やりたくなかったアップデート

やりたくなかったアップデート

This isn’t ideal. I have a fracture on at 
the time of filming. The Chicago Marathon is in 9 days time and I will not be on the 
start line. And for anyone that’s new here, I’m a professional marathon runner and I’ve been 
training for the Chicago Marathon for the last 12 weeks. And I’m probably not going to be running 
for about 12 weeks. And it’s also really windy. And I think if I stay out here, the audio is 
not going to be very good. So now I need to get inside. That’s going to be fun. [Music] I 
was using this to prop the camera up. And I can only carry one thing on my crotch at a time. 
So I’ll come back for the camera. [Applause] [Music] All right, we’re back in business. Where should I 
start? Let’s start at the beginning. This training block got off to a bit of a rocky start. I got 
Covid when we flew out here. And then a few days after recovering, got back into training for a 
week, a week and a bit. And then I took a really nasty tumble on a trail, which you may have seen. 
I shared an update video after that cuz I couldn’t run for a few days. It was pretty worrying. I 
hit the ground pretty hard when I fell on those rocks. Important to note, we’ll be coming back to 
that later. Took a while to find my feet again. My knee hurt a little bit for a couple of weeks, 
but I saw a physio and it was confirmed that I kind of had a bit of a bruise on the bone, 
but nothing structurally damaged. It should heal on its own. Should ease off, which it did 
after about 2 weeks. Didn’t have any bother from my knee. Raised a pretty underage performance at 
the Falmouth Road race. Probably still struggling a little bit from coming back from COVID and the 
interruption from the fall. We put it behind us. I then had probably the most solid six, seven 
weeks of marathon training that I have ever been able to put together. Nothing hurt. I pretty 
much didn’t have a bad day. Every workout, every session was kind of B minus, B+ or better. It was 
either average or really good. The consistency, the recovery I was getting in, how good I felt, 
the volume, the best I’ve ever done. 6 and 1/2 weeks of 100 to 122 miles and I was in really good 
shape going into the taper. And then last week in week one of the taper on Wednesday completely out 
of the blue in the last 3 miles of my run my knee started hurting a little bit which was really 
odd because I haven’t had a peep out of my knee in weeks. Same knee that I fell on. Later on that 
day, I was doing some exercises in the gym that I do every time I go to the gym on a Wednesday and 
a Saturday throughout this block. I’m down on one knee and I’m doing wood chops. Normally no issues 
at all. One of my favorite exercises. Kneeling on my right knee. It was painful. Kind of felt like 
a bit of a bruise. Nothing major. One to two out of 10 of pain, but it was there. And to be honest, 
I just thought, we’re in the taper. one of those phantom pains has come up or something’s come 
up that’s going to go away as quickly as it’s surfaced because in my experience that’s what’s 
happened in the taper. The next day I had my last uphill tempo. If you’ve seen the last video that 
I put up I spoke about having three workouts in a week. So this week was one of those weeks. I 
had double threshold on the Tuesday uphill tempo on the Thursday and then on the Friday I was due 
to have two to three mile reps. Thursday I do my warm up. I can still feel this knee pain. It’s a 
1 to two out of 10 of pain. That tells me if I can do drills and strides and this doesn’t hurt and 
it’s not feeling bad, I’m fine. It felt good after warming up. So, I did the uphill tempo. No pain 
at all. Probably because I was running uphill. We drive down the hill and I start my cool down. Ah, 
my knee hurts. It’s more of a 5 to 6 out of 10 of pain and it’s getting worse. I am compensating 
and trying to not bend my leg as much. when I’m towing off. We need to stop this cool 
down. I stopped the cool down slightly early and I got on the phone to my physio from back home. 
I spoke to Chris and said, you know, this isn’t something I’ve experienced before. The pain is 
similar to what I experienced when I had the fall, but the pattern of the pain is different. When the 
knee was sore for a couple of weeks after the fall on and off, as I warmed up and as I got into the 
session, it would get better. I wouldn’t feel it in the cool down. I would feel it again maybe 
later on in the day, but warming up the joint and getting things moving would would help it. 
This was the opposite. He did a few little tests, asked me to move in certain ways, and by the end 
of the call said, “I’m pretty confident that this is patellofhemeral pain you’re experiencing.” 
That’s kind of a fancy word for runner’s knee and pain in the knee joint. I’ve never had knee 
problems before. And so googling runner’s knee and seeing kind of exercises and extended rest 
periods for people that have a chronic knee problem. I’ve never had an issue with my knee. 
