6 weeks post surgery

On Tuesday I will be 6 weeks post surgery. I had hoped for a much quicker recovery but it hasn't worked out like I had hoped. I did my first runs since surgery this week. 1 mile on Tuesday, 2 miles on Thursday, and then 1.7 miles on Saturday. I was allowed to go 3 on Saturday but instead of shuffling along at a painfully slow pace I decided to run a little quicker, about 6:20 pace. After 1.7 miles I could tell it was starting to hurt and my stride was changing so I stopped at that point. It was a sign that I'm not healed yet and I think it will be another week before I run. As for the QC Triathlon on June 19th it looks doubtful that I'll be able to compete as an individual. I really want to race but won't do so unless I can do an interval running workout without pain beforehand which is doubtful. If I don't compete as an individual I've recruited one of the fastest females in the area to run for me and I'll compete as a relay. It didn't take much arm pulling...my wife Jen will be happy to jump in and run in my place. Enough of the bad news...
I had a very solid week of training on the bike and in the water. I hit 13,400 yards swimming, and 235 miles on the bike. Neither of them bother the achilles tendon at all. I did 2 hard bike interval workouts...my first since surgery. I nearly puked during my second one...just dry heaves. It let me know I was working hard but also that my fitness is nowhere close to where it was in March. In addition to the swimming, biking, and 5 running miles, I also lifted weights 3 times, did lunges 3 times, and core work 10 times. My total training time was 21 hours. The highlight of my week was volunteering at the Hy-Vee Youth Triathlon held at the Bettendorf YMCA on Saturday morning. It was awesome to see over 200 kids excited about doing a triathlon. The highlights in no particular order were as follows...
1. One kid did the bike section on training wheels!
2. One kid didn't know how to bike so fellow QC Team Tri-Fit member and volunteer Bill Minard literally pushed him on his bike for the 1 mile bike course that the 7 and 8 year olds did
3. One kid had on some cool sunglasses even though it was totally cloudy and raining
4. A handful of kids were wearing awesome Kiwami Triathlon jerseys...the same company that made my race jersey for 2010.
5. Only 1 kid in the 13 and 14 year old division was walking where I stood 100 meters from the finish line...ironically he was wearing a soccer shirt (If I've never told you how I feel about soccer you may be able to infer)
6. No one wiped out at the corner I was working.
It was great to see the future of triathlon is in good hands. This upcoming weekend I'm going to do a bike ride from the QC to Dubuque and back put on by the Quad Cities bike club. Saturday is 106 miles and I'm going to do some intervals on the way to Dubuque. Sunday I'll ride the 90 mile return trip back to the QC so it will make a good weekend of building my bike base back up. On Sunday I missed what was to be my pro debut, a half Ironman in Kansas. It was tough looking at the results thinking I could have been right there with the top 5. It seems like such a long road to get back to where I was but I hope I get to begin trying sooner than later. DREAM BIG!