Play The Cards You're Dealt.

57 Days to go...........

It was a big day today (Friday 18/3). After having had my foot x-rayed last week with nothing showing up I needed to move on to the bone scan which is the next level of peek-a-boo. For this procedure they inject a radioactive dye into you then scan the affected area four hours later to see if there’s any activity. Activity is bad on these occasions.

As it turns out there was some activity found in my left foot today.

The doctor at Monash then took some further x-rays with the dye still in my foot and I left there with enough good shots to make any papparazzo happy. Next step was to ring my GP and book in to get the full report of what the activity actually meant for me. Luckily there was a spare time in the arvo and I was off to hear my results. Hanging on the outcome was two and a half years of running that had all been leading towards the toughest event I will ever attempt, The North Face 100 which is just 57 days away.

Drum roll please......................You have a stress fracture,

“so obviously that means you won’t be able to do your event”

I should have been shattered but in my head I was just so sure that the statement just given was not quite correct. Right now I am still going to do the event, it’s just that I am going to do it differently to how I first planned. I think my GP could tell I wasn’t taking this as being the end of the line for me. She started explaining why it wouldn’t be possible without any training as the injury needs 8 weeks to recover. With 57 days to go, 8 weeks means I’ll be healed with one day to spare. That’s gotta be a sign. But really it’s not ideal so I am going to have to find other ways to keep some sort  of fitness up while staying off my foot.

The real clincher for me though was when she said that if I did run on it in a few weeks time I wouldn’t do any further damage, it would just be painful is all. At that point it was almost like I’d won the event. I knew for sure I would be on the start line ready to endure whatever the event can throw at me. It was going to be painful anyway, right.

So from here there’s a few things to sort out.

1)      Go see a sports medicine doc asap

2)      Probably be in a moon boot for 2-4 weeks approx.

3)      Hire an exercise bike and get on it.

4)      Swim

5)      Revise event strategy down from a race to an adventure.

6)      Leave enough Panadeine Forte in the cupboard for a couple of hits on May 14.

People started saying to my face along time ago that they thought I was mad. They would then follow up with several big questions that all started with, WHY?

In 57 days time there is a virtual guarantee that I will be asking the same questions of myself mid-‘adventure’. I hope my answer is still simply, that I love it.