I’ve been back in Oz for three weeks now, so I thought it would be about time to make an end to this radio silence and give an update on what I’ve been up to these past 2.5 months… Yes, ten weeks ago I decided to take a rest and give my plantar some time to recover. I never planned on taking ten weeks off, seems a bit over the top, but not in Suzy-world where plantars and achilles tendons make the rules.

One of my many talents is taking time off at the end of the season and entertain myself for a couple of weeks, without even thinking about running, to recharge the physical and mental batteries before hopping back on next season’s war path. However this time around it was quite challenging not to think about running when every single morning the first step out of bed reminded me there was something quite disturbing going on in my foot (to say the least), while alternating my runners and Strassburg sock 24/7 and having to take a break after every 10 minutes of walking also didn’t help.

Since I couldn’t get away from the foot problem in Holland I decided to take it with me for a little Euro-trip; destination Bergamo (a small town near Milan), Saltford (a small village between Bath and Bristol) and finally Dublin. Soon enough I found myself having breakfast with my mom in a typical old Italian kitchen, the sunrays finding their way through the open doors from the balcony, which looked more like a garden with all the flowers and plants on it. But the best part was that the breakfast prepared by our host Antonio actually became overshadowed by the beautiful dark roast Italian coffee he brewed us, now that was something to wake up to. Not only the coffee, but also the town itself was beautiful which meant we also did the necessary sightseeing, although we had no problems falling in and out of our tourist-role and every now and then blend in with the locals :)

After a couple of days in sunny Bergamo it was time to say bye to my mom and move on to the second part of the trip, a visit to my friend Abi in the UK. Besides catching up with her she also played my tour guide for the next couple of days and put together a perfect itinerary with the highlight being a visit to Jamie Oliver’s restaurant in Bath. To top off the Euro-trip I went to Dublin for a couple of days to do some of the necessary shopping to finally catch my last flight, being totally relaxed, mentally replenished and what not… back to Hollish.

So, yeah the foot…almost forgot about that. After I came back from my trip I felt like it was time to start back jogging again. Ican’t say I was super confident, but since I slowly built up the walking and rehab over the previous couple of weeks and my foot seemed to be responding well (read: no stiffness or pain) I thought it was time. Time to take the dust off last year’s walk/jog program to see if it will get me back on track once again. Although training started out fine it seemed like after about 10 days my foot already wasn’t able to handle the small load. Two steps forward, one back slowly changed to one step forward, two back.. First I dealt with a little bit more stiffness in my foot in the morning, then also in the warm-up and cool down. Once my achilles started to get involved and I was wondering every morning whether I was going to run that day, I thought it was enough.

Back to some alternative training for a while and instead of rushing back I went back to basics and put together an extensive rehab program with (my Dutch physio) Peter to work on my foot and all the other little flaws in my running form. To not have to disappoint myself again I cleared my schedule of all possible race ideas and just focused on getting my rehab done so I could potentially start back running within the first two weeks after arriving back in Australia. A very welcome distraction was the running clinic (serving as a kick-off for the Seven Hills run for kids) I got to teach at a primary school “de Klokkenberg” in my hometown, but other than that I kept myself busy getting in lots of training. Living close to the German border means there was enough opportunity to go for long long long mountain bike rides in the forest and get very lost. Think I didn’t skip any rookie mistakes, by for example getting lost on a 2.5 hour bike ride without a snack, seeing my one water bottle bouncing off into the woods on a rough downhill or thinking that just like on a run I shouldn’t wear too many clothes on this rainy day, because I will probably warm up…NOT. Yeahh, went through it all, but I survived and ended up enjoying it, probably got some fitness out of it as well!

Three weeks ago I landed back in Melbourne and since long travel can be a bia…ehh, somewhat unpleasant for injuries like these I decided to be cautious, which meant alternative training for one more week. Surprisingly my jetlag didn’t bother me too much, I must have flown off without it after having stayed in Singapore for 18 hours, so I had plenty of energy to get back into a busy training routine. The second week it was time for (my Aussie physio) Bart’s verdict…result: onto the next round! The next step was to get my body used to the impact of running again by replacing some of the biking for elliptical and adding in a daily 3 sets of rope skipping, progressively getting longer every day. Finally the response was good and Bart gave me a new walk/jog program to start this week. I never knew walk/jogging around a beautiful green footy oval for 10x30s on/2.5min off could be this much fun. Nothing was better than getting overtaken by an unfit football player on the walk part (while giving me the pity-look) when in the back of my head I knew I was having the best run of the past 10 weeks…ohhh victory! Today I was already up to 10 by a minute, with 2 minutes off and things are still moving forward. This time around I’m not wondering or guessing, I feel that where I’m at is perfectly fine for this time a year, considering for once I didn’t skip any steps in the build-up. So hopefully I can keep building this stable base and without rushing into setting myself any short-term goals I’m hoping to get back to ‘normal’ easy running by the end of November.

The year has started and this is the end of chapter 10…

“대구2011” is the new word