Twice the distance (half the fun)

In the last two weeks I have increased my walking workouts (chart & graphs below):

   * distance from 3.2 miles to 5.6 miles
   * elevation gain from 150 ft to 1,200 ft (yes!)
   * time from 68 mintues to 124 minutes
   * pack weight from 5 lbs to 12 lbs

Yesterday, I found out what two laps around Green Lake feels like.  Four weeks prior, I had been very proud of accomplishing a single lap and I wanted to attempt twice the distance and set a new personal best.

Green Lake is a beautiful place to walk, especially in the late afternoon with golden light streaming over Phinney Ridge.  There are usually many other people there running, walking, skating, and biking so plenty of distraction and motivation.  If you time it right, you are done with your workout and can sit & recover while watching a spectacular sunset.

One downside of the Green Lake walk is there's no shortcut back to the starting point.  Once you commit to going about half-way around you have no choice but finish, . . . well I suppose you could call for an Uber, but get real.  My prior personal best was 5 miles (which was pretty tender), and just two weeks ago the farthest I'd gone was 3.2 miles, so although up for the challenge, I felt trepidation about the last mile of the Green Lake loop.

And for good reason!  Although I completed two laps in a little under two hours I was definitely not enjoying the sensations emanating from my feet, ankles and shins for the last 20 minutes.  Groan! Prior to the accident, I'd become inured to aches & pains associated scaling Pacific Northwest Peaks, and my misery index was calibrated higher than most.  It is a struggle to rebuild this capability, and whoever suggested I'd bounce back quickly needs to be set straight.   

Rebuilding the endurance of muscles throughout my lower appendages is flat out grueling, and after these workouts I wonder whether I'll meet the goals I've set and whether I'll ever again be on an alpine trail with heavy pack.  Patience I tell myself; one step at a time.  Regardless of these doubts, you can see in the charts below that I remain ahead of planned incremental improvements in distance, time, elevation, and pack weight.

It's time for a follow-up appointment with the Harborview Orthodpedic team and I'll be interested in hearing the doctors' responses to several questions about my convalescence:

1.  Am I pushing too hard?  When I described my walking routine to the scheduling nurse she indicated very few people do anything like that so soon after such extensive surgery, and that I should let my ability to manage pain & swelling guide frequency, distance, time, elevation, etc.

2.  Is my left leg longer than my right?  Given the amount of reconstruction the surgeons did on both ankles & shins it wouldn't surprise me if one leg ended up a different length than the other.  The doctors had one shot at this, and separate teams were working on each foot, so no telling how well they coordinated on finished leg length!  I sense that my left leg is a little longer, because when walking along a path with a slight cross-path slant my gate is much smoother when my left leg is on the "downhill" side of the path.  It could be that because I have less feeling in my left foot/ankle/shin (and less range of motion) I favor it (walking a little club footed) and that may accentuate the effect of the slight path slant.

3.  Is my left shin bowed?  Especially when wearing shoes, it appears as though that shin comes away from the ankle at a slight outward angle compared with the other foot.  It's like my left foot is attached a little off center (toward the inside of my stance).  It's less noticeable without shoes.  Have I caused this as a result of my walking routine?!

4.  Should I upgrade the compression in my compression socks?  Thankfully the doctors prescribed light compression socks to start with (which are difficult enough to get on by myself), but now I'm wondering whether "medium" or "stiff" compression might improve recovery after walks and reduce swelling.

Chart & graphs on my walking record thus far: 
           

Back to the scene of the crime

Because the spreadsheet recovery plan I put together several weeks ago (and that now controls my life!) calls for carrying gradually increasing weight and taking on gradual elevation gain, I have been modifying my walks. 

Initially, I remained on the 3.2 mile flat ground course in Magnuson Park and carried a day-pack loaded with five pounds worth of Velcro strap-on weight belts that I had used for arm exercises while bed & wheelchair ridden.  Although this measly amount of weight was hardly noticable, it added four minutes to my workout.  Next I found a street ascending a gentle hill at the edge of Magnuson Park and after nine-laps up & down, I had completed 3.4 miles and 400 feet elevation gain with a ten pound pack and this time it took an additional 13 minutes compared to the flat course with no weight.

I could see where this was going; in no time at all the weight belts wouldn't be enough.  It was time to use my old training pack, the same one I used in Louisiana for the Tunica Hills workout (last post), and prior to that for Seattle in-city workouts (more on those in a subsequent post).  It is a sleek & lightly constructed Dana running pack (no padding on the shoulder & hip straps) that I purchased for $5 at a neighborhood garage sale on a whim years & years ago.  It fits a 50 pound sack of sand with just enough extra room for a water bottle and a light puffy jacket.

In the early days while building up to carrying the fifty pound sack of sand on Seattle in-city workouts, I carried gradually increasing numbers of water & sand-filled Nalgene bottles (ten of which are the equivalent of the 50 pound sack of sand).  The water & sand bottles were on a shelf in our garage, but the Dana pack (still filled with the 50 pound sack of sand) was at Vertical World (made sense to keep it there for tread-mill and callisthenic workouts after the twice weekly wall-climb routine rather than humping it back & forth to the car every time).

I had not made it back to Vertical World since the fall.  While bed ridden at Harbor View and Anderson House Skilled Nursing Center it wasn't a possibility.  Then once mobile---but limited to the power wheel chair and Seattle Metro bus service---there wasn't a practical way to get there because it is far from any bus route and there are no sidewalks for the wheelchair.  Once I started walking short distances and driving a car it became practical to visit, but there wasn't a compelling reason.  Going back to the scene of the crime never made it onto the short-list of to-do items.

But now I needed that training pack, so I drove over and hobbled in. Initially, I focused on explaining my presence to the front desk folks, and then I went upstairs to the workout room to retrieve the pack.  While coming back down the stairs, I realized that on the way in I had walked right by the wall I fell from without stopping to look at it even for a moment.  It was as though I had purposefully avoided looking that way.  So on the way out I stopped for a quick glance.  Noticed the routes had changed (of course).  The wall was tall.  Where I fell from was way the heck up there.  It wasn't in me to stick around pondering the scene for any length of time.  Guess I'm not ready to get back on that horse just yet.

With the training pack and water & sand bottles in the back of my car I'm fully ready to gradually increase carry weight on my walks.  This morning (Super Bowl Sunday) I tried a new venue, the road leading down to the West Point Lighthouse in Discovery Park on the Puget Sound.  In four laps up and down I completed 3.42 miles and 850 feet of elevation gain with a twelve pound pack in a little over 96 minutes, which is about 30 minutes longer than a similar distance (2/10's of a mile shorter) with very little elevation gain and no pack weight.  I can live with that!

Beating 24 minutes a lap on the West Point Lighthouse hill is something to shoot for.  It'll be nice when I'm doing eight laps, 1,700 ft and almost seven miles!