A New Hope - 2016 Pilot Episode

Something happened to me late last year in my running season. I ran the Fargo marathon (4:14:30) in May and PR'd my previous by 13 minutes so that was a big plus and I ran my first 50km ultra on July 4th on a very hot and humid day.

It was in between those months where I started to see some patterns of a very big digression. I mean I wasn't hurt asides from some minor aches associated with running but I knew something was wrong. I was looking back at my training diary and I always had these two words "FEEL OFF" associated with a majority of my training runs. And even taking some time off from running and going on a nice long vacation with my girls. Whenever I headed out for a run, my whole body was just feeling like shit, my mind was at a complete loss and then my body would just start to whither...

Koreatown to Pan Pacific Park LA run in the middle of summer and I was hurting.

When I went to LA with my girls for a 2-1/2week vacation, I'd head out in the morning and run hoping to get in 10 miles but would quickly devolve into 10km and I would be hurting. As I would look back on my running logs when I was last in LA in February and running 8-10 miles would be nothing and that would be in undulating terrain. But during this trip, just running on the flats on LA streets (which there are not many) I would feel so strained early into my run hoping that the feeling would pass...but just exacerbate the farther I kept going. When we arrived back home in early August, I took the rest of the month off to just rest from the big trip and heal my body from all the aches and pains I was feeling. The pain wasn't in my legs, but more my shoulders and that would be a harbinger of things to come.

It wasn't until September 5, 2015 that something happened to me that actually sent me to the hospital and derailed the rest of my running until the new year.

"Where am I?"

On September 5, 2015 I had plans to finally head out to City Park Runners but I woke up at 4 AM with a pounding headache (migraine range 6/10). I figured I was just hungry so I ate some cereal thinking I'd feel better in a couple of hours. But come 7:30 when I'd normally be ready to leave, the headache just got worse. And by 10AM I was throwing up. I thought the milk I had with my cereal was bad (yeah I'm an idiot) and just went back to sleep. It was finally at 2PM after throwing up 3 more times I got my oldest girl to call her mother to take me to the hospital. When I went in to register they measured my blood pressure and it was at 233/135 which is listed as Hypertension Stage 3 / Hypertensive Crisis. My head was exploding and my daughter was telling me the nurse kept urging me to stay awake (as I must have passed out) and they just wheeled me into emergency bypassing registration. It was there apparently I started to scream.

I was put on blood thinners and clot busters, and after an MRI, the neurologist found a micro blister in my right vertebral artery which clotted and caused me an aneurysm. Good thing for me I had to foresight to head to the hospital (because I thought I had a migraine and a maybe a stomach flu) according to my doctor that if I waited another hour, I'd have died....so there's that.

So after going through many tests with a cardiologist, neurologist and another brain scan, blood tests...the specialists couldn't figure out what caused the blister. But I will have to take medication for the rest of my life now. So that will be something that's part of my new normal. And I wasn't allowed to run for the first two months.

It was in mid-December that I started to venture out and run, and it was actually very painful, but blissfully great. I loved the fact that I got back out there and I ran slow-ass and I hurt. But the hurt was more from being really out of running shape. I wasn't feeling 'off' this time so it was great. I got in a couple of more runs and in order to keep the flow going and ran my farthest come the new year on January 2, 2016 with the City Park Runners (CPR) group out to Misercordia Hospital, which back in the day would take me 35 minutes now took me closer to 45 minutes and the run back was longer...but what the hell...I was out there and had a great time.

Which leads me to thinking, in order to get back into running, it's best I sign up for the CPR running clinic. I was very apprehensive at first for signing up...but I'm glad I did as I learned a lot about myself. But I'll write about that in another post