Injury Time

My fears have been confirmed and I am down, injured.

I went to the hospital on Wednesday afternoon, to the Accident and Emergency department while it was quiet at work (yes, I got permission from my manager!). Surprisingly I only had to wait for about half an hour to be seen. Say what you like about the NHS. It’s a mess but the staff, doctors, nurses, porters, et cetera, do a creditable job under extremely difficult circumstances.

I was called in by the doctor. I had rather a lot of difficulty trying to understand what he was saying. He had a very strong accent. I am not sure what accent he spoke in. It was probably Eastern European but for all I know, it could have been South African. You know, I can’t even tell a Scots accent from an Irish one.

To cut a long story short, the doctor told me that I had tendonitis. Or tendinitis. I’ve seen both spellings. I’m not sure which is correct. It refers to the tendon, so surely tendonitis should be the spelling to employ. The doctor said that I should rest my foot, carry on walking as normal, and it should be healed in a week or two. Or at least, that is what I think I heard him say.

As things stand, I can feel my foot slowly getting better, in that it’s nowhere near as painful to walk and I’m no longer walking ‘funny.’ I hope the recovery is a speedy one, but I will have to take care not to jump back into the running too soon, otherwise I risk aggravating the situation. My cousin made the valid point that perhaps the injury has come at the right time: with a month to go until the marathon, I should be winding down the training. You are supposed to cut down on your training a few weeks before the marathon, and as I have already done the bulk of my training, my situation is perhaps not too dire.

The whole thing has shaken me and affected my confidence a little. It has made me realise that I am not apparently indestructible after all and that I have to watch myself a bit more. I’ve subsequently had to pull out of the Brentwood half-marathon that I was planning to run, which is disappointing (that’s twenty quid I’ll never get back!) but I’m hopeful and positive that all will be well come the marathon itself in a month’s time. I’ve trained too hard for too long to see it all come to nothing. I will run that marathon and cross the finish line, come hell or (more relevantly, given recent circumstances in the Far East) high water.