Hernia's Back

I felt good after finishing my 8 mile run Saturday. It was a fresh, cool spring morning and I had made 8 minute miles, so I was starting to get back into race shape. After the cruise I noticed that I weighed 15 lbs more than I thought I did, so for the last month I was on a serious diet. I hoped that it wouldn't take 3 years of NOT eating donuts every morning followed by cookies and sodas every day at lunch to lose the love handles that those sweet temptations had produced in that amount of time. I had been hungry all the time for the last month except for weekends and was down 11 lbs, 9 away from my race weight goal of 205.

Not only was I training for the American Fork half marathon in June, but I signed up for the Spartan obstacle race at Soldier Hollow the next week. So I had been faithfully doing burpees, pushups, sprints, crunches and all manner of challenging exercises to gear up for that. Overall, I was feeling in the best shape of my life.

Then I got up to go shower. I felt a fiery, dull pain deep inside my lower right abdomen. "That was weird" I said. It felt just like the pain from when I was recovering from hernia surgery. Looking down in the shower I couldn't deny that there was the same assymetry that had alerted me that something was wrong about 18 months ago.

I went through the stages of grief. Denial didn't last long, because the low level pain continued. Something had to be wrong. Then I bargained that I would just ignore it and do everything I had planned during the summer and take care of it in the fall. When I woke up this morning with pain, I figured there was no way I was going to feel good about training properly for the Spartan so I might as well get it over with ASAP. I'm still going to the Grand Canyon next month, but I will see if I can get surgery the day after we get back.

I'm not looking forward to reliving the most physically miserable week of my life. How many people get another hernia only a year after their surgery? Into every life a little rain must fall, so I will quit complaining now and get it over with.