Does that look like a jogger’s shadow? Of course not: a seemingly quite serious gluteal injury (I had thought it was the right quadricep but that was referred pain) has largely benched me during all of September. The setback threw me off my entire Big Year, for the very good reason that I’d already concluded I couldn’t miss many days at all to hit my targets. Since then, confusion has reigned.
But the situation isn’t a dire as my stunned response indicated. A fortnight ago the physio set me some tough daily gluteal strengthening and balancing exercises, which seem to have paid off. I walked-plus-ran the trivial distance of 2 kms last Saturday and, on Thursday, did the same without stopping. Yesterday I was given the all clear by the physio to ramp up to 5 kms next week, and then, oh so carefully, back to 10 kms in the coming weeks. At last I can begin to reconfigure the Big Year. More on that tomorrow . . .