Post Surgery Race #4 — The San Francisco “City Half Marathon,” or “Revenge of the Hills!” July 28, 2024

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This one’s going to be a little tough, because it was at the 2023 edition of this race that I knew there was trouble a-brewing in the ol’ ticker.

FLASHBACK TO JULY, 2023

A quick flashback/review: in early July of 2023, just last year, I knew I was a badass hill runner. I had completed the LA Marathon (despite cramps that kept me from finishing the race at my 4:20 pace time), and came within 30 seconds of breaking two hours in the Mountains 2 Beach half marathon (itself a revenge race for a series of injuries that kept me out of the 2022 LA Marathon), and I had learned how to balance easy runs with speed work, flexibility, movement, and strength work.

The San Francisco Marathon was a major multiple event: an actual marathon that took you over the Golden Gate Bridge and back, then past Fort Mason and up into those legendary hills, then east through Golden Gate Park, the Haight district, then down to the San Francisco Bay waterfront and back to downtown for a glorious finish. The race includes an “ultra,” consisting of running the marathon twice (starting at 10PM the night before), and two separate half marathons: the “Bridge Half” which takes you from downtown SF, across the Golden Gate Bridge, then back to Fort Mason for a run up to the finish line at Golden Gate Park. The “City Half” starts at Fort Mason, takes you up the hills to Golden Gate Park, through the Haight district and to the main finish line downtown. (Oh, there is a 5k and 10k thrown in as well, but who cares, right?)

I had it all planned out: a road trip to SF to spend the night at a Motel 6 in the Tenderloin District, a two mile bike ride down stair-stepping streets to a shuttle to take me up to the Fort Mason start line, then once the race was done, a nice relaxing bike ride up the hill back to my motel followed by a warm shower and a drive home via an obscure campground I had discovered north of Yosemite National Park.

I had spent some time walking around the rather challenging yet culturally interesting neighborhood, bought some snacks and breakfast for the next morning, then retreated to my motel room for the night.

I woke up at 2AM with an arrhythmia so powerful that it nearly shook the bed.

I’ve been seeing a cardiologist regularly, and he prescribed Diltiazem, which after an hour or two normally calmed down the arrhythmia until I could get to sleep. Except it didn’t calm down. It pounded away all night long. Finally, close to morning, I was able to close my eyes, but when I woke up and prepared for the race, taking another dose of the Diltiazem, I noticed that the arrhythmia had not abated. The medication helped, but I could feel the pitter-patter of my heart continuing its irregular heartbeat.

(Remember, at this time I did not yet know that I had a significant blockage in my heart’s left descending artery).

Got to the start line. Locked up my bike. Immediately sought out the medical tent and sat my ass down. There were several RN’s and I believe a few medical students hanging around waiting to be shuttled up to their various stations. None of them could detect my problem, perhaps due to the Diltiazem, but I could certainly feel it.

Got shuttled up to the start line, nervous as hell, unsure how the race was going to go. I would certainly try my best, but what would that even mean? A few years earlier, I would get up in the middle of the night and do angry wind sprints to “shock” my heart back to normal, all to no avail. Hell, I even sprinted two miles. Didn’t help then. And this felt different.

The gun went off, and we began to run. Within a half mile, I had to stop running and walk. By the time we got to the hills above Fort Mason, I was weeping. I should have been running up those God damned hills, but I couldn’t make any extended effort at all without resting my hands on my knees and panting. I stopped at another medical tent at mile 4, and the nurse this time was able to detect the arrhythmia. I asked what I could do. She said as long as I was feeling no pain, I could continue. So I did. Because I wasn’t feeling any.

We entered Golden Gate Park at mile six, and I’d frigging had it. The shuttle buses were taking “Bridge Half” finishers back down to the main finish line, and I had made up my mind to hop on a bus and join them. But suddenly, the arrhythmia stopped. I was exhausted, but reborn. I could run! Finally! Except that my body was worn down from all the effort I was putting in to run with minimal oxygen and fuel getting pumped to my starving muscles.

Finally crossed the finish line, looking like, and feeling like, well, hammered dog shit. It had taken me an hour and forty minutes to run the first 6.5 miles, and just over an hour to run the last 6.5. I ran as best as I could until exhaustion took over, forcing me to walk. I repeated the cycle several times. It wasn’t determination that pushed me to the finish line; it was anger. It was the absolute worst running experience I’d ever had.

But that was 2023. I would shortly learn that I had developed a 100% blockage in my “widow maker” artery. At the time I was running the SF half that year, I had no clue. But I should have known. What I didn’t know was that the blockage was likely well above 80% and was getting ready to close. But there was no chest pain, which is the warning sign that something serious is about to happen. Then again, my cardiologist didn’t know either because was not feeling pain.

My cardiologist and I agreed that it was time for drastic measures to deal with the arrhythmia: an ablation procedure. But then the events of September of 2023 happened, and we had to prevent a serious or fatal myocardial infarction from possibly ending my life. Luckily, we got that fixed just in time.

AND NOW, HERE WE ARE IN 2024

Looking much better compared to last year’s effort, but realizing that I am still woefully out of shape.
(Also, yes I tend to wear the same shirt. Good color, fits well, comfortable. But I’ll vary my race shirts from now on!)

