Hellooooo compadres, and apologies for joining so late.   As most of you know, since that heady year when most of us were last all together: 2009's Boston and Dublin, Antitrust and real Marathons, I have been in that Dark Place that is Plantar Eff.   At the start I hoped I was just 6 months behind Spencer in recovery, but it dragged on and on, and I did everything I could find to treat it...using that strassberg sock, Das Boot in bed, icing, heel cups, orthotics, stretching, needles, massage, rest, meds, and the dreaded and expensive (£200 a pop x 6 tries) of Extra Corporal Shock wave Therapy...THAT HURT I can say.    During all this I couldn't run at all, and even standing to lecture in Bruges was a pain.  I should have just stopped all the therapy and did what Max said which was to switch sports for a few weeks or months and try rockclimbing or something which might help with recovery generally.  Eventually I did, but turned to rowing in Eights and Fours, and as much I have got into it, and it is great for the legs and core, and the club I'm in on the Isis in Oxford is fun as well as uber competitive...it is a hard hard sport and I am physically and mentally much more suited to long slow runs in the woods, than pounding away doing the equivalent of squatting down and hurling a fridge over my shoulder a few thousand times an outing.   During all this I just didn't feel like writing about my non-running and was even being childish and not taking the wrapping off my RunnersWorlds...petty huh?  Anyway, I am feeling a window of hope opening in the heel, and so I have been out on the odd plod/jog/trot since the Olympics here so I figured I would cement that by blogging about EU and UK antitrust stuff with you, and inflicting the Recovery News on you, and planning for the next Antitrust Marathon in Rome with you, and maybe I will even lace em up for that one!
Philip