My biggest fear was not ever being able to run again.
I had to take a break from blogging last spring. When I started this journey of surgery and recovery I thought it would take me a year to get myself back in form. I am relatively young, healthy and a fast healer (so I thought). Whoever said "life is what happens to you when you are making other plans" was so right on. My life was definitely not in my control. All I could do was push forward and hope for the best.
I had been planning on being back racing by summer (not fast but being able to complete a significant distance). I wanted my Ironman that I had lost in 2008. I just wanted to finish but surgery #2 took away all that. By the the end of August all I could do was cycle was 2 hours and my running was limited to 75 minutes. These times were not anything that was imposed on me by my doctor or PT, this is what literally my body told me was enough. So being a smart girl, I dropped the Ironman from my schedule.
Recovery from the second surgery was far easier than the first. After the initial 4 weeks, I was able to increase my resistance on the leg press by 40 pounds (on my surgical leg) in the next two weeks. Originally, I was told I would be running by mid to late June. I took my first strides on a treadmill in May. The running felt ridiculous and I was winded after 10 minutes. It was a start.
I progressed enough to be able to race my first triathlon, a sprint, on August 18. I ended up finishing 3rd, 7 minutes off my time the previous year. My run pace was 7:35 per mile for the 5K, a respectable time.
My real breakthrough this year did not even involve triathlon. I signed up with a team to run Dances With Dirt in Hell, MI. It is a 50k team relay. I ran about 13 miles over trails and through mudholes that went up to my chest. The last leg I ran, I had to drag "lefty" up the remaining hills because my muscles had basically called it a day. However, no matter how bad I felt after I finished, my leg was intact and after this race I finally started feeling that everything was going to be alright.
I have decided to continue bloggin but I am retiring this one in favor of a new one. I need the clean break from the surgerical issues that I have had over the past year. The new one is going to be a fresh start, more conditioning and (hopefully) racing. I still have a long way to go. The left leg is still smaller and I run with a funny gait sometimes. And my endurance is definitely not Ironman ready. But I have a renewed sense of hope that all of this is now behind me.
