Back running – cautiously

I continue to recover from my broken leg.  It has now been six months.  I now can run cautiously.  It is wonderful to be back on the trails somewhat.  Pain still exists, but I’m trying to be careful and thus far the activity seems to help more than hurt as I see improvement every couple days now.  It seems like most of the pain is soft tissue now, but I’m still not ready to really pound the downhills.   I’ve been able to run three 50+ mile weeks in a row and my fitness is coming back.  I’ve summitted Mount Timpanogos (a 4,500-foot climb in 7 miles) five times in the last few weeks and have progressed to a 3:59 round trip.  It seems like my fitness would allow a 3:30, but I have to back off the pace to keep the pain level down.  A 3:30 pace is fairly typical when I’m in good ultrarunning shape.  I do most of these summits in the dark, so that also limits the pace.

Running Timp early Saturday mornings is always fun as I chase all the college kids and their lights as they plod up the mountain to see the sunrise.  They take about 4-5 hours to get to the top and I take about 2.5 hours, so at times I can pass more than a hundred hikers.   They give me great complements as I pass them.  In the dark they can’t see that I’m actually is an old 54-year-old man running past them.  I’m temped to say, “I’m just an old man out for a morning stroll.”

Frequently I’ll come up from behind on a group of young guys and announce myself by saying hi.  Many times they won’t step aside but speed up a little.  After hiking for a couple hours, probably passing some, they just can’t belive that anyone would be fast enough to pass them.   Finally, I ask, “Could I pass?”  They look behind and finally step aside.  In these cases, I just can’t help myself.  I really kick it in gear and run very fast uphill by them until out of sight. 

Coming back down is always funny as the groups figure out that I’ve already been to the top and am now running pretty hard down the rugged trail.   I get questions like, “What is wrong?”  “Are you OK?”  I guess they think that there is an emergency causing to me run down so fast.   Sometimes, I yell back, “She’s going to blow!  The mountain is going to blow!”  (It isn’t a volcano).  This leaves them very confused.  This morning, I got a funny question from someone who was almost to the top, that saw me hit the top and immediately start heading down.  He asks, “Why are you going down?”  All I could reply was, “Its time to go home.”   I guess I could have said that I’m trying to get home before my wife wakes up.  That guy wouldn’t be home before noon.

When I run across the Grand Canyon and back (R2R2R), I’ve received a similar question as hikers have seen me running back down into the canyon after only being at the top for a minute.  “Why are you heading back down?”   My standard answer for that is, “I left my wallet down at the bottom.”

Well, it is good to be running again.  However, I think it will take the rest of the year to fully heal.  I’m just hopeful that I don’t do something to cause a bad setback.