The Black Toenail: Running has made me a wimp!

I run six days a week. I’m healthy. I feel good; mostly tired from my long runs, pace runs, interval runs, but still good. I have less health problems than most guys my age. Yet, I’m turning into a wimp. I obsess over every twitch of a muscle, every crack of a joint, every little ache, real or imagined. I worry it’s the first sign of yet unknown injury, which will keep me away from running, or even worse, from racing.

I took up running few years ago, when recovering from a bad case of herniated disk, which rendered my left leg completely numb and useless. I continued, because it made me feel good and helped me shed a hoop of fat I carried embedded under the skin around my waste. Because of running I’m never sick. I forgot what having cold or flu is like. I’m less stressed and, hopefully, a more pleasant person to be around.

And yet… I just went to cafeteria to grab a hot chocolate. It’s two flights of stairs down from my office. At the first flight of stairs there was a little pop in my right knee. I thought I felt pain under the knee-cap. I stopped dead, started stretching and massaging the area around the knee. I have a race in three weeks! I can’t have an injury now! Especially not an injury sustained during the office work!

It took a while to realize that the pain was gone as soon as it came, if it was ever there at all. I’m so tuned onto every anomaly in my bodily operations that every sound out of the ordinary causes deep concern. When I roll out of bed in the morning, I’m concerned about the stiffness in my back. That tightness in calves - is that the beginning of a cramp? Walking on the sidewalk, I made too long a step - did I pull the hamstring with it? I’m preoccupied with my body like a teenage beauty queen on a prom night.

Running is still a lot of fun, but it made the rest of my non-running life a torture.