You’ve got the spirit now

Recovery continues to go well.  I saw the surgeon a few days ago and got a new set of X-rays. I’m still doing some pretty simple exercises for physiotherapy.  More aggressive exercises will have to wait because the torn ligaments simply need time to repair. One worry is that because I don’t have much fat on my shoulder the plate will rub against my skin when I run and cause discomfort. The solution is to remove the plate, although that has to wait at least 6 months.  Other than that I should be able to run normally with the plate.

I got screwed.

There was a picture taken of my shoulder during the operation (after the surgeon tied my clavicle down and before the plate was screwed on). I’ll warn you that it’s pretty raw so if you don’t like looking at blood and open wounds don’t click…  Operation pic.  If you look closely you can see the fracture.

In the meantime I’ve been putting some quality hours on the spin bike.  I watch movies/tv shows most of the time unless I want to go a little harder, in that case I listen to music.  This weekend I watched a lot of track (Canadian and US national championships).  Speed River had a good showing with lots of medals and a couple world champs qualifiers.

The most anticipated race and hardest race to watch was the men’s steeplechase which featured four athletes with World Champs standard and only three spots.  Matt Hughes had the fastest seasonal best and the next three guys, Alex Genest, Chris Winter and Taylor Milne are all Speed River athletes.  With 200m to go it looked like Hughes was going to win with Milne in second and a battle for the third spot. At the last water pit Hughes went over clean and the camera followed him and we (a few people came over to watch) heard the crowd go “EWWWWW.” The water pit wasn’t on the screen but we knew right away that Milne had gone down, the question was how fast could he get up.  Not fast enough as Winter and Genest easily surpassed Milne and the two of them had a battle right to the finish.  It was heartbreaking watching Milne falter so close to the end of the race and a world champ birth evaporate.  At the same time it was great to see Chris Winter qualify for his first major games team after years of hard work where he battled some tough injuries. Results.

In two weeks I go and see the surgeon again to make sure everything is on track.  That will be a month after the surgery.