Long road to ruin or long road to redemption?

It’s time to return to blogging, something, that until I started typing, I didn’t realise I had missed. There is a time and place for all things in our life journey and it seems I have arrived at the time and place of injury and illness – or as you might call it, middle age.

I’ve now been sat unhappily at the injury and illness stop now for more than 18 months and don’t seem any further on than I was when I arrived here.

To continue a bus related metaphor, when I alighted the Covid coach and paid for my ticket to chest infection central I thought, ‘alright, let’s get this done with and then back to training’ but turns out I’d bought a return ticket and so got a double trip to both illnesses. I’m not complaining, I had it relatively easy compared to most, but my activity level nose dived and so I thought post Christmas 2022 I’ll buy a ticket to starting again on the January fitness kickstart bus.

The year started well, I picked up some new sports to try, skateboarding, landpaddling, SUP foiling, wing foiling, snowboarding and mountain boarding amongst others – there’s nothing like a mid life crisis to test yourself! I mention these sports because they are central to my return to the injury bus stop. That return was engineered during a very early lesson on a dry ski slope and a mere three weeks in to my journey to fitness and I flipped my snowboard and nearly ripped my ankle in two. Holy buggery – it was the most painful thing I’ve ever done – and I’ve had some painful things happen to me including being stabbed.

I told myself that a few weeks rest would fix it but I didn’t quite return to the bus stop, instead of resting, slowed down a bit, eased off and in that time managed to squeeze in 3 short distance races (Callandar 10km, Gartmorn 6, Bad Ass Trail) and therefore, I arrived back at the start of the bus stop feeling pretty smug. My smugness however was very short lived for when I ran to a jogging session I was met with excruciating pain and had to stop running instantly because sometimes you just know and I definitely knew this was bad.

Despite my dismay I told myself that this was simply an opportunity to test other routes to fitness and activity and so after several weeks of no running I headed off to my local hilly park with my mountain board and crucially, no helmet…

Yeah you know where this is going…

I had a lovely couple of hours on Easter Sunday battering down gentle grassy slopes and thinking to myself, ‘this seems pretty easy’ and so disappeared off to a steeper, slicker, grassy slope. I launched myself down the slope – with no thoughts for the safety of my head, until I realised I was out of control. It was at this point that I had a choice to make, option one – let the head take the landing, option two – lean into it and let my shoulder take the landing.

Well six months later, dozens of physiotherapy sessions and an MRI and I can still barely move my shoulder. It’s not a decision I regret but if I could have my time over I might have done something different like not go down the stupidly steep hill.

All of this means that my journey to wellness, my journey to fitness and my journey back to ultra running is as far away today as it was when this all started, more than 18 months ago.

I suppose the difference now, compared to the start of my lay off, is that I’m left wondering if I’ll ever manage to return to, in particular, ultra marathon running. It’s scary to think you might not be able to do the thing you love and as I put my medals into a box last week – out of sight – I had a sadness in my stomach that maybe I’ll never add to my haul of 60 Ultras, 25 marathons and nearly 200 other races of varying distances.

I suppose before I can get to those thoughts though I wonder if I’ll ever be able to exercise again? The combination of a shoulder injury injury on my right and an ankle/foot injury on my left means that basically all forms of exercise are off the table – kayaking, skateboarding, swimming, paddle boarding, land paddling, power kiting, etc aren’t achievable because my shoulder can’t handle it and running, hiking, walking, cycling, etc are off the table my ankle can’t handle it. I did quite a lot of snowboarding this year because oddly the boots support the ankle and I just try not to fall too hard and I’ve continued to canyon because there were significant events attached to that although the shoulder injury is now so painful that even canyoning might have to wait until it’s healed.

The end result of a lack of activity, besides not being very fit is that it leaves your head all over the place and this combined with having started a new job that I despise isn’t a healthy place to be. So what do you do? Well I’ve resolved to get my injuries fixed so that I don’t have to send emails to race directors anymore saying, ‘sorry signed up for your race but I’m ruined so please have fun without me’, get fit once the injuries are healed and then get a new job.

I’ve been riding the ultra marathon and adventure bus for more than a decade now and if I’ve got to sit at the inury bus stop for a while longer I will. However, as soon as I’m ready, and I see that adventure bus, I’m flagging it down and buying a one way ticket to joyous oblivion.

Road to redemption (and maybe a bit or ruin) please!