I had to prove it to myself. Prove what, you ask? I had to show this great and wonderful Universe that I was the person in charge of my life.

I burned July 28, 2024 as deeply into my brain as I possibly could. I registered for the same “City Half Marathon” I had ran the year before, and I registered for it as an act of faith. I wasn’t even sure if I would have my blockage fixed by then or not. But I had to register. I had no choice.

I made a reservation in the same hotel, called the Cathedral Hill Hotel (it may be a Motel 6 now). I planned to bike down to the shuttle buses along the same route I’d taken in 2023, the previous year. I used the same hydration and fueling strategy I’d used the year before, I bought the same dinner and snacks at the same hole-in-the-wall liquor store across from the motel. (Note: the Tenderloin District is not, repeat NOT, the safest area in SF!)

But there was one thing I did differently: I prayed to literally every single god, being, spirit, universal force etc. that I could think of that my heart would not go into arrhythmia again, and boy did I celebrate like an m-fer when I woke up on race day with my freshly stinted ticker in normal sinus rhythm.

Now keep in mind, if I had awoken with an arrhythmia after all, it would not have been the disappointment it was last year. Recall from my experience at the Santa Barbara Wine Country Half Marathon that I was able to run with an arrhythmia because I had a wide open artery feeding blood into my heart regardless of inefficient beats. I would likely have just sighed, shook my head in frustration, and prepared for a sub par performance, but it would not have been a tragedy. I would have been able to run up the hills, but not as fast as I thought I would.

I biked down the same stair-stepping route of smaller streets, locked my bike up, boarded the shuttle, and enjoyed the journey to the start line.

Except… the course was different. Apparently, we would not be starting at Fort Mason like we did in 2023. We started instead at the beach near a windmill. I contemplated the long run we would be making up and through Golden Gate Park instead of the “legendary hills.” A minor let-down, but hey, look where I am! And after all, hills are hills! My heart flooded with gratitude (and freshly oxygenated blood) that I had made it through the challenges of 2023 and early 2024. My faith in myself had paid off!

Off went the gun! And I realized that I was not as “in shape” as I thought I was. Oh, my heart pumped happily, sending fresh fuel and oxygen to my body in copious amounts, but even four months post surgery I knew I wouldn’t be setting any PR’s that day. But it didn’t matter. I remembered each section of the park that I had struggled through the previous year as I ran through it: That gorgeous S-turn the path made as it wound its way around a lake and through the trees, into a pedestrian tunnel. The Museum of Flowers. The entrance into the Haight District. And the Haight District itself! All the memories that flooded back to me, of the struggles and disappointment and anger I felt blossomed into gratitude: for the chance to spend my days at an interesting job where my skills are valued, the salary I’m able to make to enable me to get out of LA and travel to interesting places, and to a health care system, while certainly filled with flaws, absolutely saw me through a serious heart crisis by getting a fully blocked artery up and functioning again. For having the courage to make dietary changes in my life to keep my heart opened and functioning so I could run.

Because of all that, running across the finish line this year was a different experience than I had last year, and it included a 40 minute faster finish.

(Of course, nothing’s perfect: turns out the “City Half Marathon” measures only 12.5 miles instead of 13.1, meaning my 2:15 finish doesn’t quite count; a 2:20 finish would probably be what I would have gotten without that particular snafu. But that’s ok! Nothing but gratitude here!)

I grabbed some snacks, staggered over to where my bike was parked, and carefully pedaled my way back up to the motel, where I took a long shower and planned out the rest of my journey: a good lunch at a nearby Chinese restaurant and a trip to a campground near Yosemite where I could pitch a tent and enjoy a long, cool night up in the pines before heading home…. wait: where is my sleeping bag? You mean — I left my sleeping bag at home? Aw, shit!(*)

(*) I had a spare blanket, but still… The Sierra Nevadas make their own weather regardless of season.

Post Surgery Race #3 — China Camp Trail Run (Half Marathon) June 1, 2024

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Excited by my pain free (heart wise) experiences with the Santa Barbara Wine Country Half Marathon and the Ahmanson Trail Race (7km) the previous month, feeling my body slowly regain its running shape, and (let’s admit it) totally and completely “feeling my oats,” I took a deep dive into the racing calendar and chose an unknown trail half marathon way up in the vaunted San Francisco Bay area: the China Camp Trail Run.

This race was put on by Inside Trail, the same outfit that hosted the previous year’s Santa Cruz Trail Run (my last race before everything “went down” heart-wise). A You Tube video showed a preview of the course by a runner who had no problem navigating the trail, which proved to me that, unlike the Santa Cruz race, this trail would be much more “runnable” than the rutted, root infested adventure in Santa Cruz. (Cue God laughing as I put together this particular plan).

I willfully signed up. I willfully secured a Southwest flight from Burbank to Sacramento with a return the next day. Next was the car rental, complete with all the insurance options (I don’t like gambling with my physical and financial well-being). And…I willfully made a reservation at a Motel 6 in San Rafael, a 20 minute drive to the course’s start line.

Thoroughly enjoyed my long tourist drive from Sac-town north west up into Lake County and down through Napa’s vineyards and oak forests to my motel room. Forgot it was a Saturday afternoon, and people were heading home after a pleasant Saturday in the area. Took me a full two hours to get from Napa to San Rafael. California, everyone.

