I don’t often talk about running or fitness on this blog because I have a separate blog where I post my runs and talk about it there. However, health and fitness do go hand-in-hand, and I’d be remiss if I were to ignore the topic of fitness here completely. With that said, I’ve been forced to desist from my usual three times per week runs due to a knee injury I sustained last Monday.

Were it an injury I incurred while running or doing some physical activity, I would have no problem with it, but the fact that it occurred while standing up from a chair in a restaurant makes it ridiculous to me. Earlier that afternoon, I had run three miles at a pretty good pace. I was back to making progress with my run times, and I was doing my minimum of 80 push ups prior to every run. I was feeling pretty good, and my wife andI went out for dinner. While standing up to go to the restroom, something in my right knee just felt off, and sure enough, for the following two days, the pain was pretty bad. It wasn’t like something tore; just a sharp pain from behind the right side of my knee.

I decided to let it rest, and while I had planned to run on Wednesday, I decided that I needed more rest as it was still a bit sore. Friday came and left without running, again due to lingering soreness, and since my wife and I were out of town on a trip to Austin, I decided to not run.

Monday came and went without a run as well, but this time, it was due to the weather; storms were rolling through Houston, and the amount of lightning very close to my running area made me decide that safety was more important than getting back out on the road. I could have hit out exercise cycle instead, but I figured an extra day of healing would be more beneficial.

So here I am. It’s Tuesday morning, and I have plans to run tonight. I hope to be able to just get out there, hit my 80 push ups, and run my three-mile minimum. I don’t care about time today. I am just going to run. I don’t have a PFT coming up for another six months, so I have time to build up my speed later. For now, I just need to run for the cardio and to keep my leg muscles strong.

I have pushed myself in the past beyond what I should have due to not wanting to lose any of the gains or progress I’ve made through training. This has led me to have some recurring pain in areas like my lower back/left gluteus maximus. Hopefully, this break will help that pain as well. I also have a nagging pain in my left elbow outer tendon that has been pretty persistent. I think that it is more serious than the knee injury, as it continues to ache even without doing push ups for a week. Like an idiot, however, I will do my push ups tonight. The elbow doesn’t seem to hurt from push ups. I think it has more to do with sleeping posture. But I digress.

Sometimes, you gotta let your body heal. Sometimes, even when you don’t want to, you gotta take a break. Now, after a week and a day, I’m ready to get back into my running. I miss it. (And I can’t believe I just wrote that; me, missing a run!)