The Year of Covid Adventures

 I really wanted to make the most of opportunties afforded by the pandemic.  I know that sounds terrible as so many people are dying, sick, losing jobs etc and I just hate that.  Of course much of that is out of my control as long as I can practice social distancing and try to avoid contributing to the spread of the pandemic.  

School let out at Spring Break and March and the first two months it seemed irresponsible to leave the house as we did not yet know how quickly the virus might spread and I didn't want to be part of the problem.

I did do some primitive camper with my old 1970s model single bed camper.   It was very nice as the weather was perfect and I had the whole place to myself in the middle of a wilderness area.  I was able to run and bike a lot while camping and the rest of the time and put in around 750 miles a month on the bike and over 200 miles a month running.

The rest of the time when not working on teaching classes online I was able to read a lot of books and I discovered the joy of podcasts while biking.

In June, I was able to get a backpacking permit for the John Muir Trail going Southbound from Cottonwood Pass.  This would be my third trip to the JMT.  I really intended on going all the way to Yosemite but then exited real early after a scary trip over Forrester Pass.  I was really doing great and feeling strong.  On the second dayI found myself five miles to the top of Forrester Pass.  It was 3:30 in the afternoon.  It felt too early in the day to stop and it would be pushing it a bit but I thought I'd have time to get up and over and make camp on the other side.

This view of Mt Whitney (highest point in lower 48) from the backside was so beautiful.  The meadow here was extraordinary.

I had to really start picking up the pace as ascended.  I was enjoying it though.  Since it was mid-June, as I got higher, there was a lot more snow and the alpine lakes were still completely iced over.  It was absolutely beautiful.  But the hiking was getting increasingly difficult because of the snow.  Finally as I neared the crest there was a little notch only about 30 feet below the crest and that notch was iced over.  There were footprints there from other hikers and about ten steps.  But if any of the ice gave away on those ten steps, the outcome would not be good as it was a steep dropoff.  

So without hesitation I just went for it and it was fine but it did give me a bit of a scare.  Going on the other side of the pass the snow was even worse and I would posthole often and find myself at times up to my waste.  I was really tired by this time but in a way I was also really loving it.

I hurried down another five miles or so beyond the pass to find a suitable campsite and after a dinner I collapsed in my tent from exhaustion.  It was exhilirating and so much fun.

I wish I could go back to that moment and make a different choice because the next morning I decided to exit the JMT because I was worried if Forrester Pass was that bad, how bad would the other passes be?  As it turns out and unbeknownst to me, Forrester is the highest pass on the JMT so the rest of the passes were much better.

It was a great trip but I feel like I exited early on a once in a lifetime opportunity to experience the JMT early in the season with very few other backpackers.  I would go hours without seeing anyone.  It was so nice.  So, I will just have to go back next year.

On the way home, I went through Death Valley.  What a forbidding landscape that is!  Then the next day I did some trail running and road biking in Zion National Park.  It was my first time at Zion National Park and it just blew me away.

I liked Zion so much that a week later I drove the whole family back to Kanaab, Utah which is an 18 hour drive.  Kanaab is a great central location to tour National Parks.  The altitude is high enough that the weather is really nice there.  So the family and I did the North Rim of the Grand Canyon once day, Zion the next day and then Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef National Park the last day and on our way home.  It was a trip I had been eyeing for some time and I am really glad we went.  With the pandemic, my daughter and I cancelled a July trip to Europe and this helped to make up for that a little bit.

It's hard to pick a favorite National Park on this trip, they were all so great but Bryce was the most surprising in it's beauty and the most unusual.

My last adventure was a backpacking trip to Colorado.  I started at Kenosha Pass and backpacked to Breckinridge and back.  Then I spent another day backpacking from Twin Lakes toward Leadville.  Altogether I got in another 100 miles.  But once again I was a little disappointed I didn't stay longer and do more backpacking.

However, there is a silver lining.  I grew a lot in my confidence and I think I'm ready to greatly reduce my weight and put in a lot more miles each day.  I've found that I like nothing better than just marching a long from sun up to sun down.  I think I am ready to greatly reduce my pack weight and cover the JMT for example in six days or less.  

I've hesitated to do this in the past because I guess I just worry that this isn't something people do much and I should just slow down and enjoy it.  But I feel I enjoy it more when I really push my pace and give that physical exertion that goes to the limit.  Doing so amidst such beauty is just perfect.

So I will be back to work in a week or so but I'm guessing it will not last long before our school is back to teaching online.  If that happens, I'm prepared some even grander adventures.  It's been a great summer and has helped prepare me for even greater things to come.

Life is too short to sit around at home.

Proximal Hamstring Tendinopathy - Part II - Fall 2019 to Fall 2020

 Quick review from previous post - 

-From age 28 to 42, I had a great running experience.  Ran marathons, ultras, 100 milers and triathlons.  Post age 40 I developed proximal hamstring tendinopathy (for years I thought it was sciatic pain).  The pain would be so bad that driving was difficult, just sitting was painful and running became increasingly painful and hard until I could only really jog.

