Oh to fall from grace…..ok a little dramatic, but that is how
it has felt for me this month. The worst, by far, in all the months of training
in the lead up to the Channel. It
started straight after the 24 hour swim, my right wrist was pretty
painful. I thought it was just fatigue
and would clear up after a good night’s sleep.
The next day I went to the pool for a gentle swim, to help stretch out
the stiff muscles. On the first pull of
the water I felt the pain in my arm, but again thought it would pass, I managed
a handful of lengths but had to concede that the pain was not going to pass. At that point I noticed that the wrist was
pretty swollen and decided to head to the jacuzzi instead and rest it some more.
A couple more days of icing the wrist and taking ibuprofen
and not swimming helped, but didn’t do away with the pain completely, I decided
to seek medical advice, which was not the best. Basically I had De Quervain's
tenosynovitis – essentially a form of RSI that made the thumb tendons in the wrist
really painful. The advice was to continue
with the ice and painkillers and wear a brace on the wrist, but here was the
killer line – don’t do any swimming for 2-3 weeks. I baulked at this, but managed keep panic at
bay. I was optimistic that I would be
back swimming before that…
The next day I jumped in the water and did a kick set, now
if I disliked kicking before I really wasn’t happy about it after that
sessions. Five days later I was still
doing kick sets, by this point I absolutely hated kick sets! However, I was able to start to incorporate some drill work so it wasn’t so bad! Ten days after the diagnosis I did my first ‘proper’ swim set
and it felt …. alright. I could feel
that I had lost some pace and definitely lost a ‘feel for the water’. I couldn’t believe how much a couple of weeks
out could have such a negative impact on everything. At this point the negative thoughts started
to kick in, would I be able to make it across the Channel are my arms going to
hold up. And still I have these feelings
to some extent....
The positives for this month were that I was able to start
open water swimming in earnest and did my first sea swim of an hour in 9c
(approx), which I was happy with. Following
it up with a 2 hr swim the following day in the Serpentine (10C). So, that was good, throughout the rest of the
month my wrist hasn’t felt 100% and I have started to have pain in the other
wrist as well which has made each session a lottery as to whether or not it
would go well or not. I have not been
able to re-find my pre-24hr swim form and am not hitting anywhere near the pool
times I was before. This has been a bit
soul destroying, but I keep telling myself the longer the dip in form, the
bigger the rise will be when it comes…..
