Just Another Hurdle by Pittman Jana;

Author:Pittman, Jana;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2017-03-21T16:00:00+00:00

14

An impossible wedge

Halfway through our best ever international season, I was running a time trial over the hurdles back in England. We used to do this crazy session where you run 200m without hurdles, take a 90-second break and run the last 200m over hurdles. It was tough but a great indication of where you were at with your training. Kind of like the hills I used to do with PK. This particular day I ran like lightning. My times were so fast Chris and I were giddy with excitement. The world record seemed on the cards and it was only four weeks prior to the World Champs for the 2005 season. I was so ridiculously happy, I even rang Mum while sitting in the ice-bath, my teeth chattering away, as I told her my exciting news. The following day we were in the gym doing jump squats. You load the bar up with a medium weight, which for me was normally around 70 kilograms, and squat down, but on the way up, you launch up into a jump. I had come into the session with a slightly tight back but after the previous day, I brushed it off as fatigue. A few sets into the squats Chris suggested we up the weight as I ‘looked good’. On the second rep something tweaked in my back and shot a pain right down my left leg and into my little toe. Crap.

After an MRI and later a CT scan it was revealed I had a pedicle stress fracture in my L5 vertebrae. My season was over in one fell swoop. No World Champs, in fact, no exercise at all for 10 weeks, as there was a risk I might get a permanent foot drop if it cracked any further. We were done. All the normal devastation flooded my system but we made the most of it and decided to go on a real holiday.

Before I knew it we had the adventure of a lifetime planned. Sadly, it started off with a trip home to my family, as my grandfather on my mother’s side was critically ill from bowel cancer. I was so grateful I got to spend some precious time with him before he passed away. Maybe the injury was a blessing as he was such an inspiration to me that later I named my son Cornelis after him. Had I run in the Worlds, I would not have seen him. After he passed away our trip began.

We ventured to Hong Kong, where we ate chicken feet and fried spiders. We went to Rarotonga in the Cook Islands and canoed and snorkelled at beautiful beaches. We flew to Los Angeles and drove the famous Highway One to San Francisco. We hiked the mountains around Lake Tahoe, went to the various shows and played the pokies in Vegas. Next stop was New York, where we rode the subway to Times Square, saw a musical, strolled through Central Park, paid our respects to the twin towers and shopped till we dropped.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.