I arrived at the minor injuries unit at St Thomas’ Hospital as a man with chest pains staggered through the door and immediately I felt like a fraud. But a sympathetic nurse with a good understanding of running injuries took pity on me as I hobbled in and kindly took a look at me.
I’d hurt my leg the night before half way through a six mile run. I did what any runner with a injury wish would do – I ignored it and continued with the remaining three miles of my run. The next morning I was in agony and couldn’t walk down stairs.
“Do you have any idea what you think it could be?” the sympathetic nurse asked me.
“Well I’ve already had one diagnosis from a bus driver this morning who told me it’s my back.”
“Hmm, it’s not your back.”
“I didn’t think so.”
Sympathetic nurse told me that it ‘could’ be a stress fracture but that he didn’t want to x-ray me because it wouldn’t show up yet. Instead he prescribed ibuprofen and 10 days rest from running.

That’s 10 days of NOT running. During marathon training. This was not good news. Worse news still would be if I DID have a stress fracture I’d have to take 10 weeks out of running and then face a ‘gradual’ return. This all made me very unhappy. So unhappy, in fact, that this all happened two weeks ago and I’ve only been able to bring myself to write about it now.

Impatiently I waited for the 10 days to pass. I kept myself busy and my heart rate up by swimming, cycling, doing yoga, kyaking and walking lots. There was also beer. I had to tell my stomach that we weren’t going to be eating like a marathoner for 10 days which it wasn’t all that happy about.

I also planned. I planned what marathons I would do next year if Venice was out of the question, I planned how I was going to swim and cycle like a triathloning badass while I waited to be able to run again, and I planned what bike I was going to buy myself as a consolation prize for having a broken leg.

Then, after 10 infuriating days, I took my first tentative steps to see if my leg was ok. I ran three miles and it felt OK, so I ran a bit faster. Two days later I ran again – 11 miles at 8:22 pace. Still no pain. And two days later I ran again – six miles round a hilly Finsbury Park with 5 miles at 8 minutes per mile. And still my leg feels ok.

So Venice Marathon is back on, and with a few adjustments to my training plan, I might even make it round and claim a new PB to boot. Fingers crossed.