A week and a half before Kiawah Marathon, things were great. After the Tobacco Trail and Nashville I
could feel one of my best marathons coming soon. One week before race day, I put on my shoes and headed out
for an easy 13 miles. 100 yards in
my knee started screaming and I knew exactly what it was, my IT band. I stopped, stretched, rested, iced, and
foam rolled for the next few days.
When things had not improved, I gave in and went to the doctor, ready to
hear that I needed to sideline myself for the race, travel to Kiawah with my
friends, and enjoy a bike ride around the island cheering them on (biking, no
pain; walking, no pain; elliptical, no pain; stair climber, no pain; running, I
felt like a knife was stabbing me in the knee).
The doctor agreed with my diagnosis but surprisingly gave me the okay to
run the full marathon after taking the rest of the week off. Two days before the race I decided 26.2
miles after 10 days off and unsure of how much pain I would be in made me more
than a little nervous, so I dropped to the half. This proved to be a wise decision. I spent the first six and half miles in pain (there were
tears, a lot of walking, and a spectator might have asked if I needed a
medic). After a gentle uphill
around mile 7, the pain disappeared completely and I was able to run to the end
(the Kiawah marathon/half have a really cool tracking system, it tells you how
many people you passed within a certain stretch…in the 2nd half of
the race, I was passed by none and passed 813, not to mention the tears stopped).
