Dealing with injuries is all part and parcel of sport, and triathlon is no exception. I have been trying to manage a chronic Achilles tendonitis for 6 months now, which has really put the kibosh on my run training. 
In fact, looking at my Garmin data, since the last race of the season on September 15th up until yesterday morning, I have run 89.6 miles total! So, as a special birthday treat, I decided to race Goring 10k yesterday. It’s what any self respecting, just turning 48 year old would do, right? With a very sociable start time of 11am, and under glorious spring skies, I lined up at the start, ably supported by long suffering wife, child 1, child 2, and big hairy dog. Now I’m not pretending that I am not fit, cos I have been doing a fair bit of cycling, but I was very pleasantly surprised with a finish time of 41:56. And it’s not like I’m capable of a 36 or something silly like that, no, even when well prepared I would be happy to break 40. And this morning I don’t appear to be too broken either. So that’s all a bit weird really. I think we tend to pile lots of pressure onto ourselves when we are injured and can’t do what we want to do, what the book/coach tells us to do, or perhaps more significantly what we think we should do. I’m still not sure I have learnt my lesson, and will continue to fret about not being able to train consistently for the run, but I will take some encouragement from yesterday’s birthday treat, and feel a bit more positive about the start of my Ironman training schedule that starts in a month’s time. As it turns out, I should do less, more often!
