Perspective

Today I cancelled the hotel for Grantham... I cancelled the lift to the start, cancelled my parents need for looking after the dog and cats for the whole weekend (although they are going to look after them tomorrow night and Graeme and I are still going to go somewhere for a nice night out and a meal) and I finally stopped worrying about "Would my foot be good enough to run 29.3 miles?"
The answer, of course, is no. Of course it isn't going to be good enough, I can't even walk 100 metres without it hurting. Funny, but finally admitting to myself that it was not possible to toe the line was not as upsetting as worrying about not being able to do it. In the end, you just have to do what's best, don't you?

I phoned my podiatrist in the hope he would tell me not to worry because there would probably be something he could do, and to be honest he wasn't quite so forthcoming, "If it's capsulitis... and I think it is... you will need a cortisone injection as anti inflammatories are not working. If it is something else then I may be able to offload the weight in some way... but it IS nearly 30 miles Claire... it's a long way to run on an injured foot"

So, that was it... race over before it had begun.

The good news is, if I do need a cortisone injection, I can have one on Saturday morning as his colleague is coming into his clinic to do some foot surgery for another client and can do it then for me. This means I only have a fortnight of cross training and then I can get straight back to running.
Shaun emailed me with details of adding resistance during deep water running so that I can work hard while I'm off the road (so to speak), so I'm looking forward to giving that a go.

And just to put everything all into perspective, I got home to an email from Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team to advise me that my payment and registration has been received and I'm entered for Basel. Talk about coming at the perfect time... It made me see the bigger picture!