Write Your Own Story

Finally I feel like a real runner. It’s been two and a half years of good luck and some good management that has seen me run free of injury since I started. However for the last seven days I have been unable to walk without pain let alone head out for even a shuffle.

Ten days ago I ran up and down brutal hills across 50km and over 6 hours. At the end of that race I was flying, doing ridiculously quick kms. I was running the best ultra I’d ever done and loving it. At the finish I felt typical soreness and fatigue but definitely had not injured myself on any one particular foot strike that I could remember. For the rest of the day nothing was out of the ordinary as my body started to seize up and the increasing soreness typically took a grip.

The following day my left foot was giving me all sorts of grief and nine days later it’s still sore. I’ve booked in to see a physio later this week. Hopefully he prescribes 60km around a 400m aths track in Coburg. That’s my next event coming up this Saturday, a 6 hour ultra that will be equally tough mentally and physically. I doubt I’ll be able to take part in it, but you never know.

The big interest for me in this down time has been wondering how it will affect my attitude. It has been running that has enabled me to be more positive than ever before in my life. I have a clear perspective these days on what is important and more importantly what isn’t important. So often the little things weigh us down.

Will I still be able to write my own story?

Before I started running I was a slave to my own sloth. I couldn’t do certain things because I was so unhealthy. I’d lost the grip on the pen and the story being told was not what I had ever really wanted. I started to wonder what might happen if this injury was debilitating and I wasn’t able to run. Would I go back to the ugly sloth days?

It didn’t take long for me to answer my own questions. Sadly there are stories all around us that make a sore foot look oh so trivial. Christchurch, QLD, Libya. There’s millions of people in these places that given the chance would love to re-write the last chapter.

Closer to home a husband, a father, a grandfather, a guy from the Bowls club and a passionate Collingwood supporter has been given 3 months to live. That’s just not fair.

I’ve got a sore foot and I had thoughts of this being a big negative turning point back to a lazy, unhealthy existence. That would be bloody ridiculous. I can still choose what goes into my story and have no choice other than making it the best it can be for as long as possible. We don’t all get to the write the last chapter the way we would like but while we are in control of the pen, make it a good read.