They say runners are good at enduring pain, but nothing tests your patience quite like the long road back from a serious injury.

I kept my recovery from meniscus tear surgery on my right knee mostly private. Not because I didn’t want to share, but because like any good runner, I needed to be sure I could go the distance–literally.

I’ve never really been prone to injury. The last couple of “injuries” I’ve had that were fairly serious were a couple of turned ankles while trail running. One of those turned ankles was serious enough to take me out of trail running for close to two years.

The ankle turn happened during a shakeout run the day before I was to run the Ozark Foothills 25K trail race back in April of 2022. I was about two miles in on a trail that was covered with leaves. Just as I was ascending a hill, I turned my right ankle on a rock that was hidden under the leaf cover. The loud pop stopped me in my tracks, and I hobbled back to my tent.

I was not able to run the race the next day, and instead, packed up my gear and made my way back home—a six-hour drive away. I didn’t have the confidence to get on a trail until nearly two years later, for fear of doing any more damage to my ankle.

Thankfully, I healed up within about a month or so, and I went on to train and finish both the Grandma’s Marathon and the Chicago Marathon that same year.

Fast forward to late summer 2023. I started feeling pain in my right knee while helping Patty train for the Chicago Marathon. I was always good at self-healing my injuries (see ankle sprain above), but this was different. My longest run was eight miles in early August, and I started to get concerned.

I tried to run in between lots of icing and rest, but I was only able to muster two to three miles at a time before I felt pain in my right knee. I finally worked up the courage to schedule an MRI on November 7, 2023.

And there it was. Official diagnosis: “Complex tear of the medial meniscus posterior horn.”

The meniscus is like a soft cushion in your knee. You have two of them in each knee, and they’re shaped like tiny crescent moons. They sit between the bones in your knee joint, helping keep everything moving smoothly. They work like shock absorbers, stopping your bones from rubbing together and helping you jump, run, and walk without pain. Over time, whether it’s from an injury or just wear and tear, the meniscus can tear and cause pain or make it hard to move your knee.

The tear required an arthroscopy on my right knee to remove and repair the shredded part of the meniscus. My doctor assured me I could get back to running where I left off within six to twelve months.

Fortunately, I was feeling back to my old self after about six months of physical therapy. I ran my first official race at the Chicago Turkey Trot 5K on November 28, 2024. It was a surreal and emotional moment for me. I was on the road back.

Here we are a year later and I’m finally building up to get back to that 25K trail race I missed out on almost three years ago.

What about tackling another ultramarathon in the future? I want nothing more than to get back to that kind of suffering again—the type of suffering in an ultra that sucks the life right out of you. It’s that same feeling I long for—it’s almost like a drug.

Someday, I’ll get back at it.