-In summer of 2018 at age of 47, after five years of this tortuous running, I completely tore my hamstring from the bone while water skiing.  Looking back, I am sure the tendinopathy made me very susceptible to having this complete tear.  After some persistence with different doctors, I was finally able to find a doctor to do surgery and reattach the hamstring.

-From September 2018 when I had the surgery until March of 2018, I was just recovering.  No running.  On crutches for six weeks then working up to walking.

-By summer of 2019 I was running again but not without some very scary setbacks that had me thinking I wouldn't be running again.

-By August of 2019, I could run a 5K under 20 minutes again and my gait was better than it had been in perhaps a decade.

FALL 2019

Things continued to vastly improve!  But not without setbacks.  My biggest setback came after playing tennis and I went to run a 5K.  I was swinging the leg and limping as if the hamstring had become detached again.  It really freaked me out.  I thought I had overdone it.  So I took another 2-3 weeks off and slowly started to run gain.

Quickly started to feel better and then in September I did an Olympic distance triathlon and felt great.  Ran 7 minute pace on the 10 K portion.

So in October I decided on a lark to run a road marathon.  The Arkansas Marathon was close to home and the forecast was to have near record low temperatures near freezing at the start time.  So I decided the week of to go for it.  I was really nervous not having run a successful road marathon in 7 years or more and I didn't know if the hammie would just give out on me.  Six miles in I wanted to quit so bad just because I was scared that it wouldn't hold up.

This felt so good to run a successful hard marathon.  The first time in almost ten years!

But I was running very well.  Clipping along in the low seven range.  After the turnaround, I took the lead (it was a really small race) and that really motivated me.  The weather was perfect.  Cold, no wind and beautiful country course so I just hammered it home.  As always the last four mile or so became a bit of a struggle but the hammie stayed strong!

I knew then that if I could do a road marathon, then I was back!  It was so exciting.  I hadn't run a race with that kind of a comfortable yet intense effort since my days of running personal bests!  I crossed in 3:11 which easily gave me a Boston qualifier too which was just icing on the cake.

In November, I did a tough 35 mile ultra called the razorback revival.  It was extremely technical with lots of elevation gain from Lake Fort Smith State Park on the Ozark Highland Trail to the top of White Rock mountain and back.  Some younger guys really pushed me and got me to be competitive and thus up the pace.  I finished first in around 5:45 or so.  I was completely beat but again, the hammie held.

Through the winter and early spring I continued to run well although there were a few races where the hammie kind of froze up on me.  But that always came after playing tennis or soccer.  The quick starts and and the lateral movement of these sports seem to much for the hamstring.  Regrettably then, after a few more matches in the Spring, I've given up tennis for now.

As much as I love tennis, it's just not worth the risk and the setbacks.  As long as I don't play tennis or soccer, I feel great.  

Since the pandemic began, I'm running around 50 miles a week and biking 150.  I've done a mountain trail marathon on my own and a half marathon about every other week and feel great.  I'm still running sub 20 5Ks at age 49 so I am happy with that.

This summer I backpacked 200 miles on the John Muir Trail and the Colorado Trail and it felt great.

High point on the JMT - I had just crossed a very scary icy section to get here.  It was still in Mid June and a little early in the season.  But I loved it!

This is a panoramic photo but no photos can do the JMT justice.

I am just so thankful that I can run again and I try to never take for granted my daily runs and bike rides.

Covid19 has limited race opportunities but who cares.  I'll get to do that again, right now I just will continue to enjoy getting out there every day.

I hope that information from my experience might help others out there who are struggling.  Prior to the waterskiing accident that tore my hamstring, I never realized how bad things had become.  It had been so long since I had run without pain and with a normal gait that I had forgotten what it felt like.

For me, the complete tear of the hammie was the best thing that could happen.  For those that are still suffering from this and it limits your ability to to do what you love, then I am so sorry and I hope that very soon things will heal as they did for me.

Hamstring Surgery Repair and Running

Keywords - Proximal Hamstring Tear, Retraction, Trail running, Ultra running, Backpacking

If you look at some of my earlier posts from several years ago, you will see that I suffered quite a bit from High Hamstring Tendinopathy and struggled to get it treated.   My running never really recovered from it.  After some time off and PRP injections, I was able to at least run again but not at the level I once had.  I had once ran 100 mile weeks regularly and ran sub 2:50 marathons including a 2:44 Personal Best.  I also ran a lot of ultra marathons including three 100 mile completions and many 50 mile and 50K races.  After the PRP I could do a 50 miler but much slower and road marathons were much slower to the point where I just stuck with trail ultras and some 5K road races that usually was a minute or two slower.  I used to run under 18 pretty consistently and was struggling to go under 20 the last year or so.

For much of 2017 and 2018, running was just getting more difficult as when I tried to run at a hard effort, my body just would not respond.  Running became painful and I thought it was just from growing old.

My hamstrings were really tight and so much in my legs just did not want to respond to a hard effort.  It seems that at age 47 the decades of hard training and racing had caught up to me.

