The therapist told me to run today, and I was looking forward to it. I was supposed to take it easy on the wood-chip track at Liberty Park, limiting myself to 6 miles, but after less than half a mile my knee was already hurting a lot more than I expected. My first instinct was to push through and run the full 6 miles because, hey, the trainer said I could go that far, but I realized that I would probably just hurt myself. So I pulled the plug after 1 lap, and that's where the responsibility ended. I thought I'd go use the elliptical, but something about the thought of more time in the gym made me snap. Since the therapist had told me I could ride my bike as far and as hard as I wanted, I went home and pulled out my road bike and team kit for my first bike ride since sometime in January. I started by riding out to Magna, then south on the Bacchus Highway past the copper mine and the wild horse and burro center and on into Herriman. I called Catherine to let her know I was on my way back. Since we were having dinner with her grandparents, she suggested that maybe I'd rather ride for a bit longer and just meet her at her grandparents' house that evening. She was right--I did want to ride longer. So, Instead of riding home on Redwood I headed south to Saratoga Springs, then out through Lehi and American Fork before riding north through Alpine, over Traverse Ridge and up to Catherine's grandparents' house at Daybreak. Overall, I felt pretty good. Not as fast as I have been, but not bad at all. It's nice to know that running hills really does seem to maintain cycling legs. Of course, after so much time off the bike, I will say that my undercarriage is a bit tender and leave it at that. I ended up with about 85 miles in about 4.5 hours. The downside is that my knee still hurts. It didn't interfere with my cycling, but I could feel that it was sore. I'm not sure if cycling made things worse or if I was just feeling the effects of this morning's run. Either way, I plan to go for another longish ride like today's on Monday and then talk to the therapist about it on Tuesday. At this point, I can't take much more of the sitting and waiting. I only have six weeks till I start law school, and there will be plenty of sitting around then. I feel like right now my best choice may be to just ride through the pain for a month or so and maybe even do some racing. Once school starts I can take a month or so completely off to heal and focus entirely on studying. I have mixed feelings right now. On the one hand, I want to be back out running the trails. On the other, I'm sick of the injury and it kind of makes me want to never bother running again.
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