Love Hurts

In May's edition, we featured Nikki's mission to complete 100 marathons in 100 days. Anyone following Nikki's adventure will know that things didn't go according to plan. Nikki has very kindly given us a Badger exclusive update on what went on.

May 1st started off well at Colwick Park, Nottingham. I was only 15 minutes late for my advertised start time and I had a couple of people join me till the halfway point. They realised they had better things to do with their day than complete 5km circles around a lake – no matter how pretty it was.

Days 2 – 12 consisted of running through rain, sunshine, rain, sunshine, more rain and even some sleet and snow – bloody stupid English weather – but for the most part everything felt okay.

Day 12 felt like I was flying, the incentive of finishing at my local pub seemed to light a fire under my ass. My crew, Sharif, was also very appreciative of the day’s finish line. He met me at the pub for a post-marathon celebratory pale ale and ferried me home to proceed with the daily task of feeding, watering and cleaning me down. Throughout the evening I noticed a pain in my butt, I was sitting at my laptop trying to finish a Uni assignment that was due the next day. Yeah, I’ve gone back to school - I’m doing a psychology degree to try and understand why my brain thinks that running 100 marathons is a fun thing to do.

"The ache became a hurt as I shuffled around the 5km loop in Leamington Spa.  I tried to stretch my butt, glutes and hammy ... I couldn’t quite work out where the pain was coming from"

The pain got achier, but I put that down to sitting awkwardly on my bed trying to get my brain to think. Day 13 was in Leamington Spa, a short hour and a half drive from home.  I was achey in the van, I was achey on the warm up, but folk had arrived to run with me so the only thing to do was crack on. I cracked on in more ways than one.  The ache became a hurt as I shuffled around the 5km loop in Leamington Spa.  I tried to stretch my butt, glutes and hammy, I tried to poke the area, I got people to pull my legs thinking that something was jammed or my hips were out of alignment, I couldn’t quite work out where the pain was coming from.

Oh man, it took me forever to get to the 42.2km mark, I had to stop at one point and put a final 30 minutes knocking my Uni assignment into it shape to submit it before 5pm. It took my 7 hours of moving time, 9 hours in total time to complete marathon 13 in the bloody stupid pouring rain! Sharif drove me home and by the time we got back to Nottingham I couldn’t walk on my right leg. My sports therapist came over and tried to find the issue, she couldn’t work it out either.

Next morning I crawled into my Osteopath’s clinic (it didn’t hurt when I was on all fours).  He pushed, prodded, and needled my ass and finally said get to the hospital, concerned that I may have done something to my spine. Turns out I had a stress-fracture in my pelvis which apparently is a pretty rare injury. I know I don’t like to do things by half, but getting a rare injury is pushing that into the ridiculous category.

Anyways, I’ve been on the injury bench since May 14th trying to establish what went wrong, how I can fix it, and how I can prevent this from happening again. It’s not been easy, quick or simple but hey as they say ‘it may not be easy, but it will be worth it’ – bloody stupid motivational quotes!

FYB

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