So this is well overdue, mainly because there have been a lot of kicks to my shins the past couple months and its hard to bring myself to report news when it isn’t the news you want to be reporting. A lot has been going on so I will keep it brief, well as brief as I can be.
End of May, the morning before flying up to Europe to kick of some racing and Challenge Roth preparation my ankle decided to flare up. I didn’t think much of it but I could barely walk on my foot once I arrive in Europe. Unfortunately with good preparation I had to pull out of the Challenge Championships in Samorin that weekend.
From there I went to my base in Girona, had an MRI and a PRP injection to speed up the healing process. Turned out I had some bone edema on my lateral calcaneus. I suspect this was brought on by a slight roll on my ankle which didn’t realign properly by itself. This was the perfect opportunity to work on my biking and what a great place to do, Girona Spain.
After 3.5 weeks of no running and a lot of aqua jogging I was back gradually progressing my running. 10 days out from Challenge Roth I had a good 30km run with no pain (not a bad progression in 5 days of running…) and my legs actually felt like they were coming to the party.
Unfortunately on race day things just didn’t fire and the frustrating thing is I can’t quite figure out why. From the offset I was on struggle street. I felt like I was going to have a heart attack at the start of the swim and for the life of me I couldn’t find my legs on the bike. This was the worst I had felt on the bike in the previous 6 weeks.
Well, I managed to hold it together and get through Challenge Roth with no ankle pain and a 5thplace. Outside of my performance it was everything I expected it to be, spectators to the next degree and an amazing experience. I definitely will be back to race to my potential.
Quick stop back in NZ to pick up the family but unfortunately I went and picked up pneumonia and a pretty bad virus from Cavallo. Darn child care. It forced me flat on my back for a couple weeks but I am finding my feet again now and getting rolling. Unfortunately after a lot of discussions with my coach and doctors we have decided to pull out of the ITU long distance world champs in Penticton and the Ironman 70.3 World Champs in Chattanooga and focus my energy on getting ready for the big showdown in Kona in October.
I am headed with the family to San Diego to get some warm weather and do my final preparation next week and will look at racing Ironman 70.3 Cozumel 3 weeks prior to the world champs as a tune up race. Time to rectify 2017!!!
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