So it was a little bit a little bit strange to hear that that’s what it potentially could be. The 
advice was to rest and offload it for a couple of days until the inflammation’s gone down. take some 
anti-inflammatories, ice it, foam roll my quads, get some massage done to make sure that anything 
that’s around the patellofhemeral region isn’t kind of contributing to the pain in the joint. 
But my physio wasn’t worried. This should respond pretty well to treatment. It will settle down. 
Just let that inflammation go down and we’ll be good. So, I didn’t double on Thursday. Didn’t 
do my workout on Friday. Didn’t run on Saturday. Didn’t long run Sunday. I rested, iced, took 
anti-inflammatories, foam rolled, got massage, got treatment, just did everything I could basically. 
At the end of Thursday, my knee was pretty swollen and I wasn’t able to walk properly. So, panic 
stations had started. However, by Sunday, I was completely painfree walking. I couldn’t feel it 
going up and down the stairs. So, I was able to go on the elliptical. That was painfree. Great sign. 
On Monday, I was able to see a physio in town and to get an assessment on it, and he corroborated 
what my physio had said from back home. It’s giving classic patellofhemeral joint inflammation, 
but it doesn’t look inflamed right now. You’ve let it settle down. You’ve rested. You’ve done all 
the right things. It’s moving pretty well and it’s not painful. I think you have the green light 
to try a run. And I had wanted to run all weekend, right? But Chris had told me that any inflammation 
in there, any fluid that gets in the joint, it’s going to be pissed off. If in doubt, leave 
it for an extra day before you run on it. So, getting the green light to run on Monday was 
great. The advice was to go on the treadmill for 15 minutes at 3% incline to help offload the 
knee. And that was painfree. So, I thought, great, we’re probably out of the woods here. I’ll do 30 
minutes tomorrow, 45 the next day, an hour after that, I’ll be back into workouts. This little 
flare up can settle down. But unfortunately on Tuesday when I tried to run for 20 minutes, I only 
got 10 minutes painfree before it started hurting. My calf tightened up in that second 10 minutes. 
And I thought that might have been because I’ve been on the elliptical for a couple of days back 
to back and maybe I wasn’t kind of holding myself very well on the elliptical and I just put a lot 
of pressure on my calves. Maybe that had triggered it. Foam rolled my calves. Didn’t go on the 
elliptical on Tuesday. Went to run on Wednesday and the first mile was bliss. completely painfree. 
I taped my knee up. Thought that was helping. I actually started to relax and had a smile on my 
face and thought, “This is it. We’ve got through it. Chicago is going to be a go. Feels really 
good. I feel smoother than I did yesterday.” But unfortunately, after about 10 minutes, the 
pain started to come in again. And it got worse pretty quickly to the point at which I wasn’t 
running normally. By the time I got to 20 minutes and had to be honest with myself that I couldn’t 
run. When I told Chris, my physio from back home, he said, “Let’s get an MRI because it’s weird 
that it’s not responding to manual treatment. It’s not responding to you loosening everything 
off, and it’s not behaving in the same way that we would expect it to if it was just patellofhemeral 
joint irritation. So, I was able to book in for a same day MRI. The physio from here expedited it 
for me so we could get the results the next day. And I got those results yesterday. I’ve never 
had an MRI before, so it was a new experience for me. As was logging onto the portal to see my 
results before they’d been sent to my physician, um, which allowed me to read through the report 
and to know instantly that it’s not good news. I sent the report to Chris and asked him to call 
me to just give it to me straight and explain what we’re dealing with here. I’ll read you the 
summary of the impression. Minor nondisplaced subchondral fracture peripheral medial femoral 
condyle with associated reactive marrow edema.. What that means is I have a fracture on the end 
of my femur and borderline patella alta with mild edema/impingement superolateral Hoffa’s fat pad, 
and overlying minor sprain and edema along the anterior aspect of the lateral retinaculum with 
minor grade 2 patellar chondrosis which can be associated with patellar maltracking.. That part 
basically means there’s some fluid, some wearing in the patellofhemereal joint, some inflammation 
in the fat pad of the patellophemeral joint. All of which would typically respond pretty well to 
manual therapy. So that side of things is along the lines of what we’re expecting. We weren’t 
expecting to find a fracture and we think that the swelling and the pain is because of the bone 
injury and probably all the patellofhemeral stuff is a reaction to the fracture. I am waiting to 
speak to the sports doctor in the UK to find out exactly what the next steps and the recovery look 
like. I did ask my physio for his advice on this and he kind of wanted to refrain from commenting 
because if it were a stress fracture in my tibia or my femur or just a typical overuse stress 
fracture injury from overtraining, under fuelling, just being unlucky, it’s pretty textbook that 
you can just follow the number of weeks it says to offload it. That should be enough time for it 
to heal. You pair that with pain management and manual therapy and you should be good to go. This 
is categorized as a high-risk fracture because of the location of it. It is in a major weightbearing 
location. So anytime that I stand, walk, run, jump, use my right leg for any weightbearing 
activities, there is load going through that location. Hence the crutches which I have been 
advised to start using immediately and completely offload weight bearing on that leg. It’s a pretty 
unusual place to have a fracture. And the reason we think it’s there is because of the fall that 
I took eight weeks ago. I hit the inside of my kneecap pretty much exactly where the fracture 
is, like right inside the knee there. What we think has happened is I’ve had the bone bruise and 
it’s been a little worse than we expected. It’s softened. the surrounding structures have reacted 
and really my body has been incredibly strong to support the injury site to be pain-free for 6 and 
1/2 weeks of really legit marathon training with no pain after this settled down. And it was okay. 
