Financial
Being injured is a costly process! Here is the tally of incurred expenses thus far:
Money lost in entry fees for races entered that I won't be able to compete in:
£8 (Duchy 20 - fortunately a cheap one!)
£8 (Easter Bunny 10k)
£28 London Marathon
Forunately I had a free entry for the Yeovil Half and my Siblyback entry was kindly transferred by the organisers - Dig Deep Events - to the June event... by which time I had better damn well be recovered!
Money lost in hotels / travel costs:
£190 (2 night hotel stay in London, non-refundable)
£120 (train fares for London - as above)
Money spent on physio:
£65 thus far as rising. (The only saving grace is that the acupuncture (outlined below) was free on the NHS!)
Money spent in desperation on gimmick devises in the vain hope that they may help:
Foam roller: £15
Balance board: £8
Strasburg sock to sleep in and stretch tendon: £39
Tiger Balm and Ibuprofen gel: £6
Elastic exercise band: £5
Kinesiology (K.T.) tape (2 rolls): £16
Total injury cost thus far: £508 .... and mounting. I NEED to get this sorted soon as my wallet - not to mention my waistline and my wits - are weeping!
Physical
The first thing I did was to register with a specialist sports doctor in Exmouth, whom I have now seen twice. He assessed my achillies, foot alignment, injury history etc. and diagnosed me with equinus foot (essentially, horse foot!). As some of you may know, I used to be a keen horse rider and had a horse for a a few years when I lived in North Wales. I chose to sideline horse riding for a while as my injury record in that sport was even worse than it is in running and so I deemed the threat of a bad fall to be too great. Now I find myself diagnosed with a horse-related running injury: the irony is just too glaring! Basically, equinus foot is where the foot rotates inwards, usually as a result of poor ankle flexibility - which he reckons I have in the left ankle - and causes the arch to cave in and the foot to over-pronate. Because he deemed this a biomechanical problem of the ankle, I am still classed as a neutral runner and so stability shoes and / or orthotics would not make any difference. So, what did he advise? In the long term, making my ankle more flexible and stronger with a series of calf stretches and exercises. The issue: my calf muscle was so damaged and painful from the race that I couldn't even put my heel down at first, as the stretch was too painful, so actually doing a calf stretch was sheer agony and made my calf feel as if it was about to rip from end to end like a zipper unfastening. The interim solution: acupuncture.
Have you ever had acupuncture before? I hadn't, and it's the most bizarre experience. It's one of those treatments that I would broadly categorise as 'alternative therapy' and which belongs in the same department as arnica, epsom salts, reiki, meditation and yoga! I am not an out and out skeptic when it comes to these things, but let's just say that I approach them cautiously minded, hoping - but by no means expecting - to be proven wrong! The doctor inserted about 12 needles into my left calf, ankle and big toe, and then attached crocodile clips to some of the needles and then plugged the clips into an electric meter. He then handed me the meter and the dials and informed me that I was in charge of my own voltage! I slowly started to increase the volts by turning up the dials, but felt nothing. Being me, I started to get suspicious at about this time that if I felt nothing then it meant it was having no effect, and so I cranked the voltage up to maximum. To say I nearly went shooting off the bed, whilst simultaneously screaming and wetting myself would not be too much of an exaggeration. The electricity kicked in alright and with an almighty shock that shot down my lower leg and exited via my big toe, leaving it throbbing and red. That'll teach me to be so bloody overzealous in future! I then lay there, twitching uncontrollably, whilst periodically inspecting my spines and feeling like a torture victim in a laboratory. After 20 long minutes, the doctor announced that I was "done" (much in the same way as one would announce the successful cooking of one's Christmas turkey) and he unplugged and de-spined me, leaving me sprouting blood from my twelve newly acquired minutiae orifices. I was then informed that this was the first of three treatments and so I could look forward to being spiked and shocked again twice more in the not too distant future. Oh joy.
Me and my electronically charged needles
Did it help? No. It's meant to be a remedy for pain relief, but I did not feel any different after the treatment to before. Well, no, I had a throbbing big toe, which wasn't there before, so it did have some effect! He gave me a rehabiliation sheet which outlined several useful exercises, including that old chestnut that keeps coming up time and time again: eccentric heel drops / calf raises. There are different schools of thought on this. Some say you should do the 'lowering' part only and raise yourself up on your good leg, others say to do raises only, whilst others say to do both. All I know is, I have tried the exercises on several previous occasions and they have in fact caused other problems in my calves and the backs of my knee and not had a positive effect on my achillies either.
I have also seen a physio at the marine camp who came highly recommended by Gordan Seward. Gordan has been a huge help throughout this process. He is the time keeper at the weekly Killerton parkrun, but he is a long time athlete - and a bloody good one at that - and what he doesn't know about the sport and about injuries is probably not worth knowing. He's a lovely guy who gives freely of his time to help and advise young and enthusiastic (often over-enthusiastic!) runners, and he's somewhat taken me under his wing of late to make sure that I get this injury sorted once and for all so I don't end up being blighted by it for my entire running career.
