No silver bullets

Oh to be young again....
Leading in a 3000m Steeplechase at Croydon Harriers
track in 1975 (finished 2nd in 9:34)

It's still too early to say the worst of my right arch injury is over, but I am getting more optimistic.  I ran 6km after supervising this morning's track session at The Haven and finished no worse than I started.  Maybe I'll run further on Saturday, although the scheduled Trotters' run is Muzza's Run which, at 16km, may be just a little too far to step up.  However, there are some obvious short-cuts that will give me 10-12km, and that will work fine.

I give myself no chance of getting fit in time for a sub-3 hour Melbourne Marathon in October, although it's still possible I might run it for training (I have already entered), with my eye on the Cadbury Hobart Marathon on 12 January 2014 for a serious attempt at a fast time.  Even writing such an objective down, makes me apprehensive.  As the past few months have shown, I'm very vulnerable to injury, and just marking a date on the calendar seems to risk disappointment.

For the moment, my focus is just on getting fit again.  Diagnosis by Google seemed to indicate the likelihood of a ligament injury, as discussed in a previous post, and it seems ligament injuries can take six to ten weeks to heal (I'm generalising, of course).  It is now almost six weeks since I sustained the injury, so provided I don't set myself back, it does seem feasible that I will be back to hard training in four weeks.

Over the years, I have definitely become more cynical about the treatment of injuries, especially muscle and ligament tears.......or maybe I have just become lazy and cheap.  I believe that most soft tissue injuries will repair without third party intervention, given time and rest.  We are all very tempted, including me, to seek ways of shortening recovery time through medication, physiotherapy, etc., when we sustain an injury.  But there are no silver bullets.  Injuries take as long as they take to get better, and there are few short-cuts.  It may seem that treatment is making a difference, but usually those treatment regimes take time (and money), and during that time, the body is healing itself anyway.  My theory is that, at best, you are probably just fiddling at the margin.

I absolutely accept there are injuries that do need medical intervention, and I'm no doctor.  My advice to athletes who ask me about their injuries is to start with a doctor if they are in doubt about the nature of the problem.  The doctor has access to the best diagnostic tools and can refer you to specialists or recommend a range of treatments, including from allied health professionals.  If you start with these allied health professionals, then maybe not all possible diagnoses and treatments will be considered.