Ouchy daisy! Thanks to injuries, my marathon running plans may have reached a sad and sudden end.
As announced in my previous post, I went for an 11M long run on Saturday. It was hard, it was hell, there were some very very long walking breaks, but I pushed through and did the full planned distance. Aside from the painful calluses on my feet and an aching back (lots of core work needed urgently!), I seemed to come out fine. I didn’t feel particularly sore on Sunday morning, so went out for a shorter, faster run – 4.3M at an average pace of 10:10min/M, dragged down by a walking break after a steep hill, so with a substantial part of the run at sub-10min/M. Afterwards, I felt great, aside from a little tightness in my left Achilles, which I figured would go away with stretching and a bit of rest.
Turns out I was wrong. Not only did the tightness not go away, but it became painful. The pain got worse despite my working from home on Monday, and therefore putting very little weight on that foot. The less than three-quarter mile walk to the train station on Tuesday morning ended in excruciating pain.
In addition, I noticed on Sunday as I was wriggling my toes that wriggling my big toe on my right foot really hurt around the first metatarsel, which was swollen and painful to the ouch. This pain also didn’t get better over the next couple of days, so I began to suspect a stress fracture.
This morning, I decided to go to the Minor Injuries clinic at the local hospital to get it checked out. After an Xray and a consultation with a lovely nurse, the good news is that the pain in the right foot is probably not a stress fracture. That’s the only bit of good news though. Instead, the pain is most likely caused by an unhappy tendon, which may take anything from a couple of days to a couple of weeks to heal. Even worse, the pain on my left ankle is almost definitely Achilles tendonitis.
And that’s probably the end of my London marathon endeavours for 2013 right there. The best case scenario for my injuries is a couple of weeks on very reduced training (no more than 3-4M in one session, no speed work, no hills). I’m already barely where I need to be in distance and endurance at this point in time. The additional loss from another couple of weeks of downtime would mean that I’d need to train even harder for the remaining 10 weeks, increasing the chance of further injury. This in turn might jeopardise my Olympic distance triathlon, which I need to start preparing straight after the marathon.
Of course, the beauty of a VLM ballot place is that I can defer my entry and automatically guarantee myself a place in the 2014 race. This would give me the time to recover properly, possibly try to still run one or both of my target race, the Cambridge and Reading half marathons and then fully focus on my Olympic tri.
Rationally, it should be a simple, straight forward choice. Defer my marathon entry, make the most of the things I know I can do, focus on my triathlon. Aim for an autumn half marathon to prime myself for winter training, then go into a 25-week training plan with no major training disruptions (remember December 2012, anyone?) in the best possible shape.
It all makes perfect sense. And yet, it feels like the hardest choice, harder even than my decision last year to abandon marathon training because I was bored. This year, I’m not bored. I’m enjoying the training, I’m looking forward to the event. Deferral feels like failure. I know it should be, I know I should put my health above everything. What to do?