Don't Quit

"When things go wrong as they sometimes will,
When the road you're trudging seems all up hill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest if you must, but don't you quite.
Live is tough with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many failure turns about
When he might have won had he stuck it out;
don't give up though the pace seems slow -
You may succeed with another blow,
Success is failure turned inside out -
The silver tint of the clouds in doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems so far;
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit -
It's when things seem worst that you must not quit."
- Unknown

The last week has been pretty challenging for me. After my Monday night knee breakdown, I lost motivation. I missed track practice on Tuesday and then couldn't drag myself to run on Wednesday or Thursday. I blamed it on being tired and busy getting ready for my family to get here - all lame excuses. I finally had my knee doctor's appointment on Friday, which wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. X-ray was okay, so no new knee cap problems :) Might have some meniscus damage going on but doc and I agreed to try a cortisone shot for a few weeks before doing an MRI to see if it provided any pain relief. He even told me that I could keep running but have to really listed to my body and pain. I walked out feeling pretty good (for now), with the exception of the pain in my knee for the shot. For any of you that have had them before, you know my pain ... those of you that haven't, don't ... they hurt. I spent the rest of the day, and unfortunately, Saturday, limping around from the issues of sticking a large needle under my knee cap and pumping stuff into it. I missed track practice Saturday morning because I was just too sore and wanted to give it time to heal. I hate the idea that I haven't run in a week but am excited for track practice tomorrow night. It will be nice to see everyone again and get back on track. Sure, this upcoming week is going to be hard to fit in running since the family is in town (yay!!) but if nothing else, I will be doing a bunch of walking aka "time on my feet". All I know, is that even when I have some bad days, which I will continue to have over the next 10 weeks, I'm not going to quit. I've come too far, and I still have a long ways to go and I'm not going to do this the best I can.