General Jackassery

A week ago Sunday I was playing my second league hockey game and about half-way through the 1st period I managed to pop my arm out of the socket. Now, this is something that has happened on a semi-regular basis since sometime in 2001 when I dislocated it the first time. Anyway, it’s happened so many times that it doesn’t hurt as bad anymore and usually it just pops right back in. However, when it happened on Sunday, it stayed out of the socket for 15 to 20 seconds and it happened when I was reaching for the puck. I wasn’t hit, I didn’t fall down, I was just reaching for the puck. That’s the 2nd time in two weeks that’s happened and the 3rd time in 3 months. Then when I was at home later that night I was reaching down to pick up something off the floor and it nearly dislocated again.

Having had enough of my should popping out, I decided to make an appointment with the doctor to see what he had to say. My hope was that I could just go to Physical Therapy and strengthen the muscles. The doctor decided to refer me to physical therapy, but he also refered me back to the doctor that did my knee surgery in 2003.

Yesterday morning I went to the Orthopaedic Surgeon to see what they had to say. Dr. Alexander looked at the X-rays and then played around with my shoulder and said, “You’re gonna have to get this fixed.” He then refered me to another doctor at SportsMed who specializes in Shoulder Arthroscopy and Dr. Layton agreed that after looking at the x-ray and manipulating my shoulder that there is ligament/tendon damage in my shoulder that can only be fixed surgically. The only question is whether or not the surgery can be done Arthroscopically.

Thursday morning I go back to the doctor’s office to get an MRI. The MRI will not tell whether or not I need surgery but what type of surgery will have to be done.

Based on the x-rays, there was a visible defect in the ball on top of the humurous bone. The defect is caused by the humurous slipping out of the socket and colliding with some of the other shoulder structure. (This is how they explained it to me.) The MRI will determine the size of the defect. If the defect is very large then the surgery will have to be done by opening up my shoulder. If the defect is small they can fix it with the scope.

At the moment the doctors feel like the surgery can be done with the scope, so that will have me having a 3 inch scar on the front of my shoulder. I should know for sure on Friday.

Anyway, the surgery is already scheduled and one way or the other I will be having surgery on my shoulder on Wednesday the 7th of February. I wanted to give myself the month of January to continue training and hopefully be able to run the Half-Marathon with Brian at the end of January.

If all goes well, I will have my shoulder immobilized for 10 to 14 days, should be back to jogging in 4 to 6 weeks or less and should be fully recovered in 4 to 6 months. We’ll see how it all goes.

Okay, first of all I did just call it “Operation Svelte.” That’s what Sarah has decided to call this latest endeavor to loose weight and get in the best shape of my life. I thought it was pretty funny so I decided to adopt the name.

Now, on to better things.

Many, many thanks to Amy and Brian. Had it not been for Amy telling me that Brian was going to run in this race I would never have done it. Had it not been for Brian deciding that he wanted to run a marathon in the spring, I don’t think I would have done it. So, thanks for the inspiration and the invite! Sarah and I thoroughly enjoyed the couple of hours we got to spend with you guys.

The longest run I’ve ever done is 5.5 miles. The first time I ran that distance was about a year ago and I remember being so proud because I ran it at an 11 min/mile pace. About three weeks ago I ran that same route and was able to run it at a 9min 53sec/mile pace. I remember thinking to myself, “Man, you’re kicking but.”

This past weekend I ran my first ever 10k. For those who don’t want to do the math, that’s 6.2 miles. When I decided to run the race my two objectives where: 1) Finish, 2) Finish in under 1 hour.

Again with the math, that would mean that I need to run at an average pace of 9 min 40 secs / mile. That’s just 13 secs per mile faster than my best pace on a 5.5 mile run. So I set out training to run this 10 K. I had a lot of good training days and felt like I was ready for this thing when Saturday morning rolled around.

The race started about 15 minutes late and it was pretty dang cold, somewhere in the mid to low thirties when we started. Brian had said that he was going to stay with me atleast for the first couple of miles and then if he felt like taking off that’s what he was going to do.

“On your marks, get set…….go!”

We took off running and at the very beginning it seemed like everyone had the rush of running with a couple hundred other people, so the pace right off the start was fast. I guess that was okay since the first half-mile was down hill. I told Brian that I didn’t want to get caught up in all of that so we slowed down a little bit. Run your own pace and all.

Brian stuck with me for almost 4 miles before he picked it up a notch, but he helped me keep a really good pace and by the time he took off I was in a pretty steady rythm.

By mile 5 I was starting to slow down a little bit, but I was still hanging in there pretty good. I also picked up a little kid somehwere around mile 5 and we ran pretty close together all the way in. Somewhere around 5.8 miles you start going back up the hill to the finish, I thought it was pretty mean to have an uphill finish, but what can you do.

When we got to the 6 mile mark I picked up the pace a little, but since I was still going uphill there wasn’t much I could do. The little kid passed me and put about 50 ft into me before I could stop loosing ground. With about a hundred yards left and the top of the hill in sight I went all out towards the finish line. The kid heard me pick up the pace and he took off too, so I started cheering for him to keep pushing. For some reason I didn’t want to pass him when he’d worked that hard to get to the finish line. So I got beat by a little kid at the very end, but it was fun.

Remeber I said that I wanted to finish in under 1 hour? Look at the clock over my shoulder. I crossed the line 2 seconds later.

My official time was 57:52 so I beat my goal by 2 min 8 seconds and my average pace for 6.2 miles was 9:20 per mile. I’m happy with that.

Thanks Brian, I enjoyed it!

By the way, Brian finished in 54:50, not too shabby! Keep up the good work.