Learning from injuries
I suffered my first injury of this rowing campaign about a month and a half ago, and the past six weeks or so have been a rollercoaster of pain and discomfort. It has reminded me I’m no spring chicken and with age comes the responsibility to take much better care of myself. Because I no longer ‘bounce back’ from injuries I have to be careful and always be injury aware - that way I can keep making good progress and not lose time through carelessly hurting myself
My injury was a really silly one. I went to pick up a 50kg weights bar as I was tidying up my home gym. I say ‘home gym’, which makes it sound far grander than it is. In fact, it’s a room we call a piggery because, well, it was where the farmer used to put his sows in winter. It’s unheated, grubby, and and there’s hell of a draught blowing through it too.
It was cold and I had my housework head on rather than thinking about training. So while I’d always pick up a weights bar very carefully when I’m in a gym, I just heaved this one up with one hand as if I were picking up a sweet wrapper so I could vacuum underneath. Big mistake.
I felt a vertebra click out of position and felt a sharp pain shoot up one side of my body.
I could hardly move and it was another two days before I could fit myself into the car and drive to the osteopath. He said there was too much inflammation for him to do anything constructive, so another week of anti-inflammatory pills followed before he was able to finally manipulate things back into approximately the right place.
And then I made things worse…
Now free of pain, I should have had an easy week. Instead, I made the classic post-injury mistake of being too keen to get back into it.
I jumped eagerly back onto the Concept 2 for a massive make-up-for-lost-time session and hurt myself some more - this time I strained my knee. This led to more swelling and a course of heavy-duty painkillers and yet more anti-inflammatories.
Three weeks later, I’m delighted to say all is now back to normal and it’s a lesson learned. It’s ‘steady as she goes’ now. I’m pacing myself. Honestly.