Jeni is Not Gloomy

Although I don’t always come across as a gloomy person, I tend to be gloomy on the inside too much.  Like when I hurt my knee, I didn’t talk about it, but my thoughts about running turned into near-despair.  Pathetic.  When I find myself spiraling out of control into melancholy madness, I must stop and remind myself of the truth.  Truth has a way of shaking me out of my weirdness.

So the truth about my knee is that it is injured.  I fell on it almost three weeks ago, and it still hurts.  But athletes all over the world hurt themselves much worse, and they recover and go back to being athletes, so why would I be any different.  Truth:  I will get better. 

Moping about the injury didn’t seem to be helping much, though, in speeding up the recovery, so I finally went to my doctor, who works with a physical therapist and a sports injury specialist.  With all three of them working on me, I should still be able to race in November.  Or maybe I should say run rather than “race.”  I’m not racing anyone, not even myself.  Truth:  I will be able to run my race.

The cool thing about my race is Mark will be running with me. The trick will be for him to train enough to get through 13.1 miles, but not enough that he is antsy and wants to leave me behind.  Last week he ran a little over 7 miles—after never having run more than 3 or 4 in his life.  A couple more runs and he should be good to go!  He insists that he is only running it for me, and he doesn’t care one iota what his time is.  Truth:  He will not leave me to eat his dust. 

Truth:  I need to fold a lot of laundry.  Or maybe I’ll just go to bed.