Of all of the voices inside my head, the hardest one for me to drown out is ego. Ego is a nasty bugger (read that as if I said it in a British accent). Typically, long distance runners are used to ignoring a lot of things that our body is asking of us or writing the script for what we think it wants to hear.

“Well yeah, my legs might literally fall off but I’m fine. Really, I’m fine.”

“It’s okay if I eat this entire bag of malt vinegar chips, my body needs the salt. After all, I ran 20 miles today so I deserve it.”

“It’s negative seven out? Eh, I’ll be plenty warm in 3-4 miles”

And probably the hardest one to ignore…

“It doesn’t hurt that bad, I can keep running on it. This won’t affect me.”

I’m dealing with the last one with a temperament of 3 year old complete with meltdowns, crying fits and simply wishing it away.  But eventually, I was forced to drown out the voice of my ego and listen.

I had signed up for the LA Marathon which is just two weeks away. This was going to be my first attempt to qualify for Boston, a big dream of mine. I have been aggressively training for the past 14 weeks running 50-60 miles per week. I took a leave of absence from running group, the Attack Pack, to train with the striders for speed work. I was running loops around the town of Hays, Kansas on Christmas day. I would cancel plans with friends if I thought it would affect my run the following morning. I was taking two hour lunch breaks at work just to make sure I got the miles in. I was freaking dedicated. Once I decided I was going to qualify, nothing was going to stop me. NOTHING! (queue inspirational and dramatic music) Except for myself.

I still don’t exactly know what’s going on but my body disagrees with running at the moment. One 16 mile long run turned into the longest walk (sorry Phil, you’re a champ!).  My hips, my knees, my IT band, everything was screaming at me to stop. But I kept going on it thinking it was just a fluke, one bad run. So I kept running and my pain kept getting worse. And then a trip to the emergency room with a mysterious abdominal pain which was exacerbated by exercise is what finally did me in. Yesterday I had to cancel my flight and hotel and pull the plug on LA.

I haven’t even brought myself to tell my running framily yet (yes, I mean framily: Friends so close they become framily). I vacillate between feeling sorry for myself and knowing it’s not the end of the world and there are many more races to conquer. You see, ego is a bitch. It makes you feel ashamed of yourself when you have no reason to be.