It’s hard to believe the year is almost over already! In the month since I’ve updated you guys, I’ve finished physical therapy for the time being, unless my doctor decides I need to do some more. I don’t go back for my follow-up until January 5th, so for the next couple weeks, I will be working on my stretches and strengthening at home and seeing how it goes. If things get worse before my appointment, my PT said I could call and we could figure out what needs to be done. I’m not 100% convinced that I will be okay on my own yet because it’s hard to measure that when I haven’t been doing my usual running and biking. I’m still having some trouble with my knee. It had started to feel better, and then I had a work week that destroyed all of my progress and set me back. I still can’t function well at work unless I’m maxed out on ibuprofen. A physical job and an injury do not go well together. That’s why I have such slow healing times whenever I get injured.

Despite all that, I did do another 5K that was holiday themed two weeks ago. I was already signed up, so my PT knew I was going to try it anyway. I had originally planned to try running half of it, since my doctor told me I could run one to one and a half miles twice a week, but I didn’t even make it much more than a half mile. I felt so much like I failed when I had to walk almost that whole distance. Obviously I was being too hard on myself in that moment, but it was hard to not think that way. There’s nothing wrong with walking if you need to. I shouldn’t have beaten myself up about it while dealing with a known injury and not having been able to train properly. What helped pull me out of that thinking during the race was a group of 4 little kids just past the two mile mark standing in their yard and throwing leaves like confetti at all of us and cheering for us. They didn’t care how anyone was doing. They cheered for everyone going by them anyway.

After that race, I took two weeks off. My PT said I could ease back in to running by starting with a half mile run. That’s less than my doctor had said, but I. Think it’s for the best to take it slower after that abysmal performance I had at that race. When my PT asked me when my next race was, I told him New Year’s Eve at midnight. I don’t think he was expecting that because he just started laughing and called me “one of those crazy runners”. I told him I would be sure to take it easy and just run as much as my body felt comfortable with. I think I’ll be walking a little in the beginning to get my body warmed up some and then try to run about a mile and a half. I’m hoping in two weeks I can be close-ish to that. I did 10 minutes today, which was 0.2 miles more than the half mile I was supposed to do, but I was feeling okay and thought it would be good for me mentally to at least be able to do 10 minutes. It felt so hard after not being able to train much. It’s been at least a month since I ran over 30 minutes. Every other run has been 20 or less, and getting back to it after no running for weeks at a time was a challenge. I was very slow, but in a way that’s good because it will ease my knee back in, hopefully.

I probably won’t update this again until January after my next 5K and my appointment since life is pretty boring otherwise. I do have a week off starting December 21st, so I just have two more work days to make it through and then I can let my body and mind rest a little. It’s been so stressful the last couple of weeks. I’ve been stuck staying late every week on my morning days, which would be fine if it was once in a while, but not 3 weeks straight. And then yesterday, someone I work with massively took their anger out on me for a situation I couldn’t control and I had a breakdown. I was shaking and trying not cry while I was still at work, which was unsuccessful. At the point where it started, I only had one more hour to go, so I was able to hold most of it back until I got home. One day I just won’t go back. I can’t take many more days like that. I try not to take it personally, but I got yelled at and accused of “trying to get out of work” because a company we contract with had a weird situation occur and couldn’t deliver our product that day. It was out of their hands, and it was out of mine. There wasn’t anything either of us could have done about it. All we can do is wait for an alternate delivery date. To be yelled at about it was unfair.

Anyway, I hope everyone has a great rest of the year, and a great start to 2022!