So, five weeks ago, I started the Couch to 5K running plan, inspired by my boyfriend and his sister who have both lost silly amounts of weight after they began running, and who both used it to get their starts.
It was great. I had been doing tons of physical activities before, but now wanted to spend the bulk of my evenings snuggling under the boyfriend’s left arm rather than in a sweaty gymnasium. Running was just the ticket–serious exercise for much shorter amounts of time. Neat. My activities even had me in reasonable cardiovascular shape, so once my muscles had gotten used to the new abuse, I was flying through the program with no problems. I’d conquered the hump from W3 to W4 and felt completely confident about being able to handle all the weeks to come with no problems. I was PSYCHED for the twenty-minute run at the end of W5.
Then I tripped and fell while running. And landed on my left kneecap. On concrete. Serves me right for running on concrete, I guess. I have a doctor’s appointment this afternoon (one week precisely after the fall), but I’m pretty sure that the bone is bruised. I can walk again, with just a bit of a limp, but experiments in running have so far proved futile. I can barely stand to wear bluejeans because the material presses on my knee and causes unholy pain.
Poop. I was gonna run twenty minutes on Sunday. I was gonna be running 5K by October. I was gonna be a badass ripped and rippling runner chic, to match my badass boyfriend. I was overcoming the demons of high school gym class. I was really excited about the progress I was making. And now this.
sniffle Okay. Make me feel better. Or just gush about C25K. I’m totally up for that, too.
First, yay for you to be tackling that! I’m starting to eye it now that I have shoes that are really lessening my foot neuromas.
Second, ouch. I pulled a similar stunt with my knee nearly 15 years ago, only mine was on an ice rink and I walked on the injury for a week before going to the doctor to learn that I had broken my kneecap. The pain was extraordinary. The tendon (I think it’s a tendon) under the bone can get bruised and it can take a while to heal. Be kind to your knees!
So many things that could be wrong with my knee, indeed. Surely it isn’t BROKEN though! Oh my! As I was falling, I thought, “wow… I could break a kneecap”.
Running-wise, I thought that I’d dodged the sports-injury bullet when, in W2, I began to get shin splints and, after some research, figured out that they were caused by over-pronation. I had gone to a fancy running shoe store and had my gait analyzed and been sold some very fancy and expensive motion-control shoes, so this made me pout a bit. But $10 drug store orthotics fixed the problem. Now, if I could only figure out why I paid so much for fancy shoes in the first place…
Anyway. Running shoes are sadly neglected. If I don’t hear anything too dire from the doctor today, I’m going to do an experimental run tomorrow after work. I think that running wouldn’t hurt much more than walking… unfortunately, that hurts enough to make me limp. I’m afraid to imagine what the limp would do to my whole body over the course of twenty minutes’ running, so… we’ll see.
Condolences. Take it easy on the recovery, though. Let the knee get better, step back a week or two, and hit your 5k a few weeks late, but strong. You may need to strap it once you start running.
I am 2 weeks away from my 10km, and I am very wary of injury or overtraining. I am not missing that run - my stepson and his girlfriend are running it too.
I’ve started an exercise program recently, and I had a bad wheel for a while there, too.
Literally. I started riding my bike to work at the beginning of July. I broke a couple spokes a few weeks ago, and the rim bent enough that I had to replace the whole thing. Had a devil of a time finding one; I guess it was kind of an oddball size.
Which doesn’t hold a candle to messing up your knee. But keep the goal in sight, even if the schedule hits a few snags. I’m hoping to do 50 miles on the 21st.
Sorry to hear that Sattua. I don’t know how old you are but here’s my advice based on my experiences as a bruised and battered 38yo guy.
Listen to your body. If something hurts, stop it. See your doctor and do what they say. Trust me, it is far, far better to run your 5k a few weeks later than to try and “work through” some kind of injury, only to make it worse. I did that when I was younger and stupider and it is absolutely not worth it.
I started long distance running a few years ago and I’ve had a couple of relatively minor injuries - strained my foot, hurt my hip, hurt my knees. I have cursed my joints and my bad luck and the fact that I just don’t heal like Wolverine any more but I’ve stopped, rested, followed the advice of my doctor (and once a physical therapist) and everything has always gotten better.
If you’re going to be off the knee for a few weeks do not despair and don’t think that it means you can’t do any exercise - you can always do upper body work or stretching or crunches or something. Staying active will keep your endurance and energy levels up, it’ll make it so much easier to get back into your running when the knee gets better and it will keep you motivated.
I have never heard of this program before, but I just read a few pages about it. Looking at the first week or two, I can’t help but think “I can do that!” And I think I will. I think it will supplement my other sport (dragon boating) really well, and I think I have the perfect time in my day to do it (at least this semester… we’ll see how bad the winter is; I have no intention of running in 2 feet of snow!). I’m going to buy a stopwatch and give it a shot!
Your knee will heal, and you can keep going with this! At the least, you’ve introduced this program to at least one person, and helped them get motivated! Thanks so much!
And totally off topic, but my cat is snoring. Very funny, and I just wanted to share!
See that is what is so great about this program. If you can just get started the chance that you can do it all is excellent. The program works excellent on preparing you for the next week.
In the beginning, 60 seconds running was rather hard and I would really really have struggled to do the 90 seconds of running that follows in week 2. However when it was time I was ready and that repeated itself week after week. At the end of this week I’ll run 25 minutes and I have no worries that I’ll be able to do it.
Replying to my own post - my stepson has just realised he cannot make the run (having booked it). He is going to try to reschedule for October - if he can, I have the choice of trying to reschedule as well(giving me more training time to get some speed), or doing my run, and booking the second in another months time.
In cat related news: when, sometime in the middle of the night, my knee began to protest that I really should roll onto my back, I did so and discovered that my cat and been nestled right up next to me, asleep. She’s never done that before. Awwww.
In health related news: at the doctor’s appointment yesterday, they took my pulse. My pulse has always, always, always been 80. I was convinced that it was genetic. Yesterday, after doing four weeks of the program? It was 68.
They x-rayed the knee and gave me an appointment with an orthopedic specialist. Nothing else to report, except that I’ll run experimentally this evening.
IANAD, but unless your doctor said “Go ahead and try running on that knee” I would really recommend not doing so. You may miss a few days of running while they figure out whether you have a minor ouchie or a real injury but if you aggravate an injured part you’re going to at the very least extend the time it takes to recover and you could hurt yourself worse.
I have been there and it really sucks. Don’t do it to yourself, it is really not worth it - recovering from a strain might take a few weeks which in the grand scheme of things is nothing. Doing some long-term damage could take years to heal and you will not be sitting there thinking “Well that extra run I did when I was hurt sure made this worthwhile.”
Sorry to hear about the knee Sattua. I’m only on week 2 of the program. I did a City Chase event in August, and that made me realize how dreadfully out of shape I was (I knew it was bad, but boy, what an eye opener that was).
I’m using a treadmill for my training, so if I fall, I don’t have to worry about concrete. I may have a hard time explaining the big hole in the wall to my wife though.
24 hours later and the bimbo sports medicine secretary still hasn’t finished filing her nails and called me to make an appointment. She isn’t at her desk, either. Maybe she decided it was time for a full-out spa day.
You see, they can sense that I was a pudgy kid who had trouble running the mile in high school. Now that I’ve conquered 1.5 and was on my way to 2, they want to make sure I won’t get there. Wouldn’t want me at the country club, would they.