Made a quick stop at the start line for a look-see, then grabbed dinner and checked into my motel.

Long story short, my next door neighbors were shitty people. Middle aged Hispanic men, quiet and mean-looking, who played music non stop from the time I went to bed until I finally called the cops at 4AM to get them to shut the fuck up. Based on the vibes I got from them, my constant complaints to the motel manager and knocking on the wall was harshing their buzz.

I’m likely to come across as “that guy” to whoever is reading this. But I didn’t get party vibes from them. The situation felt far more menacing, and multiple calls to the San Rafael police department advised me to simply stay inside my room for my own safety. The police did come, eventually, but by then the men had seemingly left. Again, with a menacing slow-walk that told me essentially that if circumstances were different, we would not be having such a pleasant conversation.

Eventually the officer came, and I explained the situation and filed a report. By then, it was almost 5AM, and I laid back down and tried to get some sleep before the race started at 8AM. But wouldn’t you know it, there was some other crud in the room next door who began playing music again. Quieter this time, but still.

I made it to the start line after perhaps ninety minutes of sleep, groggy and agitated. The whole atmosphere of the event was spoiled for me, but I remembered why I was running this race: gratitude for my renewed health? Yes. The excitement of running a race I had never run before in a different part of the state? Of course.

The chance to win yet another age group award for being an older guy who shows up for an event drawing about 300 people, with only about 85 or so running the half marathon distance? Ah, hell yeah, folks! The benefits of perseverance!

But oh, that race…

The course consisted of two loops in a figure eight. The first loop was about 7.5 miles (the “10k” option, heh). The second was shorter, but had an overall steeper ascent.

Both loops had a half mile climb up a twisting, switchback climb of nearly 250 meters that at some points was steep enough to cause me to slip back down the hill. And those lovely smooth spots on the trail that attracted me in the first place? HA! California has had some severe rainstorm events over the last few years, exposing roots, rocks and ravines all over the course. Sure, there were some smooth spots, but by and large, wow. I thought I was running an obstacle course.

By the time I made it back to the end of the first loop at 7.5 miles, I was done. I grabbed some food and refilled my water pack, and I almost asked the official at the station if I could change my race to the 10k or just DNF. But then I remembered: I willfully registered, I willfully bought the plane tickets, car rental, and shitty hotel stay (folks, if you find yourself in San Rafael, don’t stay at the Motel 6. Splurge on a better motel or drive to another town. Good God!). And dammit, of course, I didn’t endure five months of wandering if I was ever going to run again, getting the surgery, and committing to a possible lifetime of blood thinners, statins and beta blockers to call it quits halfway through, just to quit because I was tired and sore. After all, there was a possible age group award waiting for me!

So I started the second loop. I slipped and slid down that same slippery hill, endured rocks, roots and ravines for another hour, and (something I didn’t talk about) was polite as I could be to all the (GOSH DAMN!) mountain bikers who decided to share this skinny, rugged and steep trail with us.

And eventually, I finished. Ran as hard as I could on the last mile, which was smoother, but by then I was wiped out from the effort and the lack of sleep. But I finished, on my feet and running. 3:02:04 for the half marathon, which is the longest time it’s taken me to run any distance short of a full marathon. Drove to a nearby Mexican restaurant for a post race meal, nearly fell asleep at the wheel on the drive back to Sacramento (pulled over and napped, which helped) boarded the plane and flew back to LA. Went straight to bed and fell asleep.

Woke up and added my 2nd place Age Group award to my pile of “old man trophies”. Well, there were only two of us in the 60-69 age group, but after everything I endured, I deserved it.

Besides, despite coming in 73rd out of 81 Half Marathon finishers, every single person who finished after me was younger than me by at least a decade. And that included an 18 year old.

Take that, San Rafael!!

Not feeling too good, and the race was just starting. But I’m in it to “win” it!
I “won!” But more importantly, I finished!

Post Surgery Race #2 — Santa Barbara Wine Country Half Marathon — May 11, 2024

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This was the very first race I registered for once I knew my surgery date. And it was an absolute leap of faith. Would the surgery be successful? Remember that the attempt to stent my blockage back in November 2023 was unsuccessful because my blockage was a full 100%. Would my insurance company intervene and add preconditions that would postpone the surgery or force me to pay more money up front?

And would I die, or worse, suffer debilitation due to an unforeseen complication?

Or worse, was this was all “catastrophizing,” as my therapist put it? I didn’t know; all I knew was how I felt: a person trapped, waiting for the jailer to open the door with a key and let me out.

So I sighed and submitted my credit card information, and within seconds, I was officially registered.

The Ahmanson Trails race was my first race out of the gate. This half marathon would be my longest, just three weeks later.

A quick note about this course: it was a three hour drive from LA, in the Santa Ynez Valley, an hour north of Santa Barbara. There was no way I was going to get up at 3:00 AM and drive for several hours in the dark to get there. I registered at a Motel 6 in Ventura, which shortened the drive down to two hours. Not much of a savings in sleep, but a 4:00 AM wake up time felt — saner than three o’clock. I was fine with it.

Until something happened. With my heart.

