DEC 98 - Sentimental Hogwash

At 20 weeks post-op, I began running again and started training for my first post-op marathon.

My first post-op "run":  I was meeting some friends for dinner in Palo Alto right before Christmas, but I showed up early, so I drove over to the track at Stanford to kill some time, and tried out the new knee on 4 x 200 meter intervals.  My first post-op mile was at Kezar, running 4 laps, and then some, around the track.  My running proceeded as it always had, although I have avoided running too many Envirosports runs in the Headlands-- that's just cartilagenous-suicide.

I managed to run the SF Marathon at 10.5 months post-op, and was quite giddy having run a time that qualified me for the Boston Marathon by 6 measly seconds.  Then, I got the itch to run another marathon.  Now, I had planned on running the Athens Marathon, the Original!,  one year earlier, but the surgery kind of screwed up my plans.  So now with my knee back, I made plans once again for my big running vacation in Greece.  But then a month before Athens, I figured I might as well run another marathon as a training run and, at the same time, pack in a little weekend travel. So, I decided to put the Portland Marathon on my agenda, running that at 13 months post-op, and then the Athens Marathon two weeks later.  Make sure you check out my Athens Marathon website.

Of the three marathons, Athens produced my fastest time, despite jetlag, Greek food, and a difficult race course, so indeed, the knee is getting stronger.  While I havent broken my 2:50 PR YET (that's the operative word here, "YET"), each of my finishing times was fast enough to qualify for Boston 2000, which I'm kinda locked into now, since I've already booked all my reservations.  There's no pain in the knee anymore, but I do have to make sure I warm up properly before any running or weight training, because the knee does tend to get stiff after prolonged inactivity.