Getting there!

It's now 12 days since my Christmas fell race spectacular fall. Since then I have "enjoyed" aqua jogging, cross training, cycling, swimming and lots of prescribed exercises designed to increase mobility in my ankles and ice, lots of ice!

Seems to be working well though and today I enjoyed a brief 12 minute jog with no ankle pain just a little bit of stiffness.   I have accepted that this is not an injury to be rushed so I was quite happy to accept cutting short a run if there was pain but thankfully it seems to be healing well.   Tomorrow night I go back to the physio for a bit more treatment.   Last weeks session was a mixture of massage and ultrasound to reduce the swelling round the ankle joint.   Progress is being made and I dont think I will be too long before I am back up to speed.

Watching yesterdays televised cross country at Edinburgh was a real inspiration.     There were some awesome performances from local club New Marske Harriers with Ricky Stevenson and Andrew Wiles battling out over 3km.   Great to see them both taking a certain Bekele down!   A stunning performance by Mark Shaw to finish 3rd in the Junior Mens Race over 6km.  What a shame there was not more footage of the junior races as the report suggests Mark bravely took the race on for a while.   He is definitetely one to watch in the next few years!

Other noteable performances was Johnny Hay sensationally sprint finishing for 2nd in the 3km Invitational event but for me the performance of the day was Steph Twell.   Although probably not finishing as high as she would like her presence in the race was quite remarkable seeing as she fractured her ankle in February she has comeback with a vengence taking part in the recent European Championships and now in Edinburgh.  Whilst my recent injury is in no way comparable to mine as Twell broke her ankle in three places her interview before the races and the commentary really summed up her commitment and bravery in tackling the really tough period of rehab and also having the nerve to return to the country and compete at that level.   One of the things she talked about troubling her was the ankle mobility which I can totally understand.   Apparently as a result of the injury she now uses a hot water bottle to "warm" up her ankle joint before she runs.   A top tip I think that I will be taking on board in the next few months as I look towards returning to running again.

Steph Twell

Its probably a bit too early to talk about my next race but I wont be racing at all in January and almost certainly wont do a cross country until next season now.   I hope to salvage my marathon training programme in the next three to four weeks as I build up to Sunderland's Marathon of the North in May.

At this stage I will just be happy to get back to the normality of daily running with or without the hot water bottle strapped to my ankle!