ACL at Four Months

Quick update:

I got booted out of rehab last week. I felt a little sad. I had been there for two to two and a half hours every Monday, Wednesday and Friday since the first week in September. What will I do with all that time? Okay, maybe I don't feel so sad after all.

My quad is at 88% and my hamstring at near 100%. I have good balance, good mobility, good flexibility (gosh, I thought I would never say I was flexible). I can ease back into running now, at four months (much sooner than the six to nine months I was originally told). Three to four weeks of building up on safe stuff (track, greenway, dirt roads), then slowly back onto trails.

I went outside and ran my first mile on Christmas Eve. The knee felt fine, but after not running for five months, it was a little tough on the rest of me. I did a 16 mile hike a couple of weeks ago (10 of it on dirt road) and the only thing that bothered me was the brace. I was wiped out afterwards, though! I did a 10 mile hike all on trail a couple of days ago and halfway through just wanted to curl up beside the trail and take a nap. I will try a 18 mile hike tomorrow and will run a little bit on the road section.

All in all, while the whole experience has not been a lot of fun, it has not been as bad as I imagined. All that time rehabbing, including three a days at home, plus working and coaching, kept me so busy and tired, that I haven't had the time to miss running or dwell too much on it.
I'm still amazed, though, that they took out part of my hamstring and repurposed it as a ligament to put my ACL back together. And it worked. Wow.

Difficult Things

Trail running is hard.

This was my big revelation as I hiked up to Wesser Bald last weekend. It used to be one of my regular training runs and was one of the last runs I did before I tore my ACL. It is all uphill to the tower, making it a fairly difficult run, but not incredibly hard. Walking what I used to run, however, was an eye opener. Now granted, I haven't run since July and my cardio training has taken a backseat to rehabbing my knee, but now I understand the comment that trail runners frequently hear from hikers, "I can't believe you are RUNNING that!". As a hiker last weekend, I gingerly made my way through the wobbling rocks and slippery roots, sure I was going to take a spill if I didn't take it nice and slow. Then I looked up at a short section of even steeper trail in front of me, with even more roots and rocks to contend with. I used to run on that stuff, I thought... I guess once I had made the transition from hiker to trail runner years ago, I lost the appreciation of how difficult this sport can be. So while I don't buy into the argument that runners need to stop and smell the roses, maybe you should take a little walk once in awhile to better appreciate the ability you have been blessed with.

After I reflected on this, a discussion on the Foothills list about the relative difficulty of different ulra races made me think about my personal list of difficult runs. (I spend a lot of time THINKING about running since I can't actually do it). Not how I rank races compared to other races, but what runs were the most difficult for me. Here's my top five:

1. 2010 110 mile Bartram Trail run. Running sick and worn down on incredibly difficult terrain with an injured IT band in last 18 miles.
2. 2004 Massanutten. My first 100, 28 blisters and a chipped cheekbone.
3. 2008 Old Dominion 100. 100 plus degrees, near 100 % humidity, bad air quality and 42% finishing rate.
4. Hellgate 100K, the bitter cold, snowy and icy year. Wait, that covers every Hellgate I ran. Okay, the only race I ever missed a cutoff at. Snow with a thick layer of ice on top, which sometimes broke through and sometimes didn't. The runners in front had chunked up parts of the trail making it incredibly difficult to run on.
5. 2011 Massanutten. Nausea for most of the race, an epic low in the middle of the night in a cold hard rain.

That was fun. Feel free to play along and make your own list. I'd love to read your posts on your top fives. And I can't wait to have challenges like that again.

Rehab at 12 weeks. Started jumping side to side and front to back (6 sets of 1 minute) and running in place on a trampoline a couple of weeks ago. Also started this cool little machine which mimics the side to side motion of skiing. I have some pain under the knee cap, but apparently it is nothing to worry about. When that settles down I will start lunges and some treadmill jogging.

Eight Weeks Later: Out in the Woods Again

One thing I will miss this winter is running in the snow. I love being blessed with the ability to run far enough to get to places where the only other footprints belong to the bears, bobcats, deer and turkeys. There is something special and magical about being in a place like that. One sunny October afternoon, I ran up Fisher Creek, a regular training run for me. There was no snow down low, but there was more and more fresh snow on the ground as I climbed. That's nothing unusual, but this was October, which meant that the leaves were still brilliant. A brisk wind had followed the snow and the pure white ground was littered with vivid red, yellow and orange leaves. It was one of the most beautiful things I have seen and I was lucky enough to be the only person out there. People sometimes criticize trail runners for not slowing down to see the beauty of things, but I have seen many more beautiful things running long than I ever did hiking.

Having said that, this October I have been blessed with the ability to hike. When Tony took me for my first short walk on trail, I was so happy to be back out in the woods, I actually cried a little. I started walking on the forest road near my house, enjoying the woods and becoming more comfortable with with my knee. Last weekend, Tony took me for a two-hour hike on the Bartram at Sawmill Gap. The trail is not easy, but I carefully picked my way along, being so glad that seven weeks after surgery I was out there. This weekend we went to the Bartram at Buckeye Branch for another hike a little over two hours, with both my physical therapist's and surgeon's blessings. I just have to be careful of steep transitions and doing things like jumping from rock to rock.

If I had known before I had my surgery how well things would progress, I would have not been quite so devastated. Now I am able to hike, bike on the road, swim and run in the deep end of the pool. This month, my quad strength increased 88% and is 75% as strong as the uninjured leg. I have full extension and can bend it 140 degrees. I am now doing balance activities (including squats on a unstable platform), leg presses, wall squats and calf raises. I am just not allowed to run, but I was a hiker before I was a runner and right now that is just fine with me.

Everyone said that I would come out of this experience a better runner and now I actually believe it. I am doing all the things that I never had time for when I was running: weights, stretching and cross-training. I have started to think of this as the "off-season" rather than being on injured reserve. My physical therapist said, yes, I could do a 100 in June. And that's really not all that far away.

The pic is from the Blue Ridge Parkway last week.