Team Life 01/27/2017 - Perseverance

Today I wanted to take a moment to write about Perseverance and how it has been playing out in my day to day life. So just to give everyone a little background and history of where I come from and how I have developed as the person I am currently. I have always been an active person. Growing up I loved being in the outdoors and playing sports with my friends but I was also always a heavy kid. I joined the Navy and of course I struggled every time I had a run for time but I never gave up. I have always enjoyed working out but also fell into the common traps and excuses as to why I continued to put on weight. So Like many people I continued to work out and wonder why doesn't this weight come off. There of course is always that little voice in your head that only speaks the truth and is constantly telling you, "you know why." Yes I worked out regularly, but I also was never one to keep my diet in check. Now for me personally, I hate the term diet. So I will phrase it as I was never someone to keep my fueling in check. The reality for me was the day that I stepped on that scale and this was about 4 years ago and saw the dreaded number. In my case, that number was 390. I knew I had to change. So I increased my Physical Activity and started to eat a little better. I started incorporating Crossfit and running into my routine. I even started signing up for local 5K runs. I was having a blast. It was actually an amazing boost to my self confidence when I came in first place in my age group for the very first ever 5K i signed up to do. So I rode that confidence boost into grander goals I and several of my co-workers signed up for our first half marathon. I was focused and deliberate in my training. I printed out a training plan and I followed it to the letter. Before I knew it the miles were racking up. Most of my training runs I would do by myself but my teammates and I would gather on Saturdays and do our scheduled long runs. I was always the last to finish, but I could always count on the fact that I knew I would finish and I knew that at the end of the run my team would be there cheering me on and we would keep each other motivated. Before I knew it, two years had passed and I had completed about 10 5K's, 4 Half Marathons and even a Sprint Triathlon. I was in my mind unstoppable. I had also lost about 20 pounds. Not that significant because I was still not eating as clean as I could or watching portion sizes. So now two years ago I was all set to start training for my next half marathon and also training for my first Half Iron Man. I went out on a normal Saturday morning run in my neighborhood. I was feeling good, the weather was perfect with a slight breeze that just aided in my runners high when I was wrapping up mile 3 and planted my left foot and felt and heard a distinctive pop from my left knee. It hurt bad and buckled my knee and almost took me to the ground. I stopped and tried to assess my knee rubbing it, moving it but I knew I was injured when I tried to bear weight on it again. No Joy!!! it was not having it. Needless to say, I found out that I tor my meniscus. So here I am off to surgery feeling very optimistic and looking forward to a speedy recovery to get back out there. Surgery was done and My doctor said He did not believe in physical therapy, just let it heal for 6 weeks and only walk during that time but after that I should be able to run again. Six weeks came and I laced up and stepped out for my first run. Once again, No Joy. I could not even make a quarter mile on that knee. Talk about feeling mad and misled and discouraged. I went back to the doctor only to be told well your knee was bad to begin with and your weight does not help, take it slow. So slow turned out to be a year. I was back to running again and feeling good doing my CG workouts, my Crossfit and hitting the Gym I ws on a roll I dropped another 30 pounds and then the unimaginable happened and I came down on my right knee doing high knee skips and felt the same pop and pain. This was July of 2016. This time I opted for Physical Therapy first along with a nice heaping dose of Steroid injections. 12 weeks of Physical Therapy 3 times a week helped the mobility but I was still injured. I opted to go for injections into the knee to increase the viscous fluid in the knee to aid in lubrication. This helped for about 3 months. I also went to see a different surgeon. He proceeded to tell me I have a Complex meniscus team along with a partial tear of my ACL and MCL. He informed me that I am not a good surgical candidate due to the fact that if he were to remove the meniscus, the arthritis I have in my knee would take off like wild fire. The real kick in the gut is to hear him say I will not run again. To date I have dropped more weight and I am currently at 326 and hope to be below 300 by the end of March. Perseverance has been the key to it all. Finding alternate methods to work out and keep dropping weight and taking pressure off those knees. I hope to some day be able to prove my doctor wrong. Don't get me wrong, I will not do anything to place my long term mobility at risk but I want to feel that I can take on more and more physical challenges as time goes on. My bucket list is extensive and I do not want to be limited at all. I will persevere. I will run again!!! AS I have stated before, I would love for Blog to be interactive, so please share your Perseverance story or feel free to leave comments. Let's make this an environment of sharing and learing from like minded people. HOOYAH TEAM!!! As always, Never Give Up!!!