For the last several years, I have dealt with a proxysmal arrhythmia. Every once in a while, I wake up at 2AM with that troublesome organ flipping around like a gymnast having night terrors. Easy enough to deal with: 30 milligrams of diltiziem calms everthing down so I can go back to sleep. But one of the last races I ran before my heart surgery, the San Francisco Half Marathon, met with disaster when I woke up with the arrhythmia a few hours before the race. I decided to run the race anyway, and it took me nearly three hours to run it. Once the starting gun went off and I began to run, I found myself walking from exhaustion. I had trained for this race all summer with the plan to run up those legendary San Francisco hills as if my feet were on fire. As it was, I walked until exhaustion kicked in, then I stopped and panted.

So when the arrhythmia kicked in the night before the Santa Barbara Wine Country Half, I was, as they say, F***ING PISSED. But there was nothing I could do.

To make a long story short, I was damned if I was going to let this setback keep me out of this race, so as I did the previous year, I got up and drove the two hours to the race. I had my blood pressure cuff on my arm, and every 10 minutes or so I took my blood pressure. The Diltiazem kept the pressure down, but the monitor still showed an arrhythmia in progress.

I parked my car, doggedly walked to the race director’s kiosk and picked up my bib. I was late, the starting gun had already gone off, but I took off my shirt, pinned my bib onto it, then jogged to the start line. Crossed it, and race number two was underway.

Interesting, though: I was compelled to run slower due to the arrhythmia, but I didn’t feel the exhaustion I felt the last year at the San Francisco Half. In fact, I stopped twice, simply to give my mind a bit of a break to calm down. But I ran! And at the halfway point, just as the race got interesting with the promise of upcoming hills and stellar views down into the Santa Ynez Valley, I felt my heart return to normal sinus rhythm, and I ran the race.

It appears that my previous experience in San Francisco was due to the blockage in my heart that was slowly building up. Stenting allowed normal blood flow back into the heart without the need of small collateral arteries, and I was able to run the race in a respectable time: 2:28:xx (sorry; I don’t remember the exact seconds). As it was, I suffered a bit on the hills (walking some), ran down the others, and really pushed myself as best I could for someone quite out of shape for his ambitions. But I pushed myself on the last mile and finished strong.

(Unfortunately, there was an error in my bib; the timing chip was for a different number than was on my bib, which means that a 24 year old female was credited with my much slower time of 2:28:xx, and I was credited with her faster time of 2:15:-ish. I notified the race director, and he credited me with my correct slower time, but I don’t know if he fixed the time for the unfortunate 24 year old female who may or may not know that she finished much faster than she realized. LESSON: Make sure your bib number and the number on your timing chip matches!!)

Me doing my best to smile through an arrhythmia.

Post Surgery Race #1 — Ahmanson Trails 12k Run — April 27, 2024

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(NOTE: Not going to apologize for the dearth of posts. I’m just going to post races, workouts and other thoughts as they occur to me to get them entered. That is all. Enjoy – or not.)

Six weeks post heart surgery. I had done a few test runs, realized how horribly out of shape I was, but when you get a second chance at one of the biggest passions of your life, you take it.

Here goes:

I never thought I’d get here. I knew I was weak, that after five months of enforced non-running, except for cardiologist-approved treadmill work while “wired up for sound,” it was time to get back up on that bucking bronco and get to work.

My hands were shaking on the early morning drive to the west end of the San Fernando Valley on that early Saturday morning. Made it to the designated section of road and parked. Sighed, got out of my car, and I almost got back in again.

So much had happened since six weeks post surgery. It was as if I had drowned, was rescued, and brought back out of a coma to a doctor telling me that everything was all right now. It was as if I had busted a leg, and after dire warnings that while the surgery might straighten my leg out and heal it, that I would live with a limp for the rest of my life. It was like dying, appearing before St Peter’s gates, and being told that I had one chance to avoid Hell: go back to Earth and live my best life.

I was at the point where I could run about four to five miles without stopping, and my body hurt after that formidable distance. But this was a race I had wanted to run for years, and here I was.

I opened the car door and got out. For real this time.

I met a few running friends and we chatted briefly before the starting gun went off. And when it did, I took my first real steps back to competitive running. So how did I do?

First off, I was not ready for the hill. It’s a hill I can run up now with little to no problem. But at that time, I found myself walking, putting my faith in a repaired heart artery that had a completely unblocked passage where a 100% blockage had been not two months before.

The trail was terrible. Rains had turned the trail bed to a criss-crossing network of pits and shallow ravines. Lifting my leg at each step to overcome each step taxed my weakened muscles. After the hill and a long traverse across a windy plateau, the trail descended steeply to a creek bed and entered an oak forest. Ahead of me was a section of creek that I would have to run through, and I did! Water entered my shoes, and my steps had a squeak to them that continued for the next mile. Then a hill again, and a long, choppy trail back to the finish line.

I hate saying this, but I had to walk several times. My muscles were still weak, and despite my clean-as-a-whistle cardio system, I was not in a place to push for speed.

But I did finish in 1:32:32, about 92 minutes for the 7.5 mile race. Not bad, considering. I even managed a nice smile for the camera.

I was back in the game. But boy did I have a load of work to do!

I’m Back!! Here is what happened

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Late September of 2023. I don’t remember the exact date, but it was most likely the 23rd of that month.

