Surgery Tale, Part I

Running on Full

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That feature photo is the last time I felt okay.

I don’t know if the course distance was off, or my watch was. The date was September 23, 2023. My watch said I’d run 20.69km, or 400m short of a half marathon. My time was 1:53:42. I was 55 years old and had really lagged on the running the last few years because my career was keeping me crazy busy, and I was struggling with anxiety. For me, running requires a lot of mental energy, and I just didn’t have it.

But I made a deal with my friend Sonya that we would run Melissa’s Half Marathon in Banff that year to kick my ass back in gear. I left the training to the last minute. I’d been riding my bike lots but barely running. With seven weeks before the race, I finally kicked it into high gear. I focused hard on training and injury prevention, which is important at my age. Five days before the race I ran a hilly 16km at an average pace of 5:25/km and figured that was good enough, and then tapered.

I felt great on race day, and great afterward. My goal was sub two hours and I hit it. I wasn’t sore or exhausted. I’d finally lost a good chunk of my covid weight via the training, and felt like I was finally back to being good at running after almost four years of barely phoning it in. That smile on my face was genuine, because hard training seemed to burn off a lot of the anxiety energy too. I felt physically and mentally well for the first time in a while.

Then that very night fate said ha ha, nope. I’m gonna try and kill you.

Paid subscribers can scroll past this italics part. For the free subscribers, this is the last teaser you’ll get for a while. I’m not fond of them myself, which is why I provide a warning at the top that it’s paid content. Anyway, you can give the free trial a go and read the rest of the story and find out what the fuck went wrong with me.