Oh dear friend, how the mighty have fallen.
Remember my excitement about the R2R trip that I wrote about just days ago? Well now it's in jeopardy. I seem to have injured my knee. It has gotten progressively worse since the Mt. Wrightson trip, and now it feels fine, right up until the point where it feels agonizingly painful.
I descended that mountain way too fast. I knew that while I was doing it. I quite seriously, ran down whole stretches of the trail. That's why I fell, and that's why my knee is all ookidy.
It's iliotibial band syndrome. Of that I am 100% positive, which is really common overuse injury, and not a serious one, but terribly frustrating. There's no swelling at least, so that's a blessing.
I went to bikram yesterday, and that was VERY helpful. However, I did not go today, (or rather, I tried to go today, but neglected to check the schedule and missed the last class by 15 minutes) and things have gone right back to being terrible. I intend to take it easy for the next couple of weeks, but first I have to survive the hike up Squaw (now Piestewa) Peak hike tomorrow.
And no, I won't cancel it, because I already committed to it, and I'm nothing if not stubborn.
I know.
I can hear you screaming 'NO! DON'T DO IT' at your computer screen. I'm screaming it at myself on and off too. But a promise is a promise. Plus, we're only going to do a short non-strenuous hike anyway. R from work isn't ready for the summit trail, so we're taking it easy.
Strangely, my knee hurts less when I'm going up or down, and much more when I'm just walking on even ground. With any luck with some rest, and it will heal up fine in no time. *fingers crossed*
Semi-related story. There was this girl my sister was friends with all during grade school and she was really into dance, ballet in particular, and would practice around 4 hours per day if not more so. This girl would consistently land the lead part in whatever she tried out for (including big stage productions) and eventually got a scholarship to go to a prestigious performing arts boarding school in another state. We all expected her to do Broadway productions, but then she sustained a knee injury in her sophomore year and had to go in for surgery. She didn't recover as well as she hoped from it, and had to start limiting herself to one hour a day or so. As a result, she had to drop out of the performing arts school and return back to public school. Not sure what she's doing now, but it was kind of a sad progression to watch since she bet her whole future on it. In any case, that's my semi-related story of the day about knee injuries.
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