Friday night, the day before I began year number seven as a pacer for the LA Marathon. I felt as strong as I ever felt as a runner, having recently completed a trail half marathon in Santa Cruz with around 1,900 feet of elevation gain. Took me about 3 hours and 15 minutes, but good enough to get me third place in the 60-69 age group. I was past all the injuries I had suffered through, including burnout and exhaustion that plagued my 2023 pacing effort back in March of 2023.

The night before my alarm was set to go off at 6:00AM for that first Saturday meetup as a pacer to train a fresh batch of “newbies” on their six month journey to the Los Angeles Marathon in March of this year (2024), I felt something — shift — in my body. Upset stomach, difficulty breathing, a bit of pain in the solar plexus area of my chest. “All those Diet Cokes I’ve been drinking!” I thought. I went to bed, figuring that I would feel better in the morning.

I did… sort of.

Long story short, my friend and fellow pacer Russ was out of town on that Saturday, so it was up to me to lead these new runners on their first official training run (all of 3 miles) on my own.

(Note:; about 2/3 of the runners were friends of mine who had run previous marathons, and who I had trained with all summer. So, not all were “newbies,” but a few were.)

I gave a quick lecture about road etiquette, and let them know that though the run was short, if anyone wanted to get in a few more quick miles afterwards, that I would be game.

We set off. Week #1 of 26 weeks of Saturday training runs leading to the LA Marathon, just six short months away! Except — I couldn’t breathe. Oh, air was coming in and out, but my whole abdomen felt like I swallowed an anvil. A weird heaviness settled in and around my gut and upper chest. After about half a mile, I announced that I had to make a bathroom stop, and told them to turn around at the pier and run back to the starting point, where I would join them.

Then I went into the bathroom and tried to throw up. I couldn’t, but I tried. I did, however, have a “bowel movement” which made me feel much better. “That’s it,” I announced to myself. “I have an ulcer.” The heartburn I experienced while attempting to run back to the place where we started puzzled me, though. I hadn’t felt that particular pain before.

I’m going to make a long story very short here. After consulting with a doctor, and after an abdominal MRI and a treadmill stress test several weeks later (it can take time to schedule tests like this), I was told that I had an arterial blockage. Atherosclerosis.

Cutting it even shorter, the first attempt to stent the artery with an angioplasty failed because the blockage was 100%. I had what is known as a “chronic total occlusion.”

People. Have. Heart attacks. From. This. And they die.

As a runner and a non-smoker, I was lucky in that a few “collateral arteries” formed around the blockage, directing blood to the parts of my heart that likely would have died if I’d had a full heart attack, even if I lived.

I worked with my cardiologist, accepting without question the fistful of daily pills that I began to take, and will likely take for as long as I live. I worried that being sent to cardiac rehab so that I would be able to at least do some exercise while monitored, was my HMO’s and insurance’s way of getting me to accept that I probably wouldn’t be able to run again, despite my cardiologist telling me that a more advanced angioplasty or, if push came to shove, a coronary bypass, would get me running by summer.

In the meantime, I showed up every Saturday morning to greet my team, give them encouragement, and feed them water and snacks at the water stop that I ran for them (and the 300 other runners). This helped so much. It kept me connected not only with my team, but with all the other runners, and the running community at large. But it was bitter sweet. I envied them so much being able to do something that I was told would likely kill me if I did it, according to my cardiologist.

“Have faith in the system,” I reminded myself. And that was tough, considering America’s state of health care at the moment. But I knew my doctors, and I had (and still have) great insurance. I used those two facts to keep my brain from falling into the abyss.

And I did all the things you’re supposed to do when facing a health crisis involving one’s circulatory system: I changed my diet, adding more fruits and vegetables, cut out red meat, and lost five pounds. I need to lose five more.

Within about a year, I will likely be vegan. Maybe not 100%, but who is 100% anything, really?

Fast forward to March of this year (2024). I got the call from my cardiologist’s office. They were going to attempt the stent again. The process, abbreviated as a CTO PCI, is a more complicated stenting process. The surgeon moves the stent _through_ the surface of the artery. Not a hundred percent sure how it was done (I’ll research it and post about the technicalities), but about an hour in, I heard the words “ok, inflate the balloon now,” and my heart “leaped for joy” so forcefully that I wonder if the surgeon detected it.

It took two stents to get through the blockage. The surgeon told me that I was one of the more difficult patients. I laid there nice and quietly, I told him, but he chuckled. “Oh, no. YOU were fine. The SURGERY was difficult!”

The blockage was nearly 3 inches long. But they got it done!

A few days later, on the final Saturday before the marathon, I ran about a mile with my group. Despite my phenomenal lack of shape, I was able to run without any pain _at all_.

I am writing this three months after the fact, partly because part of me is afraid that some other shoe might drop. But I ran three races, two of them trail runs, one of them with 1,700 feet of elevation gain, and one (a road half marathon) with a full blown arrhythmia that lasted for the first hour. No pain, at all! In fact, thanks to all the medication I’m taking, I didn’t feel at all running through an arrhythmia the way I felt at last year’s San Francisco half marathon. In fact, I ran it a half hour faster! (My cardiologist, by the way, is well aware of this, and we are monitoring it)

It’s been three months. I can’t predict the future. Perhaps another blockage will show itself in the next few years. Perhaps with the dietary changes and medications there won’t be another one at all. One can hope.

