My planned 8 mile run with my wife and my daughter, on Sunday, did not go to plan. We all got up, had breakfast, got ready and set off as agreed. At 2.35 miles into the run, my calf decided to fail me and I had to walk back home. The ladies carried on to complete their runs but I felt disappointed.
I know I shouldn’t be running, as I am waiting for an operation to fuse my ankle, but I have booked on to do the Bournemouth half marathon on the 13th October and needed to do a run. It feels like my body is a wreck at the moment and I am not liking this feeling, at all.
My ankle has been damaged through football, military exercises and, unfortunately exacerbated by my age. On my walk home I was trying to make sense of everything and working out how I can still manage to do the half marathon, but in my head I knew I was being delusional.
So, plan ‘B’ is required. I will not do the run, I will have my operation and I will rehabilitate for the race next year. In the mean time, I will still go to the gym and I will dust off the bike and start cycling again. I need to keep active and feel fit but I also need to look after my body, so running is out until I am ‘fixed’.
We all have to make adjustments, as we get older or after sustaining an injury, in order to continue to do something we are passionate about. Sport and fitness is a part of my DNA / who I am and I want to be able to keep active. That will change over time and my ‘active’ will be someone else’s ‘cool down’ eventually!
My daughter is already running faster than I am, which great to see but annoying not to be able to keep up. Gone are the days when she was walking to recover and I was doing sprints between lamp posts to keep my heart rate high 🤨.
I want to embrace getting old but resist being old, if you know what I mean!
So now I am in my rehab phase, repairing my body to be able to go again. One of my friends, husband, has a lot of experience with doing this after a few serious accidents that nearly took his life. He has always bounced back and continued to do amazing things and I’ve often wondered how he kept so positive to keep getting back into shape and ‘back on the bike’. A lot of PMA, some tough days and loads of support from his loved ones, I’d imagine.
What do you do if you get de-railed by injury or a knock back at work? How do you set yourself up for success in the face of adversity?
I often use perspective, and by that I mean, I look for someone who has already experienced a worse situation than me and turned things around, so how did they do it?
If they can, then so can I….