#Jantastic

The Jantastic running challenge has ended with a bit of a whimper. Once again my left foot has flared up again and as I write this I am sitting with my feet up, dosed up on nurofen and about to apply an icepack. My foot has not been right since the start of the year and rather than letting it rest and doing some proper rehab I have soldiered on when my experience should have told me better. In the last 2 weeks I have only run twice (3 times if you include Crofton)  and it's my leg simply giving up and crying for mercy. It was the running that we did during our bread pudding paddle that was the nail in the coffin for my plantar fascia and within hours I started to get that omonious deep ache that no amount of ice and stretching could get rid of. I was awake for most of last night, not able to find a comfortable position with my foot glowing in the dark as it swelled up. It's made me decide that I must get some really good footwear for the DW that I will be comfortable in, so I'm going to invest in a pair of trail or off-road  running shoes. Getting ones that can fit into a boat might not be easy but there must be something out there and if my foot starts playing up during the race then that could be a DW-ending problem. Once the DW is out the way I am going to go back to the physio and get some serious rehab done as I simply cannot keep going on like this. So, Jantastic is over. I have not laid the enormous aerobic base that I was hoping to in preparation for the Edinburgh Marathon and as things stand I cannot see me taking the start there, not unless I can recover quickly and keep this problem at bay.

Yesterday, I went on a BCU FSRT course (foundation safety and rescue training). It's a basic course designed to help paddlers cope with capsize and rescue situations, assess risks and take appropriate control measures etc when on the water.  My reason for doing it was two-fold. I wanted to have a few more skills so that I could cope with capsize and emergency training situations when I am out training and also I will be doing a coaching level 1 course in September and the FSRT is a pre-requisite. The Royal are short of coaches to help out so a group of us will be taking the level 1 and I am hoping that in the future it might be something that Wheezy junior and I could do. The course was taken by Paul who was very knowledeable about all types of boats and had many anecdotes to tell. I now know how to empty a Canadian kayak and how you can paddle 2 K1's with only 1 paddle. It's surprisingly easy.