Hi Igy, and thanks for asking.
Well, you've got to put yourself in my place in, say, June 2021. At that point I'd given up running for good, about nine months earlier, after a long struggle with various back ailments. I'd had three L4-5 disc blowouts in the preceding four years; I'd had one very bad strained back (ligaments) that had me yelping. I'd put myself in agony twice over the preceding nine months by doing a fairly standard "muslim prayer stretch" (as I thought of it), where you get on your knees...
That used to be my go-to for stretching out my lower back. Now, done two or three times before bed, it had me waking in agony, feeling as though I'd ruptured my disc yet again.
My last race at that point was a solid 10K in May 2019. I'd jogged a bit since then, cycled a whole lot--I'd basically morphed into a cyclist. Eventually the back agonies let me to just say Enough!
In June 2021, while on vacation, I jogged ONE mile at 11:30 pace and a high heart rate around a parking lot. My back was okay, but the jog itself felt as though I were orphaned in some old man's body. My legs hurt for the next three days! From one slow mile! And that's even as I thought I'd been keeping in shape with almost-daily 16-20 mile bike rides.
That October I started tossing a 6 lb. medicine ball from hand to hand for a few minutes in the living room. My back felt a bit better doing that. And then I thought What the hell, why don't I try a slow jog one more time. And it went okay. My back seemed okay. 10/13/21: 2 miles @13:08 pace and a low HR.
Actually, back on 8/7, I did 1 mile @ 11:56 and a HR of 139. That one isolated one-mile jog. I'd ballooned to 173. (This morning I was 167.8)
At first I assumed, quite superstitiously, that the medicine ball tosses were THE key. But eventually I stopped them--in part because my right shoulder began to ache.
And I was able to run. I couldn't quite believe it. Every single run--every jog--felt like a gift.
By the end of October I was back. I did 30 miles in one week. "Back" meant that on 11/28/21, I ran 8 @ 10:29 pace at a HR of 149.
I wrote "some notes on the comeback trail" in my journal. Here they are:
--The first few jogs were the hardest. I felt awkward, fat, slow. HR was high relative to the stumbling slow pace.
--Slinging the medicine ball 5 min. a day has worked miracles. I no longer need much of a walk warmup. Just 3 minutes.
--Keeping cadence high is good, but on some of the early slow runs I let it slide
--first "longer" runs--6 or 7 miles--felt endless. But I slowly came up to speed
--I still don't feel comfortable at faster paces. I haven't yet gone faster than 9:0-0 pace. But if past experience is a guide, that will slowly happen.
--controlling weight is still a challenge. I NEED TO GET MY WEIGHT UNDER 170.
Anyway, that's how the comeback began. And there were a series of breakthroughs. I still remember running on Christmas morning when my fam and I were vacationing on Venice Beach. 7 @ 9:20 pace at a HR of 154, which is very high average for me, with the last 3 @ 8:54, 8:36, 8:26. I was really hammering. Hammering! And not falling apart. I couldn't have imagined that only two months earlier. And then, in February, a first test race, a 5K at 8:08 pace.
And my back, amazingly, is fine. Nothing except the usual facet-joint arthritis, but I warm up quickly.
I don't know what the ceiling is. I've run 12 a couple of times during the comeback but haven't yet pushed beyond that, although I clearly could at this point. So I can't quite imagine running a half-marathon. But I will probably do that at some point.
Thanks for asking.
