Every Race is an Adventure!

My wife Karen claims that after I had awakened after my shoulder surgery last Tuesday that I asked Dr. Kimball how long before I could run again and he said three weeks. I honestly have no memory of that conversation. (She also claims I said "pineapple" multiple times, but that's another story.) Today I decided that six days was long enough.

I should point out that I am not acting totally irresponsibly. Before the surgery, I asked about recovery. Dr. Kimball said that, similar to my son's surgery earlier this year, the surgery was relatively minor, just cleaning up some rough edges, so there was no harm I could do by overdoing it during recovery. Pain would be the only limiting factor.

Three days after surgery I got tired of being constipated by the pain medication so I went off it to see just how much pain was there. There wasn't all that much, and I had good mobility in the shoulder, so I've been off it for three days now.

I ran with Tom, Nathan, Darin, Bill, and Steve (King) at noon today. While my shoulder felt fine before, during, and after the run, shortly into the run I realized that my lungs didn't feel quit as fine. I had a hard time breathing the entire run, especially up the big hill. It wasn't long before Tom, Nathan, Darin, and Steve began to pull ever farther away. I felt good just to be able to hang with Bill until the end, although he did slow down a couple of times to allow me to hang with him.

We ran the 5 miles in around 38:39 (after subtracting streetlight stops). That's roughly 7:44/mi, which really isn't that bad for me for this run. I feel pretty good about this first post-surgery run, but I can tell I'm going to need to recover quickly and step it up if I want to run with the leaders on Mondays. Tom is running especially strong.

I ran 5 easy miles through the hills of Orem and Lindon this morning with Larry and his wife Jolene. Kevin Jessop made it out a few times last week with Larry, and Larry and I were both expecting him this moning, but he didn't appear.

I learned my lesson from yesterday and took it very easy. I'm too embarrassed to record our very slow pace, but it was just what I needed.

It was just Darin and me for the Lake View run today. That's always scary, but fortunately for me he was in no hurry today. I had our time as 40:26 (7:47/mi) for the 5.2 miles.

I was thinking, after Monday I think I may be more afraid to run with Tom now than with Darin. Darin even commented on how fast Tom and Steve finished out Monday's run and finished about a minute ahead of him (although knowing Darin he was just hanging back to stay with Nathan).

Tom, Darin, and Steve are all from Spanish Fork and are all really fast, as are many other SF runners. My dad was born and raised in Spanish Fork and claimed there was something special in the water. I don't know about that, but I may have to join Tom for a run one of these Saturdays and see if I can get some of that SF speed to rub off on me.

Larry and I wandered the hills again this morning. No Kevin and no Wayne again, although it sounds like Wayne plans to run with us on Saturday. I really enjoyed the run this morning. Larry always seems to have something interesting to talk about. It will be cool when we finally get Larry, Kevin, Wayne and I together for a run at the same time.

Larry, Wayne, and I went for an 8 mile run up Provo Canyon this morning. It was great to run with Wayne again. He's been trying to recover from a stress fracture. This was his first time back running. We also hadn't run up the canyon since before St. George, and that was nice, too. We even got to say hello to Sasha as he sped past us on his way down as we headed up.

We took it real easy going up the first 4 miles (9:43, 9:29, 9:34, 9:44). On the way down Wayne told us to go ahead and Larry and I went a little faster the next 3.5 miles (8:32, 8:14, 8:02, 4:01). I was thinking about Tom running 8x800 repeats @ 2:56 to 3:06 this week and decided to push the last half mile and see what I could do for one half mile repeat. I was encouraged to see I finished in 2:55 (5:51/mi). Now I just need to string 8 of those together. :)

I only ran about 30 miles this week, but that's 30 more than the doctor wanted me to run. I figure backing off 20 miles from my goal mileage was a pretty good sacrifice. My shoulder is feeling pretty good after the surgery, and I don't feel that running has negatively affected it at all. (I can't say the same for moving computers and monitors around in my office this week.) I go to the doctor for my post-operative exam on Monday morning. I guess I'll find out how he thinks I'm doing. I plan to pick up my mileage next week, and maybe slip in a medium pace tempo run or two, unless he convinces me otherwise.