On February 10th 2011, I had knee surgery. I had developed an issue that could be called, of all things, movie-goers knee. or sometimes called jumpers knee or runners knee. Pick one, it doesn’t matter. It all hurt.
What would happen is that when I sat, my knee cap was aggravating some nerves and the discomfort it created made me squirm in discomfort. You have to understand, some time back when I broke my arm in 8 places, I had to convince my doctor it was broken. (I have a high threshold for pain. It used to come in handy in my scrapper days.) So when I start to squirm from a discomfort, that’s my usual understated method of communicating.
The discomfort started while I was running/training for the 2009 San Francisco 1/2 marathon. I was on the 10-mile weekend when, the following week, the knee started acting up. I kept pushing through the discomfort and was finally reduced to walking my 10+ miles in training for my 1/2 marathon that I was going to participate in.
I did manage a ’3-hr even’ running event, but wow, the knee was pretty uncomfortable.
After talking to my doctor, who said that there’s no guarantee, said that more than likely he can fix it and that I’d be up and about in a few days after surgery. (He forgot to mention the huge leg brace, crutches, cane and such that I’d be “up and about” with. LOL)
After surgery, I lived with a leg locked-out in the straight position for a few weeks, then I was allowed to unlock it, and then it came off. I remember what bliss it was to finally be able to get into my truck and drive to work rather than walking. And then later, the ability to ride my bicycle again was also a wonderful feeling of escape, or freedom.
Trust me, when you walk to work with crutches or a cane, that is a serious workout and it takes much longer than walking regularly.
After a long, long recovery period… or so it felt to this runner, I finally got the go ahead to start it back up. On June 6th, I had rejoined my walking group. (Something I joined when I had to stop running.) That was a tough 3 mile walk at a very good clip. Then the following Wednesday, I “ran” a 1/2 mile in 12 minutes and on Friday I then turned in a 10 minute run for .8 of a mile.
And thus, my road to recovery has commenced with walking, running and biking cross-training endeavor. It’s worth it gang. Trust me, for a guy who thought he would never take up running, it’s really not a bad thing to try. I’ll talk about getting into running in a later article. (Though if I keep experiencing hosting issues with GoDaddy, I might be moving this bad-boy blog somewhere else!)
Now, where’s that first 1K event for toddlers? I think I can take ‘em!