Then on July 7th I was water skiing and as I was attempting to get up on the skis and as the boat took off, my left leg got ahead of the right leg and the resistance from the water against the ski combined with the force of 200 horsepower forced my leg to hyperextend.  I belatedly let go of the rope and knew something was terribly wrong.  My hamstring had just snapped and I could feel it.  

I struggled to get back to the house.  I struggled that night with going up and down stairs and using the bathroom.  I could barely walk for the next week.  The back of my leg turned the most hideous color of black and blue from the internal bleeding from the hamstring having been torn from the bone.

I should have done more research and went straight away to the doctor.  But like so many injuries and pains I have had, I just assumed it would get better.  As it happened, I also had a trip to Europe scheduled only one week after the injury and I was not going to miss that.  So for two weeks I hobbled around Europe but it indeed did get better.  After two weeks, I could walk around cities in Europe and only at the end of the day did I really begin to limp as my leg began to completely give out.  But there was definite improvement.  Running was out of the question but in due time I thought that I would be able to run again.

Long story short, after I returned home, I began coaching my high school cross country team.  I could not run with them at all.  I used to lead the front runners, now I couldn't stay with the walkers.  If I tried to run, my injured leg just would not carry through and push off.  By this time, it had been well over a full month since the water skiing accident.

As became more frustrated, I became more determined to fix this problem.  So I went to the weight room to start hamstring curls to rebuild the muscle.  With my good leg, I could curl 80 pounds.  With the injured leg, I could not lift any weight whatsoever!  That's when I realized that there was nothing to rebuild.  The hamstring was gone!

I researched that night and found out that water skiing is a perfect disaster for this type of injury and that now makes sense.  The combination of the sheer force of the motor with the resistance from the water can easily tear the hamstring in a way that even sprinting could never replicate.

I made an appointment the next day.  It was frustrating going through that process because I knew from my research that time was important as the hamstring had already begun retracting.  That success comes by operating as soon as possible.

After the MRI results came in (5cm retraction meaning the hamstring had separated 5 cm from the bone and the longer we waited the more it would retract) and I saw the first doctor, he tried to tell me that normally we do not repair these injuries because people with these injuries can still walk normal and lead a normal life.  I had to be very insistent that I wanted to run again, that I wanted it repaired and he finally and somewhat reluctantly referred by to another doctor he does do these repairs although they are rare.

So several weeks later I had the surgery.  This was September of 2018.  Six weeks with a brace and crutches though I returned to teaching within a week.  Then slow recovery with physical therapy.  Six months before I could even think about a slow job.

After three months I did begin walking and quickly got to where I was walking four miles each day at a good clip.  That felt so good just to do that.

After about four or five months in the early Spring of 2019 I began to do some light running and all seemed to be going well.

Then in May after having completed some speed workouts on the track, I felt I was definitely ready to race again.  I went to a 10K road race and after only one mile I was limping.  By the last mile I was walking as if I had just injured the hamstring.  This setback was so demoralizing as I really thought the repair had failed and that I would not be able to run again.

I retreated again from running for a month and did the power walking.  By  May I was running again very comfortably.  It felt good.  I also noticed that I was running better than I did before I was injured.  My gait was much improved and felt like it did when I was in my 30s.  But I was very hesitant to run a 5k pace.

My son and I went to Europe and I decided to enter a trail race in Italy.  The Cinque de Terre.  It was a 30K race with about 6000 feet of elevation gain.  It was beautiful.  Maybe the most beautiful run I've ever done.  I felt confident I could finish so long as I didn't race it.  I took it easy and took a lot of pictures.  It was great to cross that finish line as I never thought I would be able to do that again.

Here are some pics from that epic race!

I was really nervous at the start line.  First race in Europe and would the hamstring hold?

Extraordinary views of the Mediterranean Coast.

Steps more steps is what gave this 30K race 6K of elevation gain.

FINISHED!  Hammie held but I had some serious heat exhaustion.  Took days to recover.

Back in Oklahoma, in late July, I ran a 5K a a tempo pace.  Not all out but 90 percent effort.  It felt really good and there were no ill effects.  Ran a 7 minute pace and I felt like I was coming back.

So July into August I was able to push harder until I was able to run under 20 minutes again.  That felt so good and running was fun again.

Now in hindsight, that water skiing accident was a blessing in disguise!  It may have been the best thing that happened to me.  I can run much better now than I did before when I had tendinopathy.  I feel like I'm 30 again.

I've read that in many Norway, Australia and some other countries, they will actually take serious cases of proximal hamstring tendinopathy in athletes and cut and reattach the hamstring.  Some Americans have been traveling to Norway to have this done and now I can see why.  Each case is unique but for me, having the hamstring torn an reattached was the only thing that got me running again like normal.

With a good insurance plan, my cost was $23K although I've managed to convince insurance company to not charge that (long story).  The cost from what I understand in Norway is something around 10-15K.  So it is something to think about.  In hindsight, knowing what I know now, I would do that in an instant.  But again, each case is different and other runners/athletes may not have the same diagnosis or outcome.  

I'm just grateful to be running again.  Part II - Fall 2019 - Fall 2020 Coming Next