Just pain

I am doing double training right now.  Firstly I am training for the Puerto Rico event at World Boardgaming Championships, and second I am training for my Tough Mudder.  I have been doing consistent strength training for many months now and I am confident that is in a good place, but when I injured my knee my training for running kinda stopped short.  As such I am not worried about the crazy events like climbing over stuff, swinging from monkey bars, crawling through mud, etc, but I am a bit concerned about how well I will hold up on the 15 km of running I will be doing.

The Tough Mudder website had a thing where you could type in your fitness benchmarks to get an assessment, and they asked how I feel after running 3 miles.  This concerned me, because I haven't run 3 miles at a stretch... ever?  That they expect I know the answer to this was worrying!

The real thing that got me was my lungs.  Often in the past when I ran I would end up hacking and coughing and be unable to run further.  I have minor asthma, not enough to be a danger, but enough to stop exercise cold sometimes.  Occasionally I would get a stitch in my side, and that stopped me too.  It was never my legs that gave out, always my torso was the weak link.  Since I hurt my knee though, even my legs failing was a real possibility.

So today was the real test.  Could I, having only really done a few 1 km runs in the past week, cover any reasonable distance without falling to bits?

Turns out the answer is yes.  I set up a 5 km course and ran it no problem in 27 mins.  I figure 11.1 km/hour is pretty reasonable, though I honestly don't have any useful benchmarks.  My lungs were fine, no side stitching, just muscle pain.  And pain is no problem.  My body was in no danger of disobeying me, so all I had to do was cope with my legs screaming bloody murder, and that isn't a big issue.

The way I figure it, if my knee ends up feeling like it is really in a bad way, I might have to stop, or at least only walk.  If all I have to deal with is muscle pain though from the effort I am fine, because Passion is going to be in charge throughout the Tough Mudder and he gives precisely zero fucks about pain.  As long as Director is convinced that the pain is merely short term suffering and not indicative of real damage then he will happily stay in the background and let Passion have his fun.

So now even though I am clearly not in the kind of shape that I could be if I had been pushing really hard I am in good enough shape that I can complete the mudder, barring some accident.  I figure I just keep running 5 km a day for the next four days, keep up my strength routine, and then stop doing it three days before the actual event to let my body fully repair and heal.

Go time!