Phantom Injuries

I swear to God, the closer you get to a big race, the more your body/mind tries to screw with you. As if to say "mwah ha ha, lets see how tough you REALLY are". Groan.

Planning a run from Seaside tomorrow morning , somewhere bt 14-16 miles, so I wanted to keep it easy this morning. Easy 5ish, have a great rolling hills loop from the house. Awesome.

Get dressed, turn on the Garmin. Garmin beeps back at me - "hey, I decided to turn myself on in your running bag, so now that you actually WANT to use me, I'm out of battery". Gah. Decide it's an easy day anyway, screw a watch. However, I did promptly plug the Garmin into my computer so it's set for the long run tomorrow.

My mantra the past week has been "stay in one piece for the race, no injuries for the race". First couple miles click off just fine, and then I start to feel shin pain. What?!?! Shin pain?? I never get shin pain. So of course, now I'm focusing on the pain, so it creeps around to my achilles and calf, you know, for good measure. Dammit.

This is where the phantom part of "phantom injury" comes into plan. When I stopped paying attention to my leg, I couldn't feel much discomfort at all. When I started thinking about LA, the race, staying injury-free, I had visions of ice and ibuprofen dancing in my head.

I finished the run just fine, and as I'm sitting here typing this, magically I feel fantastic. We'll see what kind of pain and suffering my body can torture me w/ tomorrow. You know, the kind of pain that isn't really there, but sends your mind into a complete panic? Eyeroll.

T-Minus 16 days...