Saturday - Sydney10 disaster

Up nice and early for the drive out to Homebush with Darren. Felt quite good - that residual soreness post massage had all but gone. Went for a solo warm-up about 30 minutes before the start, but just couldn’t get fully firing. Did a few short efforts and felt marginally better. Lined up at the front as we waited for the final two wheelchair athletes to cross the halfway mark (they started half an hour earlier). Not long after the gun went off and we were straight into it. I tried to go out solid but not too hard. I just couldn’t shake that lethargy I felt during the warm-up. The first kilometer wasn’t bad at all (3:07 I think), but it wasn’t long after this that I really started to slow down. I have no idea why, but I was just progressively getting slower and slower. The second kilometer was miserable, the third was worse, and the fourth was just downright embarrassing. I was getting passed left, front and center by absolutely everyone. I had no idea what was happening, so at the end of the first lap I decided to wave the white flag. A few walking steps into my retirement I noticed a sharp pain through the top of my left forefoot. I had noticed 5e same discomfort yesterday, but it went away after a few steps. Today it didn’t. Not overly concerned at first, I annoyingly walked back to grab my bag from the stadium before venturing to the car to get out there. This was when I became more concerned, as the pain wasn’t going away - and it was actually really hurting! The entire drive home I was palpating through the forefoot trying to convince myself it was my extensor tendons - not a metatarsal. As the day progressed, the latter became more apparent. It was a second metatarsal stress fracture in the end, putting me out for 6-8 weeks! This was devastating! I tried to be as optimistic as possible, but deep down I just had to accept it and move on. I had to find some form of training to maintain my aerobic base that I’d spent the past 6 months steadily building - but I had to make sure it was something that I would enjoy this time around (I still have nightmares back to my last injury two years earlier where I was replicating my running sessions on the rowing ergo). I’d only heard positive things about deep water running (positive in terms of training effect, not so much in terms of fun). So I found a generic program on the internet (Ptzinger’s 9 week program looked the goods), went out and bought a flotation device, and planned to officially start my deep water running venture on Monday. A change in scenery may be something to look forward to.