Knowing your own body

I went to the gym last week after having a longer week of bad pain days (lame!).  In my infinite wisdom, I thought, "hey I need to prove to myself that I can do what I want".  Well turns out, I semi can!

Here's the story as told by me: 
I headed to the gym with determination in my eye, hurt in my heart, a positive mind, and about half a bottle of Icy Hot on 2/3 of my body.  I started out with a good stretch- holy moley were my hamstrings t-i-g-h-t!  I started with a half mile warm up and I was off running.  I ran 2.5ish miles when I really radiated my pain; so I stopped, walked a bit, stretched a bit.  Then thought- hmm..why not run downhill?  You can run slower, it's easier...I found that running downhill really helped delay the onset of my pain.  SCORE!  I ended up running 6.1 miles.  I had proved myself right; I could do anything that I set my mind to.

Hahah this picture/poster just cracks me up!

Were the 6.1 miles pain free? Heck No!  But I'm getting a lot better at allowing my body to have limits.  My body hurt during the run, actually increased from baseline but guess what that night I was back to baseline and the next day my quads were sore from the downhill madness.  Case in point: I'm slowly learning to be okay with my body limitations!