This season I had to learn humility. It all started with an injury that I had first felt at a race in October of last year. I had persistently ignored the pain in my foot during harder efforts but in January I finally did go to see a doctor. After X-rays, ultrasounds and an MRI the diagnosis was ‘stress-fracture’. Actually it was ‘fracture de fatigue’ because it was made when I was still in France.
The doctor prescribed 6-8 weeks without running. I might even be able to run the Vienna City Marathon if I am very cautious for those 6-8 weeks. I did not see any of my ironman plans in danger, a 70.3 in May and a full ironman in July. I focused on my cycling and swimming and got myself some cissus extract capsules. Cissus I had heard is a great plant for bone health.
Five weeks later I am out on a ride in the hills when it starts to rain. The roads are wet but I make it down the steep descent. Just when I feel the worst is over I slip on a wet stone surface and land on the back of my head. My helmet gets cracked but I recover within half an hour and can finish my ride. For a second there I had felt that my plans for the season were foiled.
Four days after the fall my new helmet arrives. The latest POC Octal with all the safety features one can imagine. I want to make sure that my head is safe and my triathlon goals won’t be impeded by another slip. Good thinking because the first real world test of my helmet happened after 5km. A car came out of a driveway. The driver just did not see me coming. I was going about 35km/h and was barely able to break before my shoulder hit the driver’s side window of the car. An ambulance ride and another set of x-rays later at least I knew that nothing was broken. The serious contusion of my shoulder and rib cage made it impossible for me to swim, bike or run—or get dressed without help. That meant a total training stop for several weeks and it would take more than a month until I could swim again. Somehow my bike had survived with damages taken by outer chainring and handlebar.
Was my season done at that point? Yes pretty much, but I was in deep denial. I still thought I might at least make it to the start line. So I started to run as soon as the pain from the accident allowed me to get out of bed again. Every step made me pull faces and sometimes groan with pain but at least I was back on the track.
But soon I felt that something was still wrong with my foot. And another MRI delivered the final blow to my season before it had even started. It found that there were still significant bone marrow edemas in several of the metatarsal bones in my right foot. The doctor suggested another 6 to 8 weeks without running.
This was really devastating for me. I had to come to terms with the fact that all the work that I had done throughout the winter would not come to fruition any time soon and that I would not even make it to the start line of the race that I had been looking forward to for a year. For quite a while I was frustrated, sad and even angry. To my surprise none of that made the situation go away. So I started training for the next year.
I waited patiently for another 8 weeks. Again focusing on cycling and swimming, but also physiotherapy for my injuries from the accident as well as my foot. After 7 weeks I started to carefully run again.
And everything might have been ok then if faith did not have more to dish out still. On my third run my dog decided to bite my left leg. He is not to blame though. He got startled when I pulled him off of his favorite compost and must have been in a lot of pain from his bad hip so he suddenly snapped in all directions and caught my leg between his teeth. The result were stitches in three places and another two weeks without any training.
This time it did not even bother me any more. I have had become used to much worse. Two weeks later I started running for the third time this year and it felt ok(-ish) for the first couple runs. Then my right foot—the formerly broken one—started to send mild signals of distress once again. Not wanting to risk anything I got right back into an MRI-machine. Expecting the worst I was pleasantly surprised this time for a change. It turned out that this time it was false alarm. There were still minor residues of the edemas the radiologist told me, but nothing that would stand in the way of slowly starting to run again.
So with the first piece of positive news I am now happily starting the build up for my replacement goal this year, the Ironman 70.3 in Croatia in September. A little less than two months to go and if everything goes well I should be able to still actually make it to a start line this year. And I am really excited about that!
Matthias TRIs 