Those of you who read this blog regularly know that I have been training for 70.3 Busselton on 5 May 2012. And training with commitment, excitement, consistency and enthusiasm as I wanted to give this race everything, toe the line knowing I gave it my absolute best shot and that my result would be reflective of that.
Unfortunately, there are uncontrollables in life that you can't train or prepare for. Injury. Illness. These things can derail your plans, throw your momentum off course and deaden your body for an unknown period of time.
For the past 3 weeks, this has been me. I have tried hard to tackle each illness as it comes, remain positive, rest, see doctors. But sometimes, it just isn't going to come together. Melbourne has had an unfortunate change of season which has sent illness through the roof, I work in an environment where people bring a lot of illness into the office, so my already compromised immune system has little hope.
What started with a cold and a hacking dry cough (1 week off training) turned into bronchitis and a chest infection (another 4 days off training) with a diagnoses of a virus you get before pneumonia. One week of antibiotics and I was warned to be careful and avoid as best as possible getting ill again as the next sickness could be pneumonia or worse. I started training again for a few days, feeling good, but quickly developed tonsillitis (10 days of antibiotics) and a deep fatigue in my body. Aching bones and tiredness which I feel as I write this post.
During this time, I also developed plantar fasciitis in my left foot. PF is a painful inflammation of the plantar fascia, the connective tissue on the sole of the foot. It can be caused by overuse of the plantar fascia or arch tendon of the foot or a range of other reasons (unsupportive footwear, weak supporting muscles etc). Fortunately, I got onto this quickly as it can turn into a nasty ongoing injury but it still took me out of consistent running training for a few weeks on top of it.
In life, there comes a point where you have to get real. Take a good hard look at the facts and consider your options. The reality is I am not well. I am not going to be well for at least another 7-10 days and that is only if I rest heavily, take time off and do not train. To do so, and still race Busso, would mean over 1 month of patchy or non-existant training at best, an untested foot injury over my longest distance and racing a body weakened by multiple viruses and antibiotics. Not smart.
So yesterday I made the right decision and withdrew from the race. A very hard decision but one that I knew had to be made.
Fortunately, this cloud has a silver lining and I decided to move all my plans back a month and race 70.3 Cairns on 3 June 2012. I'm hoping the extra 4 or so weeks buys me the much needed rest time to heal my body, start back into training and hopefully bring myself back into the form I was showing 4 weeks ago. Cairns is a different course and climate to Busso which is a challenge to adapt to at this late stage. But I have gotten my head around this decision and now am 100% focused on this event.
Like the note above, now it is all about being patient with my body, respecting the time it needs to repair and stay positive on the change and the newly (revised) race plan of Cairns.
Not a bad picture to keep the motivation high!
No comments:
Post a Comment