I’m literally counting down the days and hours until my cast comes off…
Friday, 7 June @ 10am
Needless to say I can already taste the freedom and smell the Veet that will be applied to get my leg silky smooth the moment I get back home.
18 days & 20 hours… probably a reasonable time to wait, hey?
My patience is wearing pretty thin and I’m thinking of cunning ways to escape from this prison without anybody finding out… Like the other day when my friend Natasha, who also happens to be a teacher at my kids’ school, told me that they use the same stuff my cast is made of for their paper maché projects.
I immediately started to make plans to send our housekeeper to get a few rolls of cotton wool and three bags of the cast bandage from the pharmacy, then cut off my existing cast, go for a swim and put a new cast back on. What Dr Narramore doesn’t know, surely won’t hurt him?
Sofie told me I was out of my mind when I told her my idea this morning. I guess I’ll just have to wait another 18 days and 20 hours.
Forward Planning
Meanwhile I’ve been scouring the web for possible races that could potentially mark my grand return to being a proud triathlon backmarker.
Knowing that my rehab starts on June (with Chris Allan at Velocity Sports Lab in Hout Bay) and working backwards from a prospective event through training to my rehab, I figured out that October is probably a good time to start racing again. By that time I should be able to run on solid ground again (I will start an aqua running programme in five weeks’ time) and my bike and swim fitness should be back on track as well.
Which means that my first official race after surgery and rehab will be… <drumroll>
First, it’s a manageable distance for me (800m sea swim, 28km MTB and 8km run), and it’s kinda cool to know that my first tri can be done on my mountain bike.
And second, it’s nice to have something to look forward to and work towards. Far enough in the future to put in some solid training but close enough to feel excited about it.
Nobody said it was easy…
The upside of the pain and misery of the past few weeks is that this time on the couch has given me time to reflect on my life’s twists and turns.
And no song better sums up the past two years – from life events to training to learning to swim to embracing multisport to taking my health and body for granted and suffering the consequences to general life learnings – better than this one…
The Scientist – Coldplay
Come up to meet you, tell you I’m sorry
You don’t know how lovely you are
I had to find you, tell you I need you
Tell you I set you apart
Tell me your secrets, and ask me your questions
Oh let’s go back to the start
Running in circles, coming up tails
Heads on a science apart
Nobody said it was easy
It’s such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be this hard
Oh, take me back to the start.
