines with these races is stressing me out. I will eventually run a marathon, but I can't until I am 18 anyways. I think I will run it in the spring of 2014. I was going to run it late fall this year, but there isn't a rush. I don't know why I thought there was a rush.

I am just going to hope that my leg really does get better before the half marathon.

I know it did this before the 30k, but during the 30k my leg felt better. Towards the end my hip hurt, and then I hurt my knee 2 days after that.

I think in 2 weeks I should be fine to run. But I just have to wait.

I need to be patient. 

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