My trip home to New Zealand was great. It was really nice to be able to spend time with my family. Even though I was injured the whole time and could not run it was a good chance for my body to heal and get completely recovered. It was the hardest thing not to run when it is something I absolutely love but the time off allowed me to get motivated again after a disappointing spring marathon and get focused for all the goals that I have planned leading up to the 2012 Olympics.
Since getting back from New Zealand in late August my focus has been on getting healthy. I am getting active release therapy three times per week by Arthur Cuenco at Professional Physiotherapy Centre in Ottawa in order to get my hip functioning normally. The sports doctor confirmed that my hip is no loner dislocated but the piriformis and sciatic nerve and all the areas around my hip are very inflamed. The active release with Arthur has worked wonders. When I first went I could barely sleep properly without pain. Within two weeks of the active release I was back to being able to cross train on the elliptical and in the pool swimming. I started to run again in the middle of September. It was the greatest feeling being able to run down the road without pain :-) Thanks very much Arthur :-)
Since returning from New Zealand two very big opportunities were presented to me:
1. I have started to train with a new coach. Steve Boyd who is based in Kingston. I am very excited to be training with him and to start the road ahead to run in the Olympic Marathon in 2012.
2. Mizuno has started to sponsor me and I have received some wonderful running apparel and shoes. The Mizuno wave precision shoe is the most comfortable shoe I have run in. I feel so grateful to be able to have sponsorship from Mizuno.
As for my comeback from injury I started very slowly building mileage slowly and mixing running with cross training. I am now able to run every day and in the past two weeks have started to do some short workouts which I am very happy about. The workouts for this phase of my training are mainly targeting 10km pace right now before I start the next marathon buildup in January. I did my first race since being injured on Saturday 16th October. The Oasis 10km Zoo run was my first fitness test to see how my hip would handle faster training. I went in to the race with the goal of running with no pain and running a faster workout. I achieved the first goal as I ran the whole race pain free! The second goal however I did not achieve. I finished the 10km race in 36:02 :-( an average of 3:37 per km. Very slow and very dissatisfying! The course was very unusual as we were running through the zoo so there were a lot of twists and turns and hills. However even taking that into account my time still would have been slow. But on the positive side: I have not been back running for long and the most important aspect is that I don't have pain anymore :-) Now I can start to get into some quality training with Steve :-)
The next few months before the next marathon buildup are going to be hard work to get back into shape. I want to be as fit as I can be and injury free come January so I can really attack the marathon training and run a fast spring marathon :-)
