Training Update: Long run now 5 miles. Tread hills progressing.

It's been over 17 months since my first surgery (rt. knee mosaicplasty and OATS) and nearly 11 months after the second surgery (partial synovectomy/patellar release/fat pad resection). I'm still improving (albeit very slowly). I'm still following an every-other-day pattern of running with a 6-day cycle that includes a treadmill "hill" workout, a long run, and an additional easy run. My longest run so far has been 5 miles (which took me 48 minutes to run). On my fastest days I'm able to sustain around 9:15/mile for a while...but most of the time I'm running between 9:30/mile and 10:30/mile. I can do 5 3-minute repeats of 8% incline on the treadmill at about 10:15 pace with 2-minute rest intervals of easy running.

My stride has improved a little bit, but I still have much work to restore my stride. The incline work on the treadmill has helped, but within the next several weeks I'll start doing shorter and faster intervals rebuild my stride. Well...at least I'll give that a try. If I don't progress on that, I'll abandon it and return to more strength work. I'll continue to stretch one of my runs (in every 6-day cycle) to be a few minutes longer. It is possible that within the next month or so, I'll switch from an ever-other-day pattern to a 4-runs-per-week pattern that will include one long run and one quality workout. I'm not going to rush into this though as long as the current pattern is still working for me.

After nearly 1.5 years of rehab...it has become clear that I'm never going to be "normal" again. I'm still improving, but it is coming very slowly. I still don't do stairs (up or down) properly. I have some numbness in my right knee and the smaller toes on my right foot. I have circulatory issues in the right leg. I still have some swelling if I'm on my feet for a long time. My knee is quite stiff, especially if I bend it beyond 90 degrees. I have pain behind my right knee (which is probably due to the baker's cyst that was observed on my knee MRIs).

I've come to realize that my best path forward is to throw away my old personal records and expectations and just try to do the most with what I have now. My longest run with this post-surgery body is 5 miles (not 100). My fastest mile so far with this body is 9:09 (not the 4:40 I did in my youth or the 6:48 miles I was able to string together for a whole marathon when I was in my 40s). My immediate goals are now to run a little further than 5 miles and to get a little faster as well. The exciting thing about this approach is that when I get back to racing, I'll be setting new post-surgery personal records.