Hi there,
It’s been a week of highs and lows in my battle to recover from injury and win my fitness race for Beijing. Actually, it has been more a case of mediums and troughs because being injured so close to the Olympic Games is not what I had in mind.
It seems as if one minute I’m okay and quite positive and the next I can get quite down.
At least since my last blog the crutches have gone and I’m walking but really I’m just taking everything day by day.
For the first four or five days all I could do was ice the injury but on Sunday Mark Young, the UK Athletics physio, started the process of treating the injury. The treatment is not too demanding at the moment because the calf is still trying to recover but I know the more painful treatment will come in the next few days.
UK Athletics have also put my on a diet of multi-vitamins in an effort to recover from the injury. Fortunately, I’m on quite a good diet anyway, although one thing they have said I should drink is two pints of milk a day. Now, I don’t mind some milk on my cereal but I’m not too fond of the stuff, although I’m obviously prepared to do anything I can to make Beijing.
I’m also undergoing daily treatment in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber at the London Diving Chamber at St John’s Wood. I’m breathing in pure oxygen for sessions for one hour and 40 minutes at a time, although, thankfully, I can take in a book or a magazine with me to relieve the boredom.
I’m booked in for ten sessions and the treatment hopefully speeds up the recovery process because the oxygen is supposed to help the tissues heal quicker.
With all the physio and rounds or treatment my day’s are full from 9pm until 5pm, which is probably taking up more of my time than when I’m in full training.
I’m fortunate in that it is my right leg that is injured rather than my left. If it had been my left calf – my take off leg - it really would have been the end of my Olympic hopes because there is no way it could have taken the strain at running at 11 metres per-second and taking the force of jumping more than eight metres.
For now, it is just a case of abiding by all recovery processes I’m told to do and crossing my fingers. It will be a little weird sat at home watching the opening ceremony of the Olympics on Friday rather than being with my team-mates at the holding camp in Macau. But one thing is for certain, I’ll be busting a gut and doing everything I can to make sure I’m fit and ready to join the team a little later than planned.
Chris