I really "kneed" to get over this...

In the past few months, I have become obsessed with my knees.

I'm not sure why. Y'all, they are so ugly. I have fallen on them probably no less than 14 times over the past 18 years. One time was so bad that I probably should have gone to the doctor, but I didn't (this was about five years ago).

Whenever I stand up, sit down, bend down, they crackle. My husband is convinced that I am completely ruining my knees by running so much and fears that he will have to spend our golden years (or maybe  next year) pushing me around in my wheelchair.

I hit my left knee on the corner of my desk at work earlier this week and I wanted to die. I thought I was for a minute, and then I was afraid I wasn't, it hurt that much.

But my biggest fear is when I am asleep.

I typically go to bed well before my night-owl husband, and I sleep mainly on my right side, curled up into a ball. I sleep pretty deeply now that our babies are 13 and almost 11 (how did that happen, exactly?), and often don't even realize when he comes to bed.

But recently, every movement, twitch, turn he makes wakes me up. Why?

Because I am terrified he is going to clip me with his size 12 feet on the bottom part of my knee while I am sleeping.


Has he ever done this before? No.

Has he ever accidentally bumped me or smacked me or anything like that in his sleep? No. He does laugh in his sleep which scares the crap out of me, and he has pulled my pillow out from under my sleeping head in his sleep, but that's it.

For whatever reason, I have developed this fear. I'm having more aches and pains now that I'm 40.5 years old, and every creak and twinge makes me wonder if I'm nearing the end of my running "career." So maybe that's why this irrational fear is coming out now.

(And yes, I could sleep on my left side, and I do. But I always end up on my right side, always.)

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I've been shaking up my running routine these days (see: not sleeping well because of knee fear). Four-thirty is just too early for me some days. So I've been running in the evenings when I can, or at lunchtime. I've doubled-up on runs (one in the a.m., one in the p.m.) in order to avoid the early mornings.

I'm making it work, and for once, this change in routine isn't freaking me out. Progress, no?

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Races on tap: The Cowtown Half-Marathon in Fort Worth in late February, and then The Gusher Half-Marathon in Beaumont in early March.

After that...who knows?