2015 - The Year of Recovery

2015 was never going to be a year of amazing races, having had my ankle chopped open, my anterior talo-fibular ligament (the one that stops you from twisting your ankle when it's working properly) sliced in half, a couple of bits of metal tapped into my bones and some plastic string sewn into them to strengthen up the whole thing.  Given that I was in a plaster cast and on crutches at the beginning of the year and not allowed put any weight on that foot still until I got an air boot on 17th January and then was allowed put weight on that foot without the boot 2 weeks later... any running was totally off until March.  It then turned out that once I was allowed out of the air boot, I had to learn how to walk again having not felt anything touch the bottom of my foot since the start of December 2014.  And that kinda cramped my style running-wise on top of the 4 months of zero aerobic (or even any load bearing) exercise.

I was terrified that I'd be totally back to zero.  Everyone told me that was rubbish and that I was fit and it'd take no time, but that only really applies to life-long athletes, or at least those who have been pretty fit for many years.  And that's not me.



And it did take a while.  A really good while.  And I'm still not quite there yet.  The graph above is the effects of my last 2 years of training. The blue curve is my chronic training load - long term training effect on fitness which you can read as "fitness level". (Pink is acute training load, so the huge spike is when I ran the Thames Path, then a flatline afterward when I did literally nothing, not even walking; and yellow is "freshness", so again a huge drop during Thames Path and then a big recovery when I sat on my bum for 4 months.)

2015 did, however, see some PBs of the 1/2 marathon variety.  Which was quite nice.  But I bottled a marathon and did rather averagely at a multi-day ultra.  That said, I hit the ultras again pretty early on in the recovery, which was a great psychological boost at the time.

Now that I'm pretty much recovered, in 2016 I want to get back to doing what I want to do, not what a broken bit of body limits me to.  So, after I've got Country to Capital out of the way (a silly little 43ish mile race), I'm knuckling down to a quick & dirty marathon then it's time to hit the 50 milers.

I want to do the Centurion Running 50 Mile Grand Slam this year.  And have a go at a 100 miler.  So let's see what happens!

All done!

ATFL repair and retinaculum reinforcement all done.  Under a local.  Apparently I'm not a great candidate for local anaesthesia.  Aside from scaring the poop out of people by my BP dropping to 80/50 with severe nausea, tinnitus, dizziness and muscle spasms after the injection, it turns out I'm a bit jumpy when people are poking about my innards, twanging bits of ligament and screwing bits of metal into bones.  So we won't do that again.

As you can see, I have a ridiculous cast on my leg.  It's lumpy and weighs a ton, but I guess there's no point making it neat as it'll come off again on Friday so the consultant can check the progress of the wound healing, and I'll get a new one put on.  And the same deal again the following week.

Instructions are; "Bed rest for 3 days. No weight bearing at all for 4 weeks and you absolutely must not get the cast wet.".  This means crutches all of the time and not even standing other than on the other foot only.  I'm really hoping that the consultant lets me have an air boot for a couple of weeks after that rather than continue with the cast, because then I'll be able to be a bit more mobile and that'll make getting to work at the new job a bit easier.  In the mean time, I have some exercises to do to keep the bloody flowing and the knee mobile, but that calf (and probably the thigh as well as I can't use the leg for any weight bearing) will be as weak as a kitten after that.  And I'll be bored witless. And unfit.

Race cancellation spree

I've been on a race cancellation spree this morning.  Everything between now and about June next year.  So, no Dorset half marathon this week, no Country to Capital or Pilgrim Challenge in January and no Rotterdam Marathon in April (I'll have been allowed to run for only 6 weeks before this, so it'd be really thick to even think about trying to do it and risk messing up the repairs).

It turns out that I need surgery to reconstruct a couple of ligaments in my ankle.  This means 6 weeks in a cast afterwards, with no weight bearing allowed, and a total of 12 weeks of no running allowed at all.

I'm glad this has been brought forward from 9th Jan to 5th Dec, as it means I'll be 4 weeks into recovery by the time I start my new job and really handy on crutches by then.  It does mean that I'll be sitting on my backside at home for 4 weeks going more than a little nuts though.  It'll be bloody good to have things fixed though, so the likelihood of turning that ankle is reduced way below where it is at the moment.

Bring it on!

And I fully intend to go ahead with Ring O' Fire in September!