First off thanks to everyone who harassed me about not blogging this week. I occasionally wonder if anyone reads this and hooray, at least a couple people do. So sorry I’ve been such a slacker. It happened like this: after my run last Saturday, things were looking good. Sunday is my day off and Monday I woke up ready to run. But my right knee felt off. It didn’t hurt or ache, it just felt… strange. Like there was something clicking a little inside. And when my leg was straight, it didn’t feel trustworthy. I emailed my coach and waited for news.

Coach Phil emailed back that I should take a few days off and ice it regularly. So all week here I was in Quebec City, with nothing to do but work on my thesis by day and eat Patrick’s insanely delicious cooking by night. Also some drinking. All in all it’s been the most productive thesis time I’ve had in months, accompanied by feasting on everything from cheddar leek corn croquets to a veggie version of Ethiopian Doro Wat.

What I haven’t been doing is running, which was fine until Saturday, when I was supposed to get back up to at least 8 miles. But this was officially my last weekend in QC, and it was a sunny, beautiful day, and instead of running Patrick and I went to a bookshop and picked out periodicals for an hour, and then we went to a café and read said periodicals while snacking on croissants filled with cheese and chocolate. And when the rain started falling we walked around some of the old neighborhoods of the lower city, and then we went to a film festival and saw Art School Confidential. And it was all pretty fucking fabulous, but there was no running involved.

So anyway, here I am and it’s Monday and I am going to work on my thesis until five and then I will go running. To be honest this is the part where, if I hadn’t told anyone about my plans to run this marathon, I would quietly duck out. A few years ago I learned about the beauty of putting down a book that I’m not enjoying or turning off a movie that sucks. But I know that in this case what I’m doing is not a complete waste of time, and there are plenty of good reasons to keep doing it. And I know that it’s only for another three months, not even, and then I will have run a marathon, and we will all have raised a lot of money for leukemia and lymphoma. But the biggest motivation at this point is that I don’t want to be a big quitting loser, which is a pretty lame reason to do anything, though for the moment I’m going with whatever works. But a few days ago I was talking to a dear friend, and she told me I was inspiring, and I mostly felt like a complete con.