Recovering From Microfracture Surgery

AM - 10.1 miles in the fresh 3-4 inches of snow on the Provo River. Had about 6-7 inches in my driveway by the time I got home. Shoveled the driveway for 30-40 minutes and I will have to do it again later as it has only been a couple of hours and there is another 3-4 inches already. Showed Sasha the drills that I do 3 days a week that seem to be helping me. He has a hard time doing them especially when I try and get him to do them faster. I think over time these could really help him as well.

AM - An interesting morning on the trail after it snowed about a foot yesterday. The trail was very slick and running in the fresh snow for 13 miles was like running in the sand. Pace wise the run was easy but it felt a lot harder than 7:45 pace normally feels. Sasha stopped for a VPB and it took him just over 4 miles to catch up and he only had to make up 37 seconds. It was hard to run fster than 8 minute pace today.

AM - Super easy but icy 10 miles at about 8:00 average with Jeff and Sasha at 5:00am. Talked about lots of varied topics and just enjoyed the run. Several close calls on the ice.

AM - Mostly easy 10.1 miles with Sasha on the normal Provo River route. On a clear section we did three pick-ups at about 5:00 pace (probably about 400, 400, 300 length on pick-ups). I was going to run 13 today but the knee was bugging me all day yesterday so I figured I better keep it at 10 for now.

AM - A heat wave has hit Provo as it was about 29'F this morning. Ran with Jeff and Sasha on the Provo River routine 10.1 mile route. We averaged about 7:42 pace but it was pretty slick today. All of us had a couple of sliding adventures but no falls. I am really looking forward to winter going away. It will be nice to be able to run on a surface with traction and not being worried about hitting ice and going down. The cold does not bother me nearly as much as the fact that we are running on snow and ice day in and day out. I will see the doctor next week about the knee so we will see what they say. I have been surviving on 60-70 miles a week but really just want to get this thing fixed if possible so I can really start training again. Right now it feels like I am really slacking and not building the base I really wanted to this winter.

AM - Went up with Sasha and Steve to run the SLTC 5K. Ended up 8th overall with a 17:16. I had no goal going into this race except to just run by feel and make sure I did not damage the knee any worse than it is. So after about 4.5 miles of warm-up and doing my drills I headed to the start. The knee pain was there but bearable and not getting worse so no real problems. I drove up with my son James and Sasha and we picked up Steve along the way. Met Adam W. and James at the start and guessed a good start pace would be between 5:20-30 pace and just see how things went after that. Adam took off a little faster than me so I was content just hanging back a little bit. I did not look at me mile splits until after the race as I was just trying to run more by feel. The funny thing is that the pace did not feel fast but I did not feel like I could get moving any faster. It felt more like 10K to 15K pace but that is abouot all that the legs wanted to give. Breathing was fine and I never really felt the true pain of a 5K. After looking at splits I ran fairly even paced. 1st mile was 5:30, 2nd mile was 5:30 and 3rd mile was 5:40 according to GPS which measured the course right at 3.11 miles. I think I slowed during the third mile a little because I caught up to another runner and was sort of stuck behind him for about a half mile or more. The road had some snow and ice on it and you had to run in a single file line unless you wanted to go in the snow and ice. Everyone once in awhile it would open up so you could run two wide and try to pass but when it did there were runners coming in the other direction blocking the way. I finally got around the other runner with just under a half mile to go and I put about 7 seconds or so on him in less than a half mile. I was closing on Albert Wint fairly quickly but ran out of time. I think I could have caught him if I had another mile at most. So I ended up 8th overall and 2nd in my age group. The FRB Team had a decent showing. We had 4 of the top 8 runners with Steve 3rd, Sasha 4th, and Adam W. 6th. The course was very flat but it was snowy and icy and at the 180 turn you had to come to a complete stop or you would have fallen on the ice. In fact some did fall that tried to run through the turn around. Overall a decent race but definetely not where I want to be right now. Off to the doctors next week to try and find out what is going on with the knee and maybe even get on the path to healing. It least it was fun to get out and represent the FRB and socialize.