Recovering From Microfracture Surgery

AM - Well I was miserably sick for the last four days in bed. I have not beeen that sick in a long time. I have been on a liquid diet since thursday and still am but feeling a lot better. The blessing in disguise is when I ran 6 miles this morning the knee felt better than it has in at least a month. Still not 100% but much better. Pretty busy at work lately so not much blogging and being sick and injured does not help matters.

AM - Easy 6 with Sasha and Josse this morning. The trail was a bit icy and slick but other than that it was a balmy 33'F. The knee felt pretty good again today even a little better than yesterday. So the knee seems to be on the mend, hopefully. Now I just need to shake the last of the sickness. I was still on a mostly soft food diet yesterday but things are feeling better each day.

Easy not feeling good.

AM - 6.1 miles with Josse, Steve, Jeff, and Kory before heading to AZ for Del Sol.

First day of the Del Sol Relay. After sleeping not so good we all headed over to Lybi's house to hang out and wait for our time to depart to the start of the Del Sol Relay. We met up with the rest of the team at the start of the race in Wickenburg, AZ and hung out waiting for the race to start. We started at 6:00pm with 5 other teams which was the last start time. The first teams started at 9:00am. I will let everyone else comment on their specific legs but I was in van #2 with Adam, Kory, Sasha, Jeff and Steve. I was really concerned that I was not going to be able to run anywhere close to my predicted times and was very concerned that I would struggle to run even close to 6:00 pace. Besides the fact that I have not been able to hardly run at all the last month I came down with the flu last weekend and my throat had not recovered and I was feeling pretty trashed overall. I really did not want to let the team down so I was pretty nervous about how my body would respond and perform. So when it was my turn to run at about 9:00pm I was not very excited but I was determined to not let anyone down. So I took the hand off from Adam, who ran very fast, and just tried to relax and tell myslef to run hard and just kept pushing thinking to myself to just push no matter what and at least make it through one leg with a decent time and try and be as close to my predicted time as possible. My first leg was suppossed to be 4 miles with the first 2 fairly flat and the last 2 on a slight uphill. The total distance measured short at 3.85 miles. The toughest part about this leg was teh fact that there was 3 cattle guards and crossing cattle guards at night running sub 6:00 pace is a little scary. My first mile was 5:48 which was 12 seconds ahead of predicted pace so I was happy and although not feeling goo just focused on pushing and trying to stay ahead of pace as long as possible. The 2nd mile was a 5:38 and now I was 34 seconds ahead of pace and glad I had put a cushion before starting the climb. This is where the real climb began and to top it off I turned into a pretty decent headwind. This made things hurt and the 3rd mile was a 6:19 but I was still 15 seconds ahead of predicted and hanging on. The last split was 5:04 for .85 miles which is just under 6:00 pace so I ended up with 22:51 for 3.95 miles and about 15 seconds ahead of predicted pace wise and 1:09 ahead of actual predicted time. I handed off to Kory and jumped back in the van. At this point I was not sure how the rest of the night would go as I was feeling wiped out and my throat was killing me. The knee survived but it was a bit stiff after getting out of the van and walking around and jogging at the next exchange. So my next leg was after midnight so you can read about it on my next days entry.

Ok, the race goes on. After leg one complete for Van 1 we had a about a 5 minute lead and then when we handed off to Van 2 we had about a 7 minute lead so we were able to add a couple minutes to the lead Van 1 gave us which was a good sign. We were still not comfortable at this point though becasue a 7 minute lead is not impossible to overcome. So we headed off to exchange point 18 and tried to get some rest while we waited for our tunrs again. I ended up getting about an hour of sleep on the ground sharing a couple of sleeping bags with Adam and Jeff. When Van 1 arrived and handed off to Adam this time we found out that they had run very fast and now handed us a 17+ minute lead. This was lead by an incredible performance by Logan where he PRd at 5 and 10k during his 7 mile leg splitting a 10k in 30:30 at about 2:00am on his second leg. So after Adam took off it was time to drop me off. I was still very concerned with how I would perform as things had not really improved as far as how I felt. During my warm-up the legs were dead and the throat was still swollen. This leg for me would be 3 miles of gentle down, about 1% with a flatter section in the middle of mile 2. So I figured just go out hard and survive again. My predicted pace was suppossed to be about 5:30 so anything clsoe to this would be great. The first mile I just dug deep and focused on forum and leg turn over and hit the split at 5:15. I was pretty happy with this and although it flet hard I still thought I could at least maintain sub 5:30 if I just kept pushing. The 2nd mile started to flatten out and feel tougher but I still hit a 5:25 split. With 1 mile to go the pain was pretty bad and I felt like I could barely breath but just kept hammering knowing the finish was near. At one point I lost track of where I was running in the dark on the road and the next thing I knew I was in the middle of the highway on the double yellow line. Good thing no cars were coming at the time. The leg was only suppossed to be 3.1 miles but when I hit my 3rd mile split in 5:20 and the exchange was still aways off I knew it would be long. So 3 miles in 16:00 and handed off at 3.2 miles in 16:59 and under projected time again averaging 5:20 per mile. This was a great leg for me in the condition I was in. At the end my head and stomach were spinning and I dry heaved a few times and jumped in the van. The stomach hurt for some time after this leg. Now it was time to move on. Everyone else continued to run well and we handed off to Van 1 again this time with a 22 minute lead so we added another 5 minutes to our lead. We were now off to our last resting point. After a verys hort rest, probably less than 30 minutes of sleep, it was our turn to run again. We had no idea what our lead was at this point but we were now focused on a new goal to try and break 17 hours. I am off to the airport for another trip and will continue later the rest of the story.

Ok, after a week away I am back in town and might as well finish the story for the last leg. My last leg started on a pretty steep incline for the first mile, although I was glad I did not have Adam's leg as he had over 3 miles of grueling uphill to hand off to me. I was feeling very trashed by this point and just wanted to get through this last leg as best as I could. During the warm-up te knee was very stiff and I was concerned as it did not seem to loosen up much. I figured I would just hammer the uphill mile as best as I could and then put it in cruises control for the 2 down hill miles to the exchange. There was a bit of a headwind as well so that did not help much along with the fact that the heat was now becoming a factor. So overall not a fun leg at all but I held it together ok. My splits were 6:01 on the uphill mile which was faster than I expected. Then the down started and I was able to hit a 5:37 2nd mile and a 5:31 3rd mile. A little dodging traffic across the highway to get to the handoff but I was very glad it was over and also happy that I was only 3 seconds off of predicted time so I held together. Overall this was an awesome experience and I had a blast. I will pay with a bum knee but it was worth it.