I finished the last episode of this blog fretting about how I could do justice to the memory of an old friend, a fellow Masters sprinter, at his memorial track meeting, being held a few months after his death. Acute achilles tendon problems were severely limiting my ability to do any sprint training at all. No way was I going to withdraw, and I was also very much looking forward to meeting a whole load of athlete pals I’d not seen for the best part of three years.
Well, with pain-killers and strapping, I did get there. It was a glorious warm day, and the event was the great tribute event to Bob Lewis we all hoped it would be. And I won my 100 metres race.
There was a price to pay, of course. These days, it seems there always is. No way were my achilles tendons ready for flat out competitive racing, but they didn’t fail me. The winning was nice, but better still was the race commentator praising how stylishly I seemed to be running, with good knee-lift and relaxation. Thanks Donald. Although I finished the afternoon hobbling around like a proverbial old man, those comments were fresh in my mind as I began the long job of really trying to get my tendons right and achieving a good winter of training. And my winner’s prize of a big packet of chocolate cookies was nice, too.
That was at the end of August. Two days later, I was scheduled to begin a 12 week programme of intensive exercises and routines, which I knew others with chronic achilles trouble had successfully used. I’d assumed that I’d have to find a way to mix this with some kind of aerobic exercise. But I was wrong, at least for a month.
I’d got no more competition coming up, but somehow I’d overlooked the fact of ten days holiday away in Yorkshire coming up in a week’s time. Common sense began to take over. I’d take a planned training break, get properly stuck into the twice-daily remedial routines for my ankles, concentrate on eating and drinking well, and stay away from illness. How long the training break would be was a secret I even kept from myself. If the exercises delivered progress, there would come a point when it felt right to begin some kind of training again.
I won’t bore you with the detail of what my early morning and late afternoon exercises involved (actually, “involve”, because, at time of writing this, I still have more than two weeks of them still to do), but a key ingredient was perseverance. The stuff needed to be done twice a day, without fail, in order to reacclimatise my achilles tendons (and to a certain extent, my mind) to some intensive therapy. The “mind” bit was about maintaining a positive attitude that said “I can and will fit this pre-arranged tedium into my days, no matter how otherwise busy I think I need to be”, and “I will remain positive at all times that this is going to work for me”. It was, in fact quite easy to establish the routines, but it all brought home to me how three years of injury and illness had delivered me to the point of chucking it all in and retiring from the track.
My situation wasn’t helped by already learning that I had/have two different kinds of achilles trouble, and that exercises that assuage one kind are not nearly so effective for the other (and vice versa). I just had to grit my teeth and accept that I’d actually be doing two programmes of exercise, side by side, for the 12 weeks. Overall, progress would come slowly and in very small increments, with the possibility that the 12 weeks might need extending a little.
The holiday came and went, without too much walking up hill and down dale, and I got really well-rested. We had a lovely little apartment in Grassington, and it was good to revisit places like Malham, that I’d not been to for donkey’s years.
Three weeks after returning came the point where my achilles exercises needed to move up a notch, by being carried out with the added burden of a 12kg weighted rucksack on my back. I was surprised that my legs seemed to thrive on this addition. I’m not tempting fate by starting running again yet, but the opportunity has also arisen to do a regular, very brisk 5k walk every Saturday morning, in a new role at our local Parkrun, known as a “Parkwalker”. Basically, it’s part of an initiative to encourage more walkers to take part in parkruns, and the job is a mix of mobile cheer-leader and back-marker. So far, it seems to be suiting me, and suiting my achilles tendons, very nicely.
Starting that marked the end of what had become a month off. Illness aside, I don’t recall having had an extended break from exercise like it for at least ten years. I expected I’d need a bit of time to play catch-up in terms of basic fitness, and was surprised that I didn’t need as much as I’d thought to achieve it. A couple of Wattbike sessions, and the stats from my Garmin were quickly back up to what they were a month previously. I was also much more relaxed generally. Maybe it’s the inevitability of age catching up with me a bit, but I have to admit that the rest really did me good.
So, this is how it is for me, in mid October 2022. Thanks for following this blog.
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