Surgery is done. I survived, but I’m still recovering. There was a complication that led to me getting a catheter, and that was hands down the worst part of the whole thing. Guys, I do not recommend getting a catheter if you can avoid it. Overall, there wasn’t a whole lot of pain (outside of the 5 seconds when they inserted my catheter), mostly just varying degrees of discomfort and soreness. I’ve managed to switch from high powered prescription painkillers to just extra strength Tylenol. Progress.
One other thing that made it interesting is that we got some snow on the day of my surgery. I was still able to get to the hospital, and then from the hospital to a friend’s place. (I didn’t want to go back home. You know how I complain about running on the hills in my neighborhood? That’s not as dangerous as trying to drive on them when there’s snow and ice.)
Running? I don’t know when I’ll be back. I’ll take it day by day. Right now I’d say Tuesday at the earliest.
In addition to all of that, the lottery for the 2018 New York City Marathon opened this week. I entered. Fingers crossed. I’ll find out on February 28 if I got in, or if I need to start raising a boatload of money for charity.
Weight Check: Oh dear. 169.2, up 4.5 pounds from last week. Pretty much everybody I came into contact with after my surgery thought I should eat. Add in a really low number of miles (and all of them on Monday and Tuesday), and you end up with a 4.5 pound gain.
| Day | Total Miles |
|---|---|
| Monday | 3.11 |
| Tuesday | 3.11 |
Total: 6.22 miles
Yes, that’s it.
Monday, I had the day off work, so I waited for it to warm up a little bit. It was still cold, 28 degrees, but not as bad as it would have been around 7 AM or so. My legs felt fine. I ran really well, I kept a steady but relatively fast pace on the first two miles, then I sped up on the last mile.
On Tuesday, I had no hernia pain, and hopefully that’s the last time I ever have to make that comment. It was cold, 23 degrees, and I had to work that day so I couldn’t wait for it to warm up. I think I sped up a little bit because of the cold, and, subconsciously, because I knew this would be my last run for at least a few days, I guess I wanted to make it a good one and sped up a little more. My legs did feel a little tired near the end, but I was still able to push through and increase the pace late.
And that’s it. I guess that even if I was healthy I wouldn’t have been able to run on Wednesday or Thursday due to weather, but I might have been able to get out there Friday, and definitely on Saturday and Sunday. Oh well, I’ll get back to it this week.
Also, since most of my recovery ended up being away from home and my laptop, I made no progress on my Huntersville Half recap, or my December wrap-up, or my 2017 wrap-up. (And have I mentioned that I need to do some kind of 2018 preview? Yeah.)