Trainspotting

At the risk of sounding dramatic or flogging an analogy, I feel like I spend my days train spotting at the moment. The trains represent days of the week – they’re just passing me by, I’m stuck waiting on the platform absentmindedly wrestling nervously with my watch.

At the beginning of this week, I thought that I wasn’t far away from getting back out on the roads. I secretly held out hope that I’d awake in the morning with all of the bruising and pain a thing of the past. Unfortunately, when the morning arrived, and as soon as I swung my feet out to the ground, I could feel that all too familiar dull discomfort. So there I was, sitting on the edge of my bed cheering my spirits with a new mantra – ‘tomorrow… it’ll be fine tomorrow’.

My hope wasn’t blind – it was based on effort I was putting into recovery. I had been doing my best to look after all three issues: I rolled around a golf ball under my foot for about an hour every day in an attempt to break down the scar tissue at the base of the arch, as well as the bruising from that devil-stone from three weeks back (up by my toes). I could feel a dull pain from this routine but nothing too dramatic – certainly nothing worthy of tapping out. As for what I thought was a tendon issue by the ankle – I would dig around here as much as I could as it was the source major discomfort – a sharp piecing ache pleading with me to stop. I used to let Bec have a good dig around until her thumb gave out (it was excruciating).

So off I trundled to my physio on Wednesday morning in the hope that I could get back out by the beginning of next week – after all – apart from the ankle, everything felt good (the bruising on the base of my foot was now barely noticeable). Sadly, I had a bombshell awaiting me. That tendon I was digging at was actually the ligament that supports the arch. I was only the second person my physio had ever seen damage it in any way. Worse than that - Rule #1 with ligaments, you leave them alone. I had exacerbated the damage by insisting to knead out non-existent scar tissue. The needles you see below were just part of the recovery plan – it looks like I have several weeks of spinning and aqua jogging ahead while I let that ligament recover and work on my core muscles. I’m also back to normal shoes for a while as my arch has been weakened by my insistence to collapse in on them in order to diminish the pain of the bruised foot in the top corner. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced such a snowball effect from running over one stone.

                                                                                                 

Obviously, the Cork to Cobh race is definitely not going to happen now – it’s in 3 days, it’s 15 miles long , I have lost the race fitness I was assembling, and oh, yeah, I’m crocked. It was especially disappointing to receive my race number in the post earlier this week – only to have to deposit it in the bin. Sad really, as I was really looking forward to running through Glounthaune (the half way point in the race and my home since I was a child). It’s not a huge setback for the training; the race was only ever meant to be a barometer of my progress. At the end of the day, the race isn’t going to happen and I have to get on with that. Poo.

Spinning classes, ah how I haven't missed spinning. In truth, I had forgotten how hard spinning actually is. As a general rule, spinning instructors tend to be Hitler-esque in their zeal but the last class’s Fräulein was particularly forceful in her directions. My thighs are killing me – so I’ll try some aqua jogging this afternoon instead - or maybe age is catching up with me and I'll give the thighs another day off.

In truth, it’s a long way to Paris. Time to get stop the train spotting for a while, get off the platform and come back in a few weeks.

192 days to Paris