The Knee

My knee started to tighten up as we descended Hope Pass. She was crankin’. 55 miles into her great adventure, still all teeth and dimples.

Huh, that’s weird.

Once a week some old person finds out I run and chuckles knowingly, “Just wait til you’re my age, you won’t even HAVE knees.” I smile knowingly, while internally fuming. They don’t know me. The precautions I take to run healthy. And here it happens. Five miles into an easy ten mile jog. My easiest planned day of the week. Pacing a friend at Leadville. And now my knee hurts. Every conversation I’ve ever had about “overdoing it” with someone who doesn’t know me runs through my head.

Fuck them.

It pisses me off because that used to be me. The guy who wouldn’t rest. But not for nothing I haven’t missed a day of running in 5 years. And now my knee hurts even more. I need to walk. But I’m carrying her water. And her food. And she’s still kicking ass. No fucking way I’m going to slow her down.

We’re finally at the aid station. She is still chipper. And I am destroyed. I can’t  handle her pace for the last minutes. She looks back, worried. I put on a smile and pretend I’m slowed by distraction, not pain.

I’ll be fine.

But I’m not. That night I can’t walk. Three days later I try to run, I make it ten steps and feel like a knife is going through the outside of my knee. A customer at the bar winces when I describe the pain and says “Sorry about your meniscus.” Fuck. I don’t have health insurance. I can’t even afford an MRI, let alone a surgery. So much for my plan. What do I do tomorrow? What do I do the next day? Luckily I have a new job to keep me a little distracted. But slowly my sanity wanes. I drink a bit more, I laugh a little less. I don’t see my friends, because we are athletes TOGETHER. I don’t want to talk about what I can’t do. I don’t want to be the hurt guy.

Now it’s October. The knee is finally improving. There is a plan. I can run. Even if only for 15 minutes. After that darkness this joy is almost blinding.