Oops!

Ever since I was little I have had an unusually high pain tolerance. Whether it was ear infections as a baby, trip ups as a toddler, falling out of trees as a kid (yea that really happened :) Running until I drop as a teen, I have always been able to handle the pain or not even notice at all until it was really bad.

This proved to be a good thing when it came to racing and staying tough in training...only there is a flip side...sometimes (ok lets be honest..often times!) it leads to pushing through things I shouldn't. Not necessarily because i was just gritting through the pain all the time...sometimes I don't even notice. Take my stressy in my heel for example...it was brewing for a while and I never mentioned anything until it actually cracked and became unbearable. Well turns out I have done it again!

I never felt really anything odd leading up to Tongyeong..looking back I do remember saying to Kyle that the fact that my back is a little tight won't change the outcome of my race because we train with tight muscles all the time and still have killer workouts. Then I felt off in the race..hard to explain but just like a lack of power..lack of oomph..my body didn't want to do it the way it usually did. (looking back this makes sense because when there is trauma the body shuts down certain muscles groups..in my case, my gluts shut down which causes a 30% power loss in running!) Then all that day and the next day I found myself poking at my low back/pelvis. We used to call these my magic hands :) always poking at sore spots. After traveling home the pain was getting worse. I was having a hard time walking...I even cut a shopping trip short...I MUST have been in pain! haha I had all kinds of treatment to loosen my back/gluts and it was working. I was progressively feeling better and better. I thought no worries, a few days off and I'll be sweet! It wasn't until I tried to jog 30 mins and had intense pain from the first step. I thought it would warm up the ligaments as i went so i soldiered on trying not to cry with each step. It was all i could do to put one foot in front of the other. I came back and described this to Dr. Keeler (our team Doc) and he sent me in for some scans. Bone scan showed a hot spot so they sent me in for a CT and MRI which showed a fracture in the hemisacral region on my left side. Just beside my spine and above my SI joint. Dang! I was not expecting that! I was positive it was a strained Iliolumbar ligament...oops!

The GOOD news is that if I had to have a stressy this would be the one to get! It is not displaced..barely visable on the MRI..the radiologist said if he hadn't had the bone scan to show the hot spot he would had just scrolled through and said everything looked fine. There is not to much edema (inflammation) which is good and it is in the healing process! The other good thing is that unlike my heel...most of the shock is absorbed by the time it reaches the pelvis so healing time should be a whole lot quicker. Most of the case studies I read show a 6 week recovery period. I felt pain 4 weeks ago! Although we might have to count from my run about 10 days ago. I'm starting now with a week completely off and then will ease back into swimming and riding on the flats.

Luckily we still have heaps of time until Gold Coast. I will still go to Europe to race and train with my new coach but I will have to miss out of Washington and Des Moines..I'm just not meant to do Des Moines!!

It is not good news by any means after such a great start to the year but I put it into perspective...nothing can beat the timing of last years stressy! Even more than that I realize that there are much worse things that could happen and being frustrated doesn't help me get better any faster.

Yesterday a few of us stayed after swimming to take our buddy Sean Marlow for a swim. He was in horrific car crash 5 years ago on the way to the World Cup in Edmonton and he came as close as you can to death. He is severely brain damaged and has hardly any control over his body (although he is slowly improving all the time.) It is great to see him splash around in the water..he even can do backstroke with one of his arms! You can tell he is the same person on the inside which makes it tough for me to watch but also neat to see because he is the coolest guy you will ever meet. Hilarious and he still manages to make us laugh now even just with hand signals! This really put things into perspective for me..so I am missing a few races...I am still living a healthy, happy enriched life!

Chris and I have got a plan and will now start to work on progressing forward and taking the right steps to preventing future injuries through a well planned strength and rehab program that he already has ready to go! (That last couple sentences are straight out of Chris's mouth i think! haha)

SO! my spirits are in tact even if my bones aren't! :)