Bangs, bruises, & personal records

Wow. Has it really been a month since I posted? My apologies to the 1 (maybe 2) readers I have out there.

Well, after 4 weeks, you can hardly tell I hurt my knee. For quite a while there, I was basically one big bruise. I guess gravity kept pulling the bruising further down my leg until it went from the base of my knee to the top of my ankle. Here's a not so great photo of it. It got much darker a few days after this was taken:
I didn't run for about a week & a half after I fell. When I finally started up again, my knee felt... "off". It was stiff & sore for maybe the first 1/4 - 1/2 mile, then it wouldn't really bother me. However, once I stopped running, it felt like it was just floating around & sort of... out of place? I'm not sure how to describe it. It just didn't feel right. Despite that, I was still determined to get in at least some workouts so I'd be a little more prepared for the Half Marathon. The farthest I ended up running was 8 miles & that was the week before the race. I was SUPER nervous. To make matters worse, 2 days before the race my back started to go out on me. I spent 1/2 of Friday & all of Saturday laying down, icing my back & taking LOTS of ibuprofen. I was so upset I wanted to cry. Between my knee & my back, I knew my dream of a sub-3 hour race was out the window. Little did I know what would happen that Sunday.

To be continued...