As the main triathlon season draws to a close it’s time to reflect on what ‘has been’ over the previous months. There’s one final race this weekend, a sprint triathlon to finish of my season.

As far as the season goes it’s been far from normal. I like to be in reasonable shape for the opening regional duathlon grand prix series, consisting of four races over a six week period. This years efforts were marred with an ankle injury during a 10k road race in March which meant that only two of the four races could be attended. Not too bad a result for both events considering training was halted for a short while.

May brought two triathlons. The first being a time trial based triathlon event with 45 minutes rest between each discipline.This meant I could really put the pedal down on the bike and have a slight rest before the run.

The second triathlon was a regional sprint race event. Coming off an encouraging performance at the previous triathlon I was even more raring to go. The swim went ok, even though a little off my usual pace, T1 spot on, then the nightmare occurred. Whist coasting up to the cycle dismount line my thoughts were obviously all about something else rather than the transition and for whatever reason one of my bike shoes got caught up in my pedals, eventually leaving me on the floor with my sparkling new Orbea lying on my chest.

My left hip took the full force of the fall, it felt as if a twenty stone rugby player had just taken me out. I hobbled in and out of T2 thinking I could ‘run it off’. The extent of the fall left me out of action for about eight weeks. Throughout the eight weeks I kept asking myself “what if I hadn’t continued with the run, would I have recovered any quicker?”. At least I could still swim throughout the time injured though.

In June I had a real reason to stop training. My wife gave birth to our baby boy mid June, and he’s already making progress with his swim technique in the bath. Enter junior athlete number two. I still managed to sneak in the odd swim session though!

I tentatively started back training late July, only two weeks later to be floored with a spell of apparent ‘patella tendenosis’. Talk about fed up, it’s a good job my family are a demanding bunch otherwise I’d have been taken away in a white coat.

I decided after spending so much cash on private treatment through my local sports physiotherapist that I’d try the National Health Service route of ‘treatment’. Little did I know how much time I’d waste trying to receive treatment this way. The Doctor I saw didn’t seem to want to help as it was a ‘sporting injury’ and I was really still ‘fit to work’. Anyway, to cut a very frustrating story short, I’m back paying for treatment with my local sports physiotherapist, but at least I’m back training and have been for the past three weeks!

Am I fit to race this weekend at full throttle?

Not really, however I’ll defiantly make it round. Who knows, I’ll probably enjoy it more with not having to bust my ass!

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