living with injury

My weekly mileage is indeed pathetic, as the race director of my last marathon implied - in the low twenties on the average, all the big runs notwithstanding. I put in a 19-miler last Sunday. For the first time in months, I did not worry about the heat. The blanket of clouds mitigated the sun, and a breeze kept the coolness alive. I went at it steady and stubborn, and finished in just under 4 hours.

I figured out there is not much wrong with my knee, not the knee itself. Instead it's my whole right side, from a patch of pain somewhere under the ribcage, in the back, through the buttock, to the knee, down to the ankle. A cord of tightness, not always coalescing into pain, but always there. Sometimes I can run a 5K without paying attention to it, but I cannot forget it during big runs.

Nine days to go until the next marathon, and I still do not know what this is and how to ban it from my body. I learned to live with it as if it's part of me.

Sometimes I think running would be so worryfree without it.