You know it’s been a while since your last blog post when you type ‘WordPress’ into your browser’s address bar and it doesn’t auto-populate.
I make it three months since my last post and there’s a simple reason for that: I haven’t done much in that time. 2015 has been a tale of two injuries, the latest of which has wrecked my plans for the year and refuses to pack its bags and depart.
By way of a brief re-cap, my year started with a strained tendon in my left ankle, followed closely by sporadic and inconsistent pain in the hip of the same leg. That hip pain continues to cause me problems and has trashed a fourth month of training, leading me to write off the year and start thinking about 2016 already.
Worse yet is the effect on my racing calendar: I limped through MK Festival Half Marathon in February, before being forced to withdraw from Oakley 20, Manchester Marathon and, worst of all, London Marathon – the only saving grace in this respect was my ability to defer my place to next year, which could yet prove to be essential if the powers that be decide to re-draw the Good for Age qualification boundaries.
Since shedding weight and getting fit I’ve encountered a couple of knocks and strains, but none have lasted more than six weeks or led me to skip races. While it was great to see friends perform so well in Manchester and London, it was also heartbreaking to think that I was forced to miss out due to no fault of my own.
That said, I am my own worst enemy – my training log for the year represents a litany of premature re-starts and countless ‘too much too soon’ runs. It’s far easier to dish out advice than to follow it yourself, but if anyone else were in my position, I’d advise them that soft tissue injuries are like cuts to your skin – if you pick the scab, it won’t get better any time soon, so you just have to leave it and let nature do its thing.
If only it were that easy.
It looks as though my current problem – injury-wise – is a bulging disc in my spine, which is pinching the sciatic nerve, causing the sharp jabs of pain in my hip and weakness/discomfort in my calf. It hurts like hell when I run and my left leg feels dead from the knee down when I ride the bike.
My physio seems to be confident that it won’t last forever, though, instructing me to take two weeks with no running and seven days without cycling – suggesting that after that time I should be ok to slowly start re-building from there.
I’m not sure that’ll be long enough, but then after so long and having lost so much ground, it is hard to be positive.
One thing I would say – I’m fairly sure that the problem with my back is a direct result from spending all day hunched over a computer screen, with my lower spine being constantly compressed and gradually squeezing the life out of my vertebral discs. The human body is not built for sitting down all day, so the best advice for PC dwellers is to build multiple walk breaks into your day and keep you spine mobile.
It seems daft to me that workers are allowed breaks to smoke and office canteens are founded on fatty foods, but nothing is done to support healthy lifestyles built on exercise and positive wellbeing.
But then I guess that might get in the way of making a profit.
Anyway, enough of this particular ray of sunshine – my regime of stretching and icing won’t complete itself. Fingers crossed for a speedy recovery.