gj This is my story.

Here is my report that I sent out to the trail group here in Tucson:

Some of you may have noticed that I haven’t been around this season for any TTR runs.  (Please, didn’t somebody notice?  Remember me, the guy with the purple shorts?)  Here is a little of the backstory to the story that follows:  I stumbled coming down the back side of Gunsight Pass in OP 50, 2013 and got a stress fracture in the head of my femur, which developed into osteoarthritis.  But yes, I did finish the run.  Jump ahead three years and you have..

Runner Interrupted

So, I was out East one fine Monday morning, near Grant and Craycroft, and came upon a gang of people, all dressed alike in blue and in fact, they all had blue hair.  Uh oh, I thought.  I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I was a little nervous at the time and I’m sure that they saw this.  After a few words were exchanged, without warning, one guy just knocked me out cold with something that I never saw coming.

Just before I lost consciousness, I noticed one of them, seemingly the leader of the group, coming at me with a very sharp knife, all the while with a very ‘Wild’ look in his eyes.  (Coincidentally, I was later told that they call this guy ‘Dr. Wild, the Elder’.  I could see why!)  I subsequently learned that he slashed me across my right glute to the tune of about 10 inches and opened me up like a ripe watermelon.  Then he went to work on me.

Some time after that, I woke up in a prone position with an argument ensuing about who had not plugged in the battery charger.  This ‘Wildman’ was standing above me with a circular saw that was not spinning, obviously not finished with what he was doing to me.  He was not happy.  He had a dead DeWalt 18 volt circular saw in his hand. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to remember that I had two DeWalt 18 volt batteries with my drill in my truck in the parking lot and one of them probably had some juice left in it.  This necessitated a coffee break for all, while someone went down to my truck after getting my keys from Jane who was heard screaming ‘WTF is going on in there?’.  I was a little nervous again, so that other guy just knocked me out once more.

What seemed like days later, I awoke again with the ‘slasher’ hammering, hammering, hammering something into my leg, through this gaping hole in my backside.  I was thinking: ‘my hip has been hurting me for three years.  How is this going to help?’  The last thing I remember hearing was ‘give me that three pound sledge over there in the corner!’ and thankfully, again, I was out like a light.

This next time around, I awoke in a room, where the scene was like some nightmarish fever- dream version of an aid station at an ultra.  There were all of these little people running around me, tending to my every need.  They were giving me liquids, asking me how I was doing, did I need anything? And telling me that I was ‘looking good’!  I doubted that I was.  Disconcertingly, they had no M&M’s.  However, for the time being, I was going nowhere.  It seemed like I was in there for weeks, going nowhere.  As it turned out, it was two days after I was accosted in the operating room by the gang in blue, that I went home, carrying an extra two pounds of titanium and minus maybe a pound of my own, hard earned bone.  Oh, and I stopped taking the Percocet that day.

So, what’s next for me?  Who knows?  But I seem to be moving in the direction of healing.  After 5 weeks I am bicycling up to 8 miles.  I left the walker behind at two weeks and the cane at 4.  It seems that new hips are relatively easy to recover from (anecdotal information from various sources).  Dr. Wild, the Elder has soccer and tennis players, skiers and mountain climbers and hikers as past paying customers (41K for the curious), but notably, no trail runners.  My intention is and has been to run.  Titanium hips should last 20 to 25 years under normal conditions.  One of my life coaches recently said to me ‘Just get a new hip and if it wears out, get another one!’

All right! Plan A!

Inquiring minds go here:  hiprunners.com

N.B. Most of the above is true in some fashion or another.

Please keep this incredible trail series going for a while longer yet.

Long live TTR,

gj