But I’ve been through this once now, and I know what it is. And I know I can survive it. I will continue to run until that first shovelful of dirt lands on my waxen face.

I will write about the races I ran after the surgery, and my bigger running goals coming up, because I have ’em.

But I will close off today’s entry with a before and after shot of the arteries in my heart. See if you can tell where the blockage was. (Hint: check the blue circle). Once you spot it, you will wonder how the hell I lived through it without something more serious, or fatal, happening to me.

Before stent, showing blockage

“This is a trail race, not a hike!” I yelled at everyone

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April 1st, 2023. Just a mere six months ago. I’ll always remember this day.

THE GREAT RACE OF AGOURA

Exactly one year before, in April of 2022, as runners lined up for the 2022 edition of the Great Race, in beautiful downtown Agoura Hills California, I sat glumly on my bed, nursing a pinched nerve in my back and an unstable torn left quadriceps just above my knee. Just one week earlier, I also sat glumly on my bed, nursing the same injuries, while runners lined up for a small trail race in the west San Fernando Valley. A race that, by the way, no longer exists.

I had registered for both these races months earlier. I was not going to be able to run them.

And a week before THAT, I painfully pedaled my bike to the cheer tent at mile 20 of the LA Marathon where I would watch, glumly, while trying to look cheery, as the training group I had led for six months ran by me, without me trading off the pacing sign with my fellow pacer.

And seven days before THAT — well, let’s just say that if one has not strength trained with vigor, little injuries will build up, painlessly, until one day, say a week before a major marathon you’re supposed to run with people you have spent six months of Saturdays with, getting to know them and run with them, an otherwise normal feeling quadriceps muscle will blow out on you. And if, in your pride and ego, you try to shake it off and run one final workout with the team, you can throw in a pinched sciatic nerve in with it.

It was a long year waiting for this trail race to swing by on my race calendar. And boy, was it worth the wait.

(Well, I DID run New York City, but that was a different entry, wasn’t it?)

The race began with about two miles of largely downhill running on paved streets (don’t think I didn’t sweat that part of the race! Was my strength training enough?), followed by a glorious nine miles of gentle uphill through the Palo Comado Canyons via the Cheeseboro Canyon trail, up and up, a full thousand feet of elevation gain over those nine miles, until you meet up with civilization again for a final two and a half mile downhill back to the finish. Absolute heaven.

So grateful I had had the patience to recover and focus on strength, mobility, and flexibility! My time sucked at 2:20 for the half, but after all it was a trail run, right?

You wouldn’t know it from the oddest thing I saw out there:

We had a lot of rain this year. The 2023 storms wiped out roads, rerouted creeks and rivers, and turned every tiny streamlet into an abundant water source for pretty much the entire summer.

And runners, who like me had paid a hundred bucks to get out there and run the most beautiful trail race in Southern California… you want to know what they did?

Instead of thrashing their way through the dozen or so creeks that crossed the trail, these people — ugh. It enrages me to say it.

They stood in line, single file, and tiptoed over whatever rock path they could find to MAKE SURE THEIR G-D- M-F- $200 AND CHANGE *****TRAIL SHOES***** DIDN’T GET WET!

I’m not an angry person, but this situation even now makes my gorge buoyant. At least a dozen times, I committed the unpardonable sin (at least to me on calmer days) of cutting the line, running past them, apologies blasting from my mouth like expletives, thrashing through the creek like you’re supposed to, and shouting “THIS IS A TRAIL RACE, M-F-ERS!” before speeding on.

I’m certain that there were at least three instances where I deserved a punch in the mouth:

A narrow trail that snaked its way across a steep hillside with room for a single file line and a few cents’ change (which I took advantage of, nearly falling down the hill myself). A narrow gorge that required people to climb it single file, unless you wanted to boulder hop like I did, well within punching distance of whatever hothead thought I was interrupting his or her peaceful stroll. And the last, when near the end of all the crossings with my patience at its end, I shouted out the above “THIS IS A TRAIL RACE” epithet at the top of my lungs. I shocked myself at the volume.

But I’m a runner, right? Boy did that ever give me the motivation to drive my pace well into zone 4 and sprint the hell outta there.

Later, at the finishing chute, I spoke to an old vet who gave me some great advice: (A)-get to know the trail so you can anticipate such setbacks, and (B) RUN THE FIRST TWO MILES AS FAST AS YOU CAN to the trailhead to beat all the dimwitted strolling chuds.

A great life lesson, don’t you think?

This is what it’s like to run a half marathon with an arrhythmia

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How did my San Francisco Half go, you asked?

I’ve run countless races from the 5k to the marathon.

But this was the very first race, ever, that I very nearly DNF’d.

And no, not because of the hills, which were plenty. 950 feet of elevation gain and loss is no joke.

I’ve slacked a bit from formal training, though that is changing now with the LA Marathon and later races on next year’s calendar.

San Francisco’s traffic is abysmal, and I left my cell phone, _again_, this time at the Expo (I quickly realized my error and found it within about 5 minutes, so that wasn’t the issue).

The issue? A fib. Around 2AM, I woke up to my heart flip-flopping around like a gerbil on holiday. Happens occasionally, once or twice every 3 months or so, and it usually clears up in a couple of hours.

