You know you're a runner when...

It's been over a month since I stupidly kept running for an extra couple of hundred meters while my knee was telling me to stop.  It's almost a month since I went out for an exploratory run to see if I could work out why my knee had caused me so much pain.  It's been four weeks since I went for a slow short run, to test my knee, only to have to walk home under a darkening cloud after under a mile with my clearly not well knee refusing to straighten and aching with every step.

It has been a month since I managed to get an appointment to see my GP, two weeks since I had an x-ray and it will be another month before I finally get to see a physiotherapist.  Today however I got some news.  The x-ray results have come back clear, there is no bone damage to my patella and there are no signs of arthritis.  This is very good news!

For the last month I have felt like a caged bear.  I know that I have been tetchy and more than a bit of a grump, but I hadn't really put it down to not running.  But I have realised that running was not only befitting me physically, but it seems that it was also having positive effect on my mental health too.  Or rather not running has had a negative effect on my mental health.

To counter this I've started swimming, once a week to start with but I'm upping that to twice a week.  I'm also considering cycling to and from work.  Swimming has been hard.  When you go for a run there is every chance that you will pass two or three other runners, but there are always lots of other swimmers as pool time is limited.  That is a lot of people to witness you swim and it turns out that I am rubbish at swimming, probably as bad as I was at running a couple of years ago. 

Both swimming and cycling are aimed at keeping me fit and strengthening my knee in preparation for running again, but I hope that they will go some way to giving me the endorphins that my mind craves.  So far swimming is not doing that as I am constantly the slowest person in the pool.  I know they are not, but it feels like every pair of goggles is watching me tread water.  It feels like I'm being passed by the man in the panda suit during last years Leeds 10k every time I get in the pool.  But I'm sure, as with running, I will get better if I only keep going.

New Boots.

I know that I am not not ready to start running again yet, my knee feels kind of hollow and it creaks like a barn door on a cold winter night, but when I am ready I have my new trainers to look forward to.  I'm not going to rush things but there is the small matter of the Abbey Dash in November, a month after my first physio session, assuming I haven't gone crazy in the meantime.

I tend to stay away from labels.  Foodie, blogger, runner, are all things that others have told me that I am.  Not being able to run has shown me once and for all that I am a runner, all be it not a very good one.  I miss it.  Seeing other people out for a run upsets me.  Volunteering at ParkRun is like putting myself through Chinese Water Torture.  But I know that I will run again.  It will be tough to start with, but the thought of putting my headphones in, starting my watch and running down the road, injury free, is enough to make me smile at those running past, happy knowing that one day I'll feel the runners high again.