So last week I went with Gordan to see Rich, the physio at Lympstone Commando. He did a series of tests on me and determined that I do not have one leg shorter than the other (as one physio had previously told me I did), and I do not have a collapsed left foot arch (as the sports doctor told me I did) and that, biomechanically, I am an almost perfect specimen! That's great on the one hand, but on the other, it means that there's no pin-point reason to explain why I keep getting problems in my left achillies. The one thing he did notice is that my right calf is visibly larger than my left: a pretty good indication that it's more developed and stronger and so likely to give me less problems. This is something I have always been aware of, even from before I took up running. My parents thought I was imagining it and used to call me ridiculous on the few occasions that I got the tape measure out in attempt to prove it to them, but I am right leg dominant, so it makes sense that it would be more developed. I used to hate my larger right calf and wish I could lop it off; now I would give anything to have another to match it!!
Rich and Gordan both believe that my achillies issue is simply a result of doing too much, too fast. Many athletes would build up over a period of 10 years before tackling their first marathon, I did mine after 3 months! I have only been running for 2 and a half years and in that time I have competed in over 80 races, 9 of which have been marathons (and 2 of those 32.4 mile ultras). Come to think of it, I probably have overcooked things slightly. The problem with me is that my personality has always been given to excess and so I don't just dabble and flirt with things, I dive in, head first, without ever pausing to check the depth beforehand. Sometimes I don't have the depth to fall back on, and I think that I am now being reminded of that. I am finally starting to learn that you feel pain for a reason and ignoring pain - whilst at times seeming heroic - is in fact just stupid, as it will only get worse to the point that it forcefully insists that you give in to it. I have ridden my luck on my dodgy achillies for far too long and my sheer bloody-mindedness has made this injury far far worse than it need have been.
Psychological
Which leads me nicely onto my next topic: the psychological impact of being injured. Now, I have always said right from the start that if I ever got seriously injured to the point that I couldn't run, that I would worry for my sanity, and I have proven myself to be right on that point! Everybody needs a goal in life, a reason to strive, something to fight for, a motivator to get up in the morning. For some it's their family, for others, their career, and for others, it's sport. I used to be massively career minded. When I was at Bangor, studying for my PhD, I had no other focus but that and so I put all my energies and efforts into it. I took up running at the very moment that I had started to lose focus and interest in my research, and so there was almost an imperceptible shift that took place, whereby I just transferred all my ambitions and attentions from my PhD to my running. Believe me, when you go at things with the fervor and ferocity that I tend to, there is only room for one focus in your life! The problem of course comes once this focus is taken away, as it has been for me for the past four weeks.
Until the Plymouth Hoe calamity, I was fixed on my target of a sub 2h55 time at the London Marathon in much the same tunnel-visioned way as an eagle fixes on its prey. It occupied many of my waking thoughts - and some of my sleeping ones too - with the planning of my training, key build up races, race strategy, tapering and the organising of the trip itself. London is of course now definitely ruled out, along with all my key build up races along the way that I had hoped to set new PBs in. Now, when I get in from work, I am faced with more tedious cross-training - which I simply do not enjoy. I like to run, outside, to feel the wind in my hair and to hear the sounds of nature. I do not like sitting on a bike in the gym, sweating away to some God-awful music being blared out far too loudly, whilst staring at the same blank wall for an hour. Also, all this cycling has been giving me monster thigh muscles; it's amazing how quickly your physique adapts itself to a new sport within a matter of weeks. The thunder-thigh, Chris Hoy look is really not something I go in for, and so I've been having a series of internal dilemmas as I try to weigh up the cardiovascular benefits of sticking with the cycling against the drawbacks of the negative impact its having on my physique and self-image. It's a toughie!
I have also been having a tussle in my head about the progress of my injury versus the degeneration of my fitness at Parkrun each week. With each outing the pain in my calf muscle - which I now know to have been caused by a partial tear of the gastrocnemius muscle as a result of the stresses transferred to it in the race from my achillies - subsides, leaving me feeling positive, but as it subsides I have been able to push the pace a bit more, which has highlighted to me my considerable drop in fitness. I keep telling myself not to panic, fitness can be regained provided you have the injury under control, but only half of me ever listens to this logic!
Ultimately it's perhaps not a bad thing that this has happened. Yes, the timing of it might have been dire, but then, is there ever a good time to be injured? I always have plans, so whenever it happened it would have been inconvenient. But it has forced me to address this on-going issue that I had previously chosen to ignore and it's made me realise that I need to listen to my body and be a bit more attentive to its warning signs in future. Yes, it's frustrating that I have it when I know of runners who compete far more than I do and who just coast by without a single niggle, but their bodies are clearly made of sterner stuff than mine. If only my physical strength was an equal match for my mental tenacity: then I really would be a force to be reckoned with!!
The only running I have been doing these past 4 weeks is at my 5k weekly outing at Parkrun, where I assess the progress of my injury. This was the Harrogate parkrun, one cold morning in late February.
