Overuse?

I'm not one who's really "tuned-in" to pain. I attribute this to my high-school cross-country days. Back then I had some major issues with my quads. I was in seeing the sports-medicine therapist (ok, how many hyphenated words can I use in this post?) just about every week. I also had back issues in college. I think because I was living with pain all the time I just kind of turned it off. I figured this out (with the help of a physical therapist) when during a PT session they asked me how much the pain was on a scale of 1-10 and I said "It's not that bad today...probably a three." I think I confused the physical therapist, because I basically could never tell him WHERE the pain was and I was always ranking it a 2 or 3, and never more than a 5. So he started feeling my muscles and I guess he found something because he said that he had seen a bunch of big football players come in who had less pain than I did with tears in their eyes. I don't know if that says more about the football players or the fact that I couldn't feel pain. His theory was that I had turned off my pain sensors because I was dealing with pain constantly. So he had me do a bunch of really lame (I thought) exercises that required almost no effort so that I could "turn my pain sensors on again." I don't know if any of this helped or not. But my point is, that a lot of times when I'm injured I don't realize it.

That could end up being bad.

So I try try try to be really tuned into my body and listen to it. I also know that I have issues with my left leg building up a lot more muscle than my right (even though I am right-handed). So I try to pay attention to that.

Last night I was scheduled to do my 5 miler on the course I am running this weekend with 3 short bursts of sprinting. When I got home and started putting on my workout clothes I realized that my right knee felt really bad. AND it was right on top of it. On the right side. Of course. I think it's my quads again. In the injury session I went to a couple of weeks ago they were going over knee pain and said that if you have that kind of knee pain, it usually means that your quads are not strong enough. Go figure.

I was pretty mad because I really wanted to run. I asked Bill what I should do. (Which means that I really knew the answer, but just needed to hear it from someone else.) He said that I was prone to overuse injuries so I should probably do something like yoga instead and ice it. Boo!

So that's what I did last night. I am hoping to get out and run tonight, but you know what? I don't think it is going to happen. My knee is still a little sore. Actually, it's just as sore as it was yesterday. So, I am going to do all of those exercises that the physical therapist LAST TIME told me to do, to build up my quads.