My Journey to an Ultra Runner and this photoblog …

Pitstop during my first Ultra in 2017

Prior to become an Ultra Runner, I had never been a great runner. I always enjoyed going out and putting down some miles. Running races was something I put out there to help motivate me and give me a gauge by which I rated my progress. I wasn’t great but I would at least place in my age group a few times. I ran 5k’s and 10k’s, a couple halves and a couple marathons, usually having fun, until about 2010 when my right hip started bothering me.

It was then that I was backed into taking some drastic action to correct what Osteoarthritis and years of running was doing to my hips. It was this situation that peaked my drive to becoming an Ultra Runner.

When things first started to become an issue, I thought it was just a little groin injury and went through the process of resting, stretch, etc. to help heal it with not a lot of success. I then thought maybe it was a hip-flexor issue, same treatments, same results. At some point I started having some real problems just putting normal weight on my leg and at times, almost going to the ground when it would let go. 

One afternoon, it happened while I was on a ladder and that’s when I finally decided that self-doctor James didn’t know what he was doing and visited my primary care doctor who ordered x-rays. I did those and received a call the next day saying I need to see a specialist that he set up. I showed up at the orthopedic surgeon’s office, naively thinking he would do some magic and I would be back hitting the pavement. At this point, can any of you diehards relate??


One afternoon, it happened while I was on a ladder and that’s when I finally decided that self-doctor James didn’t know what he was doing and visited my primary care doctor who ordered x-rays. I did those and received a call the next day saying I need to see a specialist that he set up. I showed up at the orthopedic surgeon’s office, naively thinking he would do some magic and I would be back hitting the pavement. At this point, can any of you diehards relate??

As I sat waiting to see the Specialist with my wife, we talked about what we were going to do for dinner that day and some hopeful plans for a marathon later in the year. The doc walks in with the x-rays, introduces himself and promptly asks me what my primary care had shared. I shrugged and said, “nothing.” He shook his head and said, “Jon always makes me give the bad news.” Well that set a sour tone and I started getting a little nervous.

With x-rays up on the screen, I see what should be hips with ball and cup and instead is some mass of bone, spurs and who knows what else. Yeah, it didn’t look so good. He proceeds to explain to us what osteoarthritis is, pointing, demonstrating and a bunch of other crap but the only thing I remember hearing is, “You have to stop running today and will need replacement surgery in the very near future and will not be able to run again after that.” He said something about biking, swimming, hiking and how that would be a great replacement for the running. This guy obviously knows little about a runner’s mind. Blah blah this and blah blah that and we could schedule the surgery in a couple weeks.

At some point, I think he finally realized that shock had set in because I was answering none of his questions, asking none of my own and was a little glazed over. He gave me all the info along with his schedule for this type of surgery and told me to contact his team when I had time to process the news and was ready to start getting things fixed.

FIXED?! The hell you say! This wasn’t fixing anything if at the end of it I couldn’t run. I moped around for weeks, not running because I couldn’t, it hurt way too much, adding to my depression and really just trying to imagine what was going to happen. Not a good time for me or my wife. She was at the end of her rope with my self-pity. (At the time, she was not a runner and could not relate. Side note: I did eventually convert her! HA!).

In hopes of lifting my spirits, she coordinated a dinner with our best friend Melissa and I shuffled my way there with her. It was a nice evening, good food, great company and just before we went our ways, Mel says, “Oh yea, I have a friend who has some hip problems and he is having this procedure called Birmingham Re-surfacing done. He claims that he can go back to normal activity after recovery. You might want to check it out.” What did she say? A surgery that allowed me to still RUN??

When we got home, I looked up this Birmingham Re-surfacing and to make an already long story a little shorter, in 2014, I ended up having a Birmingham Re-surfacing surgery. I laugh now because I don’t think the surgeon ever thought when he said I could still run, that he ever imagined that I would take it to the extreme and become an Ultra Runner at the age of 59 years old. 

It was a very long recovery, mostly due my not listening to the Doc and causing some unnecessary problems. I tried to run, but I was much slower than I was before. It was a bit frustrating but I was running.

My crew go with me wherever I go … including the hospital – After an Ultra in 2018

One day I walked into my favorite shoe store “Second Sole – Akrun” and while being fitted for a new pair of shoes, I got to talking with the sales person, Connie Gardner (an award-winning Ultra Runner herself) and she tells me about endurance racing, something I could do at a much slower run than marathoning, just more miles. Oh, I loved the sound of that! I went home and started researching as much as I could about it and in 2016 ran my first Ultra at the Eagle Up in Canal Fulton, Ohio. The rest of the story can be followed in the archives of this blog.

Fast forward to 2022 … 

My hip is still doing great but I haven’t been running due to severe arthritis in my left knee.  As the pain slowly increased, my running dwindled to a mere 2-3 miles and now I am lucky to walk 2-3 miles a day. This didn’t happen overnight as I have been fighting this for close to two years (do you see a pattern of denial here?). I am still having a hard time with the reality that I will never run again. If you are a runner, I know you can relate to how I must be feeling about all this.  I have struggled for the past year to find something to replace my running and in the end this old man as gone back to something I loved since the early days of my youth, Fly-tying and fishing.  I stopped fly fishing shortly after I retired from the Military and moved to Ohio in 2000.  The trails around where I live called my name and running became my daily obsession for the past 20+ years and the fly fishing was set aside.

While it’s not the same as running, I am finding that fly fishing and the creativity of fly tying is meeting a similar need in my mind. I have run into so many runners in my situation, some have taken up biking, others swimming and the list goes on.  At some point, we tear up our bodies so much that in most cases it comes down to having to set aside your love.

I hope my new photos taken on the river, and still some trails, will continue to inspire you and you’ll continue to come back to my blog to see what else is new.   

– Oparuns