Yes, I'm Special

I've been seeing a physical therapist for about a month now and last week I was cleared to start running again with 4 minutes walking/ 1 minute running intervals for 30 minutes. I was feeling overwhelmed with all the stuff wrong with my form that I was so worried about that during my runs. I guess I should have been more concerned about my injury in the first place. I tried running outside first (since that has always seemed less painful on my injured leg in the past) and of course I felt a minor pain in that area. Being the stubborn individual I am, I kept going for the entire 30 minutes thinking "It will go away, I just haven't run in awhile and not warmed up yet". Obviously not the case, so I thought let's try this on my treadmill.  Was I seriously thinking that it would be any different?? Oh the things we tell ourselves so we can simply run!! As I was running on the treadmill, I tried to tune into what was hurting to at least help my PT diagnosis the cause of all this.

So I show up at my appointment today and hope for some good news (i know like i'm going to get good news when I tell her it hurts when I run) and she starts to feel around for the pain. It has now moved itself to my ankle bone on the inside of my leg and she begins to do her series of tests finding my strengths and weaknesses. At the end of it, she tells me "I'm stumped. I don't know what is causing this and have never seen this before. I will ask around and may have another set of eyes look at you next week".

The meaning I've taken out of this is I'm special and I know it!!    Just one more case of the doctor telling me I don't know. If only you could charge them if they didn't figure out what was wrong I'd have free healthcare.

In light of all this, the intervals changed my perspective on the "just one more minute" mentality in my running (for when I actually get back to doing that). That minute seemed to just fly right by and was over before you know it. I don't know how many times on my long runs I had to tell myself this to keep going and it always felt like 10 but it worked. Now I can think back to this moment and tell myself I always have 1 more minute in me :)

What is your favorite running mantra?