Got to the start line at 8 for the 8:15 start, and my heart was still flip-flopping around. We started, and at the first big hill at mile 1 (this is SF) I knew it was a lost cause. But I pressed on, through the magnificent Presidio, the jaw dropping views of the Baker Beach bluffs, through the magical Golden Gate park.

As we entered Haight Ashbury, I thought I was going to die. When your heart rate jumps by 20% while you are running DOWNHILL, there is a problem.

I was facing two deadlines: a mandatory checkout time, and a 3 hour deadline in order to be counted as an official finisher. I crossed the halfway point knowing I would not be able to cross the finish line in time.

But something about the Haight Ashbury district must have inspired my heart somehow, because suddenly my HR dropped, and the uphill I was on got a lot easier. By that time, though, my body was cooked. I walked/”ran” to a 2:50 finish of a half marathon that I would otherwise have finished in 2:05 with no problem.

And folks, I AM DAMN PROUD of this accomplishment. Did I want to do a hell of a lot better? Yep! The plan was to take on the last six miles, mostly downhill and flat, as a chance to ‘negative split” to a sub 2hr finish.

But I found a way to FINISH a half marathon in under 3 hours while my heart had decided, at 2:30AM, to work against me.

We carry on.

Mile 8 near Haight Ashbury. Arrhythmia resolved, but too late by this point to “race.”

Recap of 2023 – And what I will be posting in October!

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Races! Injuries! Training! Pacing!

2023 was a very busy year, and I deeply regret not posting about each event as it happened. What can I tell you?

Ah yes, the one word I didn’t enter in the top paragraph of this entry that I should have:

BURNOUT!

Two full years of training hard, getting hurt, recovering, training hard again…. 2021 and 2022 were tough.

Not to mention– Covid!

(Which, thankfully, I did not catch.)

But as I confessed to a friend of mine a week before pacing the LA Marathon this last March, “I’m not sure why I’m running anymore.”

So I will tell you what happened with a daily blow-by-blow series of entries, one entry per race/injury/realization/learning experience I, well, experienced this year.

Today is October 1st, 2023, and each calendar day will feature a single race, lesson, or other life experience related to me hopefully reaching my goal to run the Boston Marathon as a time qualifier before Mother Time herself comes by to tell me that time’s up.

So buckle up, and do what your mother told you to do: clean up your room and eat your vegetables.

The New York City Marathon!!

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Not the fastest marathon I’ve ever run (in fact, at 5:20, it’s the slowest) but it was certainly the most life changing. Everything about this race was different from my previous experience. The swanky hotel in Midtown, the jam packed transportation system, the hours, and I mean hours, we all spent standing up.

I’ll start there. If you hate standing cheek by jowl next to people you have never met, this is not the race for you. The subway ride from Midtown down to the ferry: Jam packed with runners as well as bewildered locals from where I boarded at 40th and 7th that only got even more jammed as the subway made stop after stop on its 20 minute journey to exiting at the Staten Island ferry. Standing together in a crowd of nearly a thousand to file onto the ferry, where I was able to get some respite by sitting on a bench for the trip to the shuttle buses at Staten Island.

The, and I am not bullshitting you here – at all – ninety minute wait to board shuttles to get to the the start corrals at Fort Wadsworth. Met some interesting people and had some good conversations. Not a lot else to do, so why not?

Skipping the marathon experience for a later post, let’s discuss the jam packed subway ride from 77th and Broadway back to our various stops in Midtown and further south. Packed, in case one needs to remember, with runners who had just finished running an entire marathon in warm humid weather.

And I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

ADDING THIS NOW WHILE I STILL HAVE A FEW MINUTES BEFORE MY FLIGHT BOARDS:

The gorgeous hardwood forest you have to walk through to get to the start corrals. The windy path you take, once it is announced that you are free to begin running, to get to the actual start line.

That bridge from Staten Island over to Brooklyn, which is a surprise in how steep your first mile is.

Eleven miles of Brooklyn, where it felt like the entire borough came out to cheer you on, at full volume. My ears rang after the first few miles of that.

The wonderful mile run through Williamsburg, one of the largest Jewish communities in the US. Not a lot of cheering, but a few coming out to watch, waving their kids’ hands for them to do their part in cheering us on. The number of schools, synagogues and other buildings, inscribed in Hebrew.

The absolute diversity of Brooklyn itself. If I ever have to move to NYC, that will be the borough I’d settle in.

The quiet respite of the 1.5 mile climb up the Queensborough Bridge that seemed to never end. Until it finally did, by dumping you into absolutely the loudest crowd of cheering people I’d ever heard in my life outside a concert or sports stadium: First Avenue in Manhattan. Three and a half miles of the loudest crowd you could ever bear to hear without earplugs or covering your head with the palms of your hands.

And finally, the finish. A three mile run into and around Central Park to the finish line.

My heart is full, literally. Gotta find a way to do this again!

The long, dark trudge through the middle ground

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SHORELINE HALF MARATHON – JUNE 2022
SANTA ROSA HALF MARATHON – SEPTEMBER 2022

This blog post was delayed by several weeks.
Get over it; at least we’re all still here, right?

