Surrender is not in my creed

No words can describe the joy with which I and my guide runner Laurie Palacio crossed the finish line in the prestigious 2008 Flora London marathon. We finished in four hours and fifty two minutes, raising £3,000 for Guide Dogs.

The enduring feeling of victory was dulled only slightly when some hours after I discovered I had sustained a tension stress fracture to the femoral neck in my hip.

I didn’t know it at the time but  I had actually broken my bone in training so ran the entire marathon beginning to end with the fracture. Of course I knew my hip was hurting long before the big day and indeed I had a heat pad affixed to the precise location of the fracture which combined with off the shelf pain killers and pure adrenalin got me round.

When did I first notice the pain and why didn’t I do something about it I hear you ask. Laurie and I were totally aware of the importance of training sensibly and as a rule, we did not increase our mileage by more than 10% per week… accept once, but sadly… this is all it took. Having run 15 miles around the streets of London in mid March, we increased our distance to 18.2 miles the following week and chose Richmond Park as our training ground. BIG MISTAKE! Such an increase in distance in such a short time does have the potential itself to cause issues but there are lots of hills going up and down in Richmond Park making it a much harsher training ground than mostly straight pavements and roads. The lesson to learn here is ALWAYS train in the conditions you will eventually be performing and NEVER increase your distance by more than 10% per week.

I was in absolute agony following the 18.2 mile run with a moderately aching hip and a leg that inexplicably would not always move in the way I wanted it to. But I didn’t listen to my body, dismissing the symptoms of what was probably quite a minor stress fracture at the time as being some kind of strain.

I literally limped my way on to the start line in Blackheath, dosed up to the eyeballs with pain killers and patched up with a large heat pad on my hip thinking to myself how am I going to run 26.2 miles when it hurt me to walk 200 yards. At 9:45am we were off and adrenaline helped me ignore the pain and run quite smoothly. Popping more pain killers on a half hourly basis, I felt more comfortable running than I had training to run. Pain didn’t get the better of me until the 23 mile mark when I was forced to walk a bit, jog a bit, force myself not to cry out with pain and walk some more. The stamina was there and I felt minimal tiredness but waves of pain physically prevented me from maintaining my speed. Somehow we managed to jog at a moderate speed for the last 300 yards but after we crossed the finish line and I actually kissed the concrete floor, I was spent and limped every step thereafter.

After the marathon, every step sent floods of pain through my body. Words cannot describe the agony I felt. It took me half an hour to walk 100 yards to get a bus and by 8pm I was totally unable to weight bare on my left leg. Still labouring under the belief I would be fine in the morning and fit enough to go to work, I was forced to give way to the excruciating pain and went to hospital at 10pm when even at rest, the pain was indescribably unbearable.

Although I sustained the fracture in training rather than on marathon day, I have no doubt that I significantly worsened my injury by taking part. The fracture required surgical intervention, four compression screws and a metal plate. The operation was a success but the nerve block failed causing me to wake in recovery without anaesthetic. This, combined with the delights of sampling NHS de cuisine for 11 days caused me less mental anxiety than being parted from my wonderful guide dog Chipp. To me this really emphasised the value of the service provided by guide dogs and the need for valuable funds such as the £3,000 we raise. For these reasons, I cannot regret having taken part in the marathon and regard my story to be one of victory rather than tragedy.

In closing, I should like to thank my dedicated friend and former Guide Dogs Mobility Instructor Greer Gerson, now of Guide Dogs South Australia for her support and positive outlook throughout my hospital stay and beyond and for the inspiration and encouragement she gave me to take part in the first place.

I should make a FULL recovery in time - so get your running shoes out and join me on the start line of some marathon or other very soon!