What Have You Been Hiding From – 2023 Year in Review
You can try and hide from important things. This can work for some time. But eventually you will be forced to face them. 2023 was that year for me. I was challenged almost every single day dealing with things I had put off for years. But first to explain how I got to this point.
Injury
I started 2023 with a very serious achilles tendon injury. I still have the achilles tendon injury. I still have not returned to running. I got this injury off the back of my broken foot in 2022, and so at this point I have been almost continuously injured with two major injuries in two years.
The achilles tendon injury had been getting worse since I ran the 27km Ultra-Trail Kosciuszko race in mid December 2022. I ended up missing a second season of running in a row, having to cancel my trip to New Zealand for Shotover, and my entries into the Kunanyi Vertical Kilometre and Buffalo Stamepede. After a few weeks off to drain the fluid build up in my ankle in March 2023 I started rehabbing my ankle while also doing a very gradual return to running load. The rehab was initially simply placing load through the ankle with heavy lifts like deadlift and backsquat four times a week. I could then gradually move into pre-plyometric training and body weight calf raises before moving into heavy calf raises and beginner plyometrics. At this point I still had the dream of racing the Spartan Trifecta World Championships in November. To get there I needed to race all three Spartan distances, and I was rapidly running out of opportunities in Australia to do so. I made the decision to race the 10km and 5km distance at Spartan Gold Coast despite not having a functional achilles tendon and being in significant pain, to keep the dream alive. I completed both races meaning I could then complete the Beast at the Spartan NSW trifecta weekend to qualify