"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat." -Theodore Roosevelt



Wednesday 10 October 2012

I have now seen my GP about my dodgy knee.

As suspected, I’ve been told to rest it for longer, and if it is still causing me problems in a couple of weeks I am to book another appointment and then I could possibly be referred for some physio, or to a knee specialist.

It turns out one of the GPs in my Practice is actually a knee specialist, so yesterday I phoned up and booked an appointment with him -the wait is 3 weeks and 1 day. Chances are if it hasn’t sorted itself by then it will probably require a more extensive examination than prodding at the different bits of it and asking ‘does that hurt’.

As an NHS employee I think the NHS is a brilliant thing, but not always the best for sports related injuries. I realise it’s much cheaper to ask a patient to just rest, whilst being seen by e.g. a physio straight away may help to solve the problem quicker, but costs money. However, if someone has a condition due to say, smoking, likelihood is it could be suspected cancer, and they would have a fast tracked referral to be treated.

Both, it could be argued, are self-induced – smoking is more than likely (and I use more than likely loosely here) to cause long term health problems, just like running is likely to cause some form of injury at one point or another, however minimal or not that is, yet only one is more than likely to receive quicker treatment.

It’s all about priorities and money really… No More, no less

Whilst thinking of the quite unlucky couple of years I have had through injuries I realised that in 2012 my injury record is as follows:

Months unable to run due to injury: 4 months
Months able to run being injury free: 5 months

I’m now entering my 5th month (October) of being unable to run through injury, this equates to races:

Races unable to compete in due to injury: 4
Race able to compete in due to being injury free: 5

If I’m unable to race in survival of the fittest at the start of November, then that will be number 5.

Unfortunately I’m not nearly as positive minded as the shibby Taffster (http://hewhotrainstrains.blogspot.co.uk/) who has a much worse injury yet still remains amazingly focused and positive.

Here’s hoping for a speedy recovery and a return to pounding the streets, although I’m not holding out much hope…