A (Long) Year in Review…

I can’t believe a year has passed since I did Ironman Wisconsin and my blog entries came to an abrupt halt.  A lot has happened in that amount of time culminating with a trip to race in the Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii via a lottery slot.

After Ironman Wisconsin in September 2010 my ego was pretty bruised.  The fact that I missed my goal of qualifying for Kona really hurt.  So I took almost a month of feeling sorry for myself before I got back on the horse and started executing my 2011 plan.

I ran the Grand Rapids Marathon in mid-October with the goal of qualifying for the Boston Marathon held in April 2011.  I needed to run a 3:15 to qualify.  The aim was to run 3:14:59 and no faster.  I wanted to have fun and not push it to an extreme, especially after what I put my body through a month before (hyponatremia).  The race went really well.  I felt awesome the whole time and ended up running 3:10.  I was just feeling too good in that final 10K so I pushed it bit harder.

Unfortunately, I missed the Boston Marathon registration by a couple hours.  For the first time in race history they filled the available entries within hours instead of the normal weeks.  Oh well, it wasn’t in the cards so I’ll just have to wait until 2012.  I was actually relieved since Andrea’s due date was early April anyway.

I spent the winter focusing on run training.  I did all my long runs with a group.  I put in the longest weekly mileage numbers ever.  I was feeling pretty good but my times (5K and 10K tests) just weren’t showing improvement.  2011 was just going to be a fun year anyway so I didn’t stress much about it.

On March 23, Leah Morgan Hansen joined our family.  We are so blessed to have 2 healthy kids!  Drew did a great job welcoming his new little sister into our home and helping Mom & Dad.

A few weeks later, on April 15, I started getting loads of emails, voicemails and texts.  I had won a lottery slot to the 2011 Ironman World Championships!!  I had completely forgotten that I entered the lottery back in the fall so this was a complete shock.  Plus, only about 2% of the lottery entrants actually win a slot.  This was supposed to be a non-Ironman year to focus on the family and the new little addition to our home.  I told Andrea about the news and she immediately said “Well, you have to do it.  You worked so hard to get there last year – you earned it.  Plus, Leah, Drew and I want to go to Hawaii.”  So, I took it.

Now it was time to get my mind and body back into long-course triathlon training again after more than 6 months hiatus.  I put my plan together and began training the end of April.

All was going well until May 23.  I was out for a 1-hour lactate threshold interval run when I started developing progressively worse low back pain.  By the time I finished the run, I had to literally crawl inside the house.  I immediately called the chiropractor to get a quick fix.  Unfortunately, the quick fix methods didn’t alleviate the pain and lack of mobility.  This was going to be a long road.

After X-rays, MRIs and bone scans over the following weeks I learned I had 2 things going on: a stress fracture on the left side of my sacrum and a degenerative disc (L5/S1) with an annular tear.  This meant no running for at least 10 weeks.

I could still swim and bike relatively pain free so I continued those things to keep some level of fitness and to keep me sane.  After about 8 weeks, my back was feeling really good.  I experimented with a couple very short, very easy runs and was fine.  On June 26^th, I decided to compete in the Pleasant Prairie Olympic Distance Triathlon.  My intention was to run off the bike but shut it down if I notice any back discomfort.

I had a great swim and bike.  I started running and feeling okay, except for the very apparent loss of run fitness resulting from the 8-week break.  I finished the 10K run feeling a little uncomfortable toward the end.  I crossed the finish line and found some friends standing around swapping race stories so I joined them.  After about 5 minutes of talking with them I took a step with my right leg and immediately went down once I put weight on it.  I tried to get back up and do it again but the same thing happened.  Uh oh, I really jacked something up this time.

I was on crutches for the next week unable to put any weight on my right leg.  I had intense pain and profound weakness.  It turned out that the stress fracture and disk issue caused me to overload the muscles on my right hip/leg to make up for the weakness and pain on my left side.  Now I was back to square one.

I started physical therapy that week.  The PT had me doing the most basic exercises, the same ones that spinal cord injury victims go through to learn how to walk again.  It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.  It took so much concentration and mind games to get over the pain but I had to stick with it to teach my muscles how to fire properly again.

After about 8 weeks of PT (now end of August) I felt I could start doing some very easy and short run/walks to prepare for what lied ahead in October.  At that time, I had fully embraced the fact that I would be walking the whole 26.2 miles of the run portion of Ironman Hawaii.  It may be the one and only opportunity to participate in this event so I was finishing no matter how long it takes.  I underwent as much treatment as possible to expedite the healing process so I wouldn’t have to walk the marathon.  This included regular massage, Active Release Technique, spinal manipulation and epidural steroid injections.

The run/walk training started with 30 seconds (yes, SECONDS!) running/4.5 minutes walking.  Things progressed pretty well over the following weeks so I decided to approach the Ironman run with a 5’ run/2’ walk strategy.  In the weeks weeks leading up to Ironman I had put together a couple 90 minute runs using a 7 minute run/2 minute walk and 8 minute run/2 minute walk approach (my stretch goal for the race).  However, I was still unsure what the 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, heat, humidity, winds, dehydration, etc. would do to my body to be able to execute this plan.