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Walt Disney World Marathon Dopey Challenge 2015 Week 4 Training: Listening to your body

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398888-R1-034-15A_016Happy Monday!  Last week was not as solid of a week as I would like, but I had a little bit of knee issue creep up (bursitis).  I have had this a few times, but now fun when it creeps up.  I know I could have worked through the pain and kept my training going.  Not a huge deal, but something I wanted to take care of, so some medication, some rest and hope to have a great week.  In the end though I had a solid month of training in July with 66.18 total miles, so happy with the running and cross training.

Now you may be thinking, wow Matt is quick to get things fixed..  In reality I am stubborn and I was battling the knee for close to 4 weeks before I went to my chiropractor who made me scream when she tested for the bursitis.  I have always been a fan of a few things my coaches of told me over the years:

  • Pain is weakness leaving the body
  • Embrace the pain
  • Pain is temporary Pride is forever

While you certainly need to know how to teach your body to push (especially training for a long run) because , it is capable of amazing things.  However you also need to learn to balance “legitimate” pain, that sends you to a see a Dr. vs. I need to push past this.  The old adage comes to my mind, are your injured or hurt.   For me this process usually takes 3 weeks. Smile

So the medicine is working and I am resting for the next couple of days.  What amazes me is how good my knee felt in a short amount of time, even went for a quick 3 mile run (and yes it hurt a little). This reminded me something my Dr. told me and I am paraphrasing here

Pain is not always a bad thing, it is the body telling you something is not right and you need to listen.

The reason I mention this is I see a lot of folks try to mask or ignore the pain. Often times they end up more injured than before.  So if your new to this, my only advice is to error on the side of caution until you get used to all the tweaks, hitches and general soreness you will experience during the training. 

Here is my schedule for this week: