The last 7 miles...

On Sunday I was supposed to do a 15 mile run, but after 3.5 miles I decided that I wasn't interested in doing the whole thing. Right now I'm wondering how the rest of my week would have turned out if I had kept going. Would it be better or worse?

I aggravated an old injury either during my run or soon after, but however I did it I basically got no sleep on Sunday or Monday night. The pain was so bad that at 7:00am Tuesday I was up calling the doctor to get in to see her as soon as possible. My doc was all booked up, so I ended up seeing a nurse practitioner. She took one look at my problem and said "I can't do anything about this. We need to get you in to see a surgeon."

Whatever I expected out of my Tuesday, it wasn't to be talking to a surgeon.

I got really lucky. The surgeon had a free appointment time right then, so I took an elevator ride down a few floors and got seen immediately. He took a look at the problem then gave me two options. Option 1 was a more invasive procedure that would result in approximately two weeks of excruciating pain with probably another month of moderate pain after that. But after those six weeks were done my problem would effectively be taken care of. Option 2 was a less invasive procedure that had less pain associated with it, but for 20-40% of people who have it done the problem is not completely resolved. I'd already done quite a bit of research on both, so none of it came as a huge surprise. The doc suggested we go with option 2 and I agreed.

Due to some twist of fate (I swear I wasn't planning ahead for this) I hadn't had anything to eat since around 9pm the night before and nothing to drink since around midnight. That means that my body was already effectively ready for surgery. Doc asked if it could wait until the next morning and I said I'd prefer it to happen as soon as possible. So at 2:00pm I checked into the surgery center and at 4:00 they took me back to get prepped. There are some really fantastic people working in medicine. Everyone I met was friendly, helpful, and they all laughed at my jokes. I make jokes when I'm excited, happy, or nervous. Actually, if I'm not trying to make a joke about something you could probably assume that there's some bad stuff going down. I kept Nurse Rockstar (he just had that look) in stitches while he was rooting around in my arms for a vein to stick the IV in.

After an hour or so of prep work they wheeled me into the OR. The anesthesiologist slapped a mask over my face, I tried to make another joke or two and then I was out. OUT. I sort of woke up in the recovery room and the doctor tried to confuse me with medical jargon. The only thing I took out of it was that they started off trying to do the surgery we agreed on but determined that it wasn't going to be possible and went for the more invasive procedure.

So, what is this going to mean for me? Well, obviously I'm going to have to take it easy for a couple of weeks. The marathon is in roughly 3 weeks. It's just not going to happen this year. I'm of two minds about this, to be completely honest. I'm disappointed because I've been dreaming about how good it will feel to cross the finish line since June. I've put in a lot of work toward this thing, and I'm not going to be able to follow through with it. On the other hand, the last few weeks of running have shown me that I'm not thrilled with some aspects of my training and I've lost a little of the excitement for doing the marathon because of it.

So what's the new plan? Well, I'm going to take it easy for a little while. I'll count the cost of the marathon as a sunk cost. I'm not going to run it, but I am going to pick up my t-shirt. I paid $100 for this marathon, if I'm not getting to run my 26.2 I'm at least getting the t-shirt I paid for out of it. And I'll wear it too on days that it's cool and I'm training outside. After I've had some time to heal, I'm going to start working on hitting that 26.2 goal again. I'm going to mix in at least one half marathon sometime in the first half of 2010, maybe Vancouver. I've never been there and I hear it's nice. The new goal is to run the Rock 'n Roll Marathon in July. Of course, I'll also have a couple of 8ks along the way (Beat the Bridge and Torchlight). We'll see if we can't work in a few 5ks as well.

I think I like this. First, doing a summer marathon will give me a lot of time to work up to a reasonable speed. I haven't been thrilled with the idea that it was going to take me 5 hours no matter how much I tried to convince myself otherwise. Second, it's going to give me some freedom to train when I want. I hate that I have to go out on Saturdays or Sundays almost as soon as I wake up in order to get it done before dark. I'll be hitting my long runs hardest around the end of June or beginning of July, so I could leave to go on my long run at 5pm and still get home before dark, even if I have to run 20 miles.

Ok. I've had a setback. I've had to change my plans. But I've got a backup plan that I'm probably more happy with. And I've taken care of a problem that's bothered me for a long time. It's hard to be too disappointed with the way the week has turned out.