Hard to Take Your Own Medicine

I often have to tell injured athletes that they will miss an important game, meet, or tournament. Part of playing sports, I tell them, is dealing with setbacks and adversity. Fortunately for me, I have had very few of these setbacks to deal with during my running career. I have been amazingly injury free. This weekend, however, I sprained my MCL and badly bruised my medial femoral condyle in, of all things, a paddle board accident. It should heal fully in a few weeks, but I am registered for the Sandhills Marathon in Valentine, NE this Saturday. I can't roll over in bed without searing pain in my knee. It is hard to imagine that it will feel that much better by Saturday. My training  has been going really well, too. I put in 59.5 miles last week, peaking for the marathon this weekend. The race was supposed to be a long training run for my 50 mile trail race in September. Unless my knee feels a lot better soon, I will miss my first race due to injury in 20 years. I guess I will understand that much better how my patients feel and deal with disappointment.