2014 started off very badly.  Actually January was great – I ran 97 miles that month – at the time, the most I ever ran in a month.  But I did not hit 100 miles because knee pain was beginning to manifest itself.  I opted for a few days off because I had a bad feeling about this knee pain and my first 20 mile run was a few days away.  You can look back at earlier posts to see what ultimately happened, but basically, I suffered the worst injury I have ever had.

Back in February, I was feeling my marathon and race aspirations float away. Although I felt depressed, I never gave up. I was not always positive about the injury – after all, I could not even run .17 miles without debilitating pain.

If you read back to my earlier posts this year, you can see the ups and downs of my comeback. The knee soreness returning and ending some of my practice runs where I was 2-3 miles from home and walking back, frustrated.  I overcame all these obstacles to run my first marathon, the Chicago Marathon.  It was an incredible experience.

I winded up running 2 half marathons and one marathon in 2014.  I had planned to do more this year, but I did not expect an injury either. I learned a lot in 2014 – about running, about myself.  I can be stubborn and sometimes have to learn the hard way.  I did learn the hard way to not EVER run through pain that keeps getting worse as you go. If you do, you could be causing permanent damage. It took me 7 weeks to run one mile (with a cortisone shot),  and my knee is still not 100% almost a year later.  I learned that I am very tenacious. I don’t give up easily. I had to work harder for Chicago after the injury and faced road bumps in August and in September to the point that I wondered if I would make it to Chicago. Even the night before the marathon, I had to ice my knee from walking so much that day.  Perhaps the best thing I learned was that things don’t always go our way, and how we respond to undesirable situations makes all the difference in the world.  We learn and grow from bad experiences.  Sometimes we need to embrace it.  Sometimes better things come out of it. It makes us better people.

(Post Note: When I titled this post, I was thinking I would be stating that beating last year’s total miles was the only thing left to do in 2014. However, as I typed, I went down a different path, and this is a much better message for my readers – JW).