I could nearly lay out the five stages of grief leading up to a recent decision to wipe my race schedule free this summer, but I don't want to sound whiny so I won't expand on that. But looking forward, it's obvious my knee needs more time to recover and I've decided running the Sugarloaf Marathon in a few weeks is not a good idea, and neither is the Pineland 50K. Furthermore, I've already lost a lot of my fitness, and don't think I'll be in shape to run the Vermont 100 the way I'd want to this July, so I've decided that I'm going to withdraw and do it next year.
It came down to the following: I could either scramble to play catch-up and almost inevitably set myself up for major frustration, disappointment and/or injury... or, recover slowly and properly, spend the summer focusing on getting back into the running shape I want to be in, and hopefully run a really great marathon at MDI in mid-October (i.e. BQ). The latter makes more sense, so that's the route I'm going to go. I'll do a few smaller races this summer, with the grandest being the Mt. Washington Road Race next month and the rest being 5Ks or not much more.
Hard decision, but I feel it's the right one.