Trying to make sense of my emotions, running-wise. I didn’t train as hard as I felt like I should have after Mountains 2 Beach, but I trained. I didn’t do as much strength, flexibility and movement work as I definitely should have done, but I did some. The results? Two half marathons six weeks apart, both a tremendous improvement on my tentative performance at the Mountains 2 Beach half marathon, both ended up essentially the same.

SHORELINE HALF MARATHON, VENTURA. EARLY JULY:

Nervous about how well I was going to do on that cool, breezy morning at the start line overlooking the beach in Ventura. Fellow running friends are there. One of them, a fellow pacer, and another one a new runner who would run with him. Motivational music blares from the start line speakers. Excitement permeates the festival atmosphere, rare on an early Sunday morning but common for road races.

Crack! The starting gun goes off, and we race out of the starting gate, cross a grassy field and file onto the skinny bike path that leads north along the beach, meeting up with the Pacific Coast Highway where a row of skinny, orange pylons protect us all from automobile traffic speeding the opposite way. I lock into a slightly painful but comfortable 9:30/mile pace and with gritted teeth prepare myself for the journey ahead. A few hills, but nothing serious. Four miles in, it feels like we are running uphill. Our visual sense confirms this to us as several runners around me look forward to the turnaround and a nice long downhill run to the finish. We make the turn, but alas, we are denied! The anticipated downhill is just another flat surface that thanks to our depth perception feels like another uphill. Ha! I think out loud. A flat course!

My thoughts turn to my body: it has been about three months since the quadriceps injury. I think back to the strength training, and all the fear and anguish I felt as I realized how far I had fallen behind, and how much work I had done to get back to the point where I could even begin to train again. Look how far I’d come! My fellow LA Road Runners pacer runs past me near the ten mile mark, and tells me the woman he was pacing has decided to walk. He could easily have completed the race with a 1:45 or better time, but hey, it’s just a race, one of many, and it feels great to be out in the sun, running down the beach path on this glorious summer morning. He finishes just ahead of me, and I finish in 2:05 and change, a full ten minutes faster than poor ol’ Mountains 2 Beach a mere six weeks earlier.

I feel great! And with another six weeks to go before the Santa Rosa half marathon up in beautiful (you guessed it) Santa Rosa, California, there is nowhere to go but up!

SANTA ROSA HALF MARATHON, EARLY SEPTEMBER

Nervous about how well I was going to do on that even cooler, breezier morning at the start line in downtown Santa Rosa. Downright bone-chilling. A good omen, though. A few friends are there as well, some running the half, like me, and others running the full marathon. Rows of portable bathrooms, tables set up for post race food and beer in the beer garden. Motivational music blaring from the start line speakers, excitement permeating, yadda yadda yadda.

Crack! Dammit, I think to myself, I can’t get the Strava app on my phone to link up in order to enable family and friends to “follow” me. Fukkit; just use the timer. Off I go, meandering through downtown before hitting the long green tunnel route that follows a creek deep into redwood and wine country. This course is even flatter than Shoreline, and I settle into– hmm; let me check. Yep. 9:30 per mile pace.

I spent $400 including car rental and motel for a repeat of my previous race? Apparently so. But despite the pinched nerve in my left foot giving me a bit of trouble, I hang on, compliment and encourage other runners, cheer the fastest returning marathoners who had started an hour earlier and were now on their way back, and just enjoy the verdant, rolling scenery.

I finish in 2:04.

ANALYSIS

Am I proud of both accomplishments? Undoubtedly yes. Crawling back from a serious injury, essentially restarting my personal racing clock, is one of the most physically difficult things an athlete can do. Especially (and boy do I ever hate to say this, but to deny it would be so, so wrong) at this age. Nine times out of ten, runners in their late 40’s and beyond simply stop training and do something else when faced with the daunting task of getting behind that boulder, and like Sisyphus, grinding him or herself into the menial task of shoving that burden up the hill. Again.

Still, why did I dial the intensity back? Fear of re-injury? No doubt. I had also gained ten pounds. Not sure why about that, either. But it happened.

Between Mountains 2 Beach and Shoreline, I googled training exercises and programs, signed up for virtual training from a well known mountain and trail runner. Did the exercises. Had trouble with her app because of the age of my phone, but it was all right there. I simply– slacked.

CONCLUSION

And perhaps slacking was part of my recovery journey. I didn’t give up. I didn’t even sit down and “re-evaluate” my goals. I know what my goals are, and I know I can achieve them. But it’s like love. Can a broken-hearted person learn to love again? Many do. And acknowledging your broken heart, feeling it slowly and tentatively heal, taking the steps to test its strength, then easing back for a time to catch one’s breath before moving forward again is part of the healing and revitalizing process.

But it’s time to get back on that horse again, to move forward now. Nothing is permanent, and the clock is ticking. I want to see how far my running body can take me. So I need to continue to commit to making all those little tasks– strength training, flexibility and movement training, long runs and speed work, the bedrock of my life again. I need to look a year in advance, and register for tune up races and ultimately the marathon where I will PR and qualify for the Boston Marathon with as many minutes to spare as I possibly can. And along the way, enjoy the long green tunnels and the windy, ragged beaches.

Because we’re only here once, and sometimes, we have to cram two lifetimes’ worth of challenges into the only life we have.

Learn to love again.
Learn to love again.