Recovering From Microfracture Surgery

Hiking and rock climbing at Arches National Park. During this time I really tweaked my knee hopping across a crevasse and was in pretty severe pain for a little bit. See Monday's story.

Rested knee after a long weekend of hiking in Moab.

Ok, a strange thing happened this morning. I ran 2 miles in 13:30 with cadets and for the first time in months the knee really did not bother me. I felt it a little but not the normal every step pain that I have been experiencing for months on end every day. So maybe something has happened. I have a theory but we will wait and see if it pans out. If so then I may still get the miracle I had been praying for and not end up with surgery. If not then I am still ok with surgery in July if required.

So my theory is this: We were in Moab hiking a lot at Arches National Park this weekend and I was really stressing the knee quite a bit with a lot of climbing over rough terrain. During our last hike on Sunday evening in the "Fiery Furnace" of all places I was hopping from rock to rock across a large crevasse and felt a severe sharp pain in my knee that was the worst pain I have felt in it to date. It was bad enough that I was gritting my teeth in pain for a couple minutes and wondering if I was going to be able to continue the hike and make my way back out. After that the knee was sore but I managed to continue and make it out of the "Fiery Furnace" ok. So today when I started running I noticed immediately that the knee was not hurting like it normally did. I could feel the knee but not anywhere close to like before. My theory is that when I made this jump and felt the pain that it was the torn piece of meniscus tearing completely off. I am not sure if this is possible but I imagine it is since a torn meniscus is a flap of torn tissue/cartilage and the pain is normally caused by the torn piece interfearing with normal knee movement. During surgery they go in and cut this piece off to smooth things out and restore normal movement. So I wonder if this is possible? I guess I will find out as I continue to run over then next month and see if the pain completely goes away or not. Either way it was nice to run a couple miles and not be in so much pain. So this weekend I was thrown into the "Fiery Furnace" and came out better than when I went in!

Also did 175 push-ups and 175 sit-ups. 

Well another decent day with much less knee pain than previously. Still some minor pain but much more tolerable. I ran a track workout with our BYU students. We did 3x1 mile repeats with a 800 jog rest between. Repeats were as follows: 6:10, 6:04, 5:58. They all felt very comfortable and relaxed and the knee was ok, not good but ok and that is a huge step forward from the last 5 months. Afterwards did 100 push-ups and 100 sit-ups. Adam also joined us for the workout and afterwards I helped him work on some drills to improving his running stride and hopefully his overall speed. So two days in a row where running actually was not a very painful event for a change.

Easy 2.1 miles and 150 push-ups and 150 sit-ups.

In Fort Knox until the 3rd of July. Just traveled today no run but did 50 push-ups and 50 sit-ups.