This week, although I completed all my planned training it was like a puzzle piece of completion, less than half of the training was completed on the days they were set for. There were many reasons for the alterations in training but I knew I didn’t want it to affect my overall training plan. I thought out of the days I was busy and when that would affect my normal timings to train, some meant I had less time and some meant I needed to alter when I trained.
This left me ending up completing my long run on Wednesday, pushing my swim to Thursday and my long ride on Friday, leaving me with my short bike ride after football Saturday and an hour run before a big day at a funeral on Sunday.
This week was hard due to the circumstances but I’m proud that I managed to get through it completely. Completing my long run on Wednesday was quite a change, as I had just completed my last week’s one the Saturday before so a quicker turnaround than I’m used to. It also meant I wasn’t mentally prepared for it until the night before when I decided which can make the run a bit more daunting.
Nevertheless I got myself up and going, and though it may be interesting to just freely wander around new streets for the start to make time go by and make it less repetitive. Unfortunately, 2km in at 6am on the dot, I was at the end of a col-de-sac that was apart of the new suburb area, I went to turn onto the road off a driveway to turn myself around back towards the opening of the road. When turning I stepped on the moss covered corner of the smooth driveway causing me to slip directly onto my right knee skinning the whole surface, in the moment I didn’t realise the extent of the graze thinking it would just be a few scratches. Once the momentary pain subsided I had the option to go home and fix it up, or keep running the 22.5km I knew I had left, I wanted to get the run done as I was already up and didn’t want to have to defer it to another day waking up early again, so I kept going. I didn’t think much of the graze until I felt a warm sensation down my leg and looked down and realised there was a lot more blood than I thought and it had splattered onto my opposite leg, as well as staining my socks and new shoes.
I completed the run, and then tendered my knee before heading to school. I’m proud I completed the run even with the extent of the injury I gave myself at the beginning, it lets me experience it in case something similar was to have happened during a race where I knew I wouldn’t have stopped either. From there the rest of the week ticked by and I completed all my training as I had planned without any more injuries getting in the way.
– Jessica Bray