The Road to Berlin, Delayed
Started but…
I started serious training for Berlin in June, 2023 with the best of intentions but in July there came a training run where I could not finish, the pain in my heel was just too great. I got 3 miles into a 12 mile run and had to stop and walk back to the start. I went home and on the next Monday I called a foot doctor I had run with to get a second opinion from the Orthopedic surgeon I had been seeing.
Cutting to the chase, I am not running in the Berlin Marathon on Sept 24th, 2023. Instead I will be having surgery that month. The surgery will be what’s called a Haglund Resection. Basically she will detach my Achilles tendon, cut off a big bump on the back of my Calcaneus heel bone, remove the big nasty bone spur now embedded in my Achilles then reattach the achilles and anchor it back in place. I will then take 4-6 months to recover.
Here’s the thing. 7 years ago I had the exact same surgery on my left achilles. And I was running after 4 months and ran a marathon within a year and had a 21 minute PR to boot! I am feeling positive about the chances of a similar outcome. Is it guaranteed? Nope. But I believe most of my recovery will be up to me, so I choose to look forward with the best case scenario firmly in sight.
What that means is that for the last month or so I haven’t been running. Instead I have been swimming, cycling, weight lifting, climbing, walking, etc. I am not keeping up my fitness to the marathon training level, mostly because my achilles hurts like hell all the time, but I am still getting workouts in and getting ready to rehab from the best possible position.