Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Boston Marathon Training: Surgery, A Sick One and 19 miles

Let me tell you - last week was insane. It was one of those weeks, where as you are in the middle of it all, you wonder will you be strong enough to get through it? How will you accomplish everything, be a good Mom and stay sane?



He started playing beach volleyball before the surgery - I didn't have that when I was kid! ;0


I wrote a long post on Instagram, but Josh (our nine year old) had a major, major surgery on Tuesday (which happened to be Valentine's Day, but we couldn't even think about it). When your child is in a four HOUR surgery, you start to feel uneasy. Okay, scared out of your mind - but you know you have to hold it together and trust that everything will be okay.

The surgery was good and he is healing well. I hate that he has to have another surgery in nine months, but in order to completely restore the hearing in his right ear, that is what has to be done. They have to go in and insert a prosthetic bone in his middle ear that was destroyed. Ruined by the skin growing in his inner ear (a condition he was born with, but we didn't know) that has blocked a lot of his fine tune hearing. For instance, take your thumb and index finger and rub them together up to your ear. Did you do it? Okay, you can hear that, right? Well, Josh can't hear that and many auditory tests have shown us that he has lost a lot of his hearing. So, after many consultations, this was what we had to do for him. 
We got up at zero dark thirty on Tuesday and made the trek to the hospital for our half day visit. He was so incredibly brave and I have never felt more proud of him. Josh is such a loving, inquisitive, funny kid and he walked away from us with the anesthesiologist, confident and ready to get it done.



Gone in a blink - I almost missed it!


Jerold and I went and had breakfast together - making small talk and trying not to think about the surgery. The nurse called a while later to let us know what Josh was sleeping and they were about to begin. After pacing around the hallway, trying to read, and catching up on e-mail, I realized that the best thing for me to do was run. I had my phone, Jerold was there and I walked out the door into the (rare - it finally stopped raining for a bit) sunshine and began to run. I was praying as I ticked away the six plus miles and asking God to watch over him. Take care of our baby, please.
The run was the absolute best thing I could have done to whittle away an hour and when I returned, it was time to go and see him.

Josh was in a lot of pain and a bit disoriented, so the nurse gave him some pain medication to ease the discomfort. I wish I could have traded places with him in those hours - I gladly would have done it in a heartbeat.

It was the perfect week to have this done, as the kids were off for ski week (do you guys have that? It's a total thing here in LA) and we stayed home to rest (no skiing for us - the kids were sad) and for Josh to heal. He can't run, jump, ski, swim, play hard or anything that a nine year old boy likes to do to stay active for a while. Zero plane trips, altitude, long car trips - pretty much just stay home and play with legos and rest, rest, rest.

By Thursday/Friday, he was going a little stir crazy, which was awesome, because that meant he was healing.
We took the kids for a walk and they found snails laying around after the rain.



The bandages are all gone - now he just has cotton in his ear with a ton of ointment to protect and a scar behind his ear where they made the cut. My heart hurts writing about it, but he is strong. Love him so much.






Sunday rolled around, and I was happy to run 19 miles and get it done - it's such a great feeling during a marathon cycle when you have the first super long run under your belt.







Sunday night, Elle (our four year old) wakes up in the middle of the night BURNING UP hot. Ugh. 104 fever and she feels absolutely miserable. Soothing, medication and getting her back to sleep, put us into the wee hours of Monday morning. She has been sleeping and sick all day Monday.
This, ladies and gentleman - is Mom life.



Monday February 13th - 4 easy miles. 

Tuesday February 14th - 6.5 miles during Josh's surgery

Wednesday February 15th - DAY OFF (I took the day off - I needed the rest today and day was spent taking care of Josh)

Thursday February 16th - 1 mile warm up, 7 miles at 7:10 pace, 1 mile cool down. 
Didn't want to run today - these are the days that test what you are made of. It's days like this - where you have to push and shove yourself out the door that make you stronger.

Friday February 17th - 4 easy miles

Saturday February 18th - 6 easy miles

Sunday February 19th - 19 miles at 7:45 pace (prescribed pace was 7:45-8). Note: Coach was not happy with the 17 miles at 7:34 pace that I did the other week. I trust and respect his advice and he told me to SLOW DOWN this week. I listened. :) #trusttheprocess

Total miles: 48.5


Strength work: Core every day; including push ups, bicycle crunches, dynamic plank, bridges, russian twists with medicine ball, superman. Plus monster walks, lateral walks (with band), jumping jacks, squats, dynamic warm up before every run, PT exercises for foot. Yoga = pigeon, legs up the wall, child's pose and downward dog. Heavy weight training lacking this past week - looking forward to hitting it hard this week.


Eight weeks left till Boston, time to lay it all on the line! 

Have a great week and happy running!

xo,
Natalie



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