Round and Round in Circles
I'm still injured, it doesn't feel like it's getting any better, but it's not the end of the world.
“Nobody likes having salt rubbed into their wounds, even if it is the salt of the earth.”
Rebecca West
Where to Next?
It feels like forever since I ran and felt comfortable. Today I went to go for a run, for perspective I haven’t run for 16 days, and we’re consistently told that rest is our best friend, but for me it’s driving me crazy.
I didn’t make it two steps today before straight away I get a shooting pain in both my adductors, it’s hard to know whether to push on, because my diagnosis is that the pain in my adductors is being caused by an impingement in my back.
So, is it wise to try and get something in or not? My opinion based on the physical feedback I’ve received from my body is no, but at the same time I feel like the pain in my adductors has virtually disappeared when I’m at rest, but is now beyond excruciating when I decide I want to run.
Quite honestly makes me think that I’m going to take a long time to get past this, and that any ambitions I have of running any more races this year are slowly fading as the days go past.
Which is frustrating, but there is no point going into something half baked and completely destroying myself and then that’s that. But, on the flip side it’s hard to know whether this is something that will resolve quite quickly, anyway it’s doing my head in, I can’t get the same endorphin kick from other things and the longer this goes on the more I feel like it’s going to be harder to get back, cause each time I have a set back I lose a bit more confidence in my bodies’ ability to get things done.
Seven Marathons in Seven Days
My friend Jess Peil did the incredible last week by running seven marathons in seven days for the fifth time. Quite frankly incredible, I had ambitions of doing it this year, but with the significance of the charity and things not lining up and whether or not I would’ve been running for the right reasons I decided not to go ahead.
There is something special about watching people achieve incredible things. It gives me hope that one day I’ll be back doing something not quite as incredible, but just as fulfilling. What a day on Saturday.
Growing My Knowledge Base
If or when I ever get back I’m going to have a lot more knowledge of how I want to fuel my races, and techniques to get me through these runs.
On Sunday morning I woke at 3am, I had volunteered myself to help crew Allicia Heron at the 24-hour track invitational at the AIS. This format really intrigues me from a data sport nerd background, not that I’ve ever used any of my data nerd stuff for anything except launching off silly stats about sport to people.
I asked if I could bring anything on my way in and the call went out to get some McDonald Hash Browns. As I drove up to the window the man said that they hadn’t turned on the Hash Browns deep fryer as yet, and I told him along with some choice
words the woman I was crewing for is close to 20 hours deep and that I had no choice but to arrive with hash browns.
A few moments later I was leaving with the sweet smell of deep fried potatoey goodness in the passenger seat of my car. I’d woken that morning to find that Allicia was a couple of kilometres behind Sharene Blake, a superb runner from Western Australia who had been relentless throughout the entire 20 hours.
But that’s the beauty of the 24-hour race is that you have to be able to maximise your kilometres across the whole 24 hours, so while the gap was there of about 10 laps, based on what the two of them were putting out in terms of lap times, I had the feeling if Lauren (crew chief), Michael and myself could keep Allicia out there, she’d not only have the opportunity to win the race and take home an ‘A’ seeding for the Australian team, but also have the chance to go further than many Australian women before her.
This for the record was my first time crewing, and wow the team was organised, there was lap splits compared to previous races at the same distances, a multitude of baked goods and food options for Allicia, as well as a number of remedies you could think under the sun (or fog). The conditions were freezing, and a number of the athletes were suffering.
Lou Clifton a trail running marvel was also in the race and she was hanging around Allicia’s distance for a while, but the hash brown, along with some true mental grit saw Allicia put down a distance that by Australian women has only been bettered by two women (one of them twice), but she managed 225.428km! That’s the fourth largest total by an Australian woman ever.
To boot both Sharene and Lou made qualifiers for the Australian team, which tells you how tough this race was. For myself four hours in crew felt so much faster than the four hours I’d spent on the track earlier this year, but it was a great experience to sit and learn and take it what truly makes these athletes great.
I could share the story about Allicia taking some pain relief, but for those that struggle to swallow tablets, they’ll know exactly where I’m coming from. If she ever learns to swallow a tablet, look out 230!
All in all it was an incredible opportunity and one I’m thankful for, I would highly recommend crewing to anyone that doesn’t have the potential to race. It’s been good in some ways, as frustrated as I am with my injury which seems so insignificant, I’m able to learn and make the most of it in other ways.
Luna Keeping Me on my Toes
Our new addition has settled in so well. She loves biting everything at the moment, so helping her pick and choose what to bite has been critical. I’ve never owned a dog that’s learnt to use a doggie door before 10 weeks, and she’s also learning to sit and drop.
Tomorrow she goes in for her next round of vaccinations and I can’t wait to take her out on the trails after the third round in a few weeks.
Certified Beast
One honour I did have recently was being able to speak with Sam Harvey, he was the assist at Dead Cow Gully with 101 loops, but then backed it up 9 days later with 43 loops for the win at Krayzie in New Zealand.
He’s an incredibly confident person which I love, and he is obviously walking the walk at the moment. Wrap your ears around this one as he shares some of his cracking secrets, and also keep an eye out for my chat with a young woman from Perth, who is hoping to run from Karratha to Perth next month, a 1,600km journey, to raise money for two mental health charities.
Sam Harvey on Apple
Sam Harvey on Spotify
I do want to stress that everything is alright, I just feel a bit frustrated with the way this year running wise is going, but we got plenty of time one day to make up for it!