Getting ready

Only about 40 hours to go and my cast comes off. I'm delighted, I absolutely can't wait. I'm sure my cautiousness and carefulness (not putting my weight on my ankle from the moment I fell/always elevating whenever possible etc) will pay dividends. My dad hurt his ankle once and it took him 2 years to get over it, I also know of plenty of other people who continue to walk on an injury and put themselves back considerably... hopefully, that will not be the case for me. I'm ready to get back to normal!

I have tried a couple of training sessions and although they felt fine at the time, I suffered afterwards. I did 30 minutes boxing (padwork) last Sunday and was shattered (and I have to say, ached for days and days afterwards). I thoroughly enjoyed it but have had what I think is a big blister on my heel ever since. I'll not know to what extent it is until my cast comes off, but it hurts quite a bit.

And I contacted a lady called Ania on Friday. She is a vegan dietician and I originally emailed her to ask if she thought she could help with a couple of issues. One of them being that everyone I know who becomes vegan feels absolutley brilliant and full of energy and their training goes through the roof in terms of speed and strength. I have never found that... although I do feel better, I don't feel absolutley amazing, however Graeme says he felt brilliant within a fortnight and within 5 months knocked about 45 minutes off his marathon PB. She emailed me back very quickly saying she will certainly be able to help and it's just a matter of finding the right combination of foods for me (which I mustn't have found yet, obviously). She has offered me a free 1 hour breakthrough session to get to the bottom of it all, and I have that on Tuesday afternoon. I'm looking forward to finding out what she has to say. Over Christmas I bought a dehydrator and have tried a few raw foods (they are actually very very nice) and have started sprouting my own seeds, so I can't see her telling me I have to do something I would class as "Weird".
She sent me a questionnaire (which I filled in and sent back to her yesterday) and it was quite thorough, asking for sleeping patterns, any aches and pains, eating habits as a child compared to now, weight now/6 months ago/a year ago and family problems with weight or illness. So, I'm looking forward to finding out what she thinks of my current eating habits. I would say I'm relatively healthy and only have the odd naughtiness (oh, I was absolutley honest and told her I am addicted to curry and have substituted an unhealthy obsession with coffee to an equally unhealthy obsession with green tea!) so I just can't imagine what it is that I'm not eating (or maybe something I AM eating) that isn't benefitting me the way it should.

2013 is the year I want to do my three ultramarathons (which currently are Connemara 39.3 miles, The Wall 70 miles and something for the winter time which I am not picking yet until I know how I'm progressing). I need to make sure my nutrition is sorted for all of that and I think I made quite a breakthrough with Grand Cayman marathon and learnt a few things that will benefit my training from now on... as we speak, Shaun is tweaking my training schedule ready to incorporate some extra things I seemed to have discovered during my last race. So... it's all good, and I'm getting ready to start training again. Bring it on !!!