And it was okay. And it was okay. And I probably without knowing kind of adapted how I was running 
to take stress off of it and put stress on other areas. and it was okay until it wasn’t okay and 
that’s what happened when it started hurting last week. So yeah, no walking, definitely no running, 
complete rest and I don’t know how long that’s going to be for. On the one hand, I have the kind 
of upset and frustration that I don’t get to do this race that I work my little socks off for and 
I believe I was in really good shape to perform well at and to post a really strong performance. I 
was excited to do that. I’ve been really enjoying the training. I already just miss getting out 
the door and putting the work in towards that goal. On the other hand, I have the unknown and 
the uncertainty of how long this disappointment is going to impact my life. Running is not only my 
job as a prorunner, but as you guys know, creating content about running and coaching runners are 
the other sides to my job which are going to be impacted by this and impacted by how this impacts 
my mental state, which is a whole other thing. I don’t even know what that looks like because I’ve 
never taken 12 weeks off of running before. So, I’m very grateful that my body has been strong 
enough and that I’ve put the work in that has meant I haven’t had any of those breakdown 
injuries that have sidelined me for this long. But I’m quite scared as to yeah what the next 
few months hold because outside of performance and outside of wanting to be fit and fast and my 
goals to run this race and that moved me forward and to get to the Olympics, I I just love running. 
And that is such a simple statement, but it’s so layered and it’s it’s such a big part of my life. 
I’ve realised in the last few days how much I take for granted the fact that I can just get up, walk 
downstairs, have my breakfast and then within an hour I’m warming up and getting out the door to 
run. It puts me in a great mood, makes me a better person. It helps regulate my ADHD. Is a huge part 
of my identity and it’s going to be a process to face that head on for the next few weeks and 
months and sit in the unknown. So, I really don’t know what the content is going to look like. We 
are going to figure that out. But you best believe I’m going to share with you the journey. I feel 
like a lot of athletes when they are faced with a serious injury decide to go offline and deal with 
it in private. And that is so fair enough. That is exactly what I want to do right now in the sense 
of I just want to hide away and for this to go away and to not see anyone until this is fine. But 
on the other side of that coin, I know that we all get injured at some point if we’re runners. We all 
face challenges and unexpected bumps in the road, whatever we’re striving towards. And if I can 
share the honest, stripped back reality of that, celebrating the small wins, but also showing you 
the days that it feels like two steps forwards and one step back as well. That might help someone. 
And I don’t want anyone to feel like it’s plain sailing and easy riding for us pros and we 
don’t go through the [ __ ] as well cuz we do. Selfishly, I want to look back on this myself and 
it’s going to be a different way of learning how strong and how tough I can be. So stick around if 
you want to see that. If you would like to support me in this recovery arc, I will be sharing weekly 
updates on Patreon as always to share my progress and those will be a little bit more detailed, a 
little bit more stripped back. And the minute I can do some movement, whether it’s swimming, oh, I 
hate swimming so much, cycling, any form of cross trainining, getting jacked, doing pull-ups, you’ll 
be the first to see it. It might not be pretty. It might not always be ugly, but I’m sure it’s 
going to be a spectrum of everything in between. I’m sorry that this isn’t the update that I wanted 
it to be and we’re going to have to wait a little bit longer to prove the fitness that I built 
in this block. I’m going to have to lose it all and then build it all back up again. But I’ll 
do it. Thanks for watching and like I always say, love the grind. I should write that on 
my crutches. Someone get me a Sharpie.

Today I was meant to be posting my last video before Chicago Marathon preparations began, sadly that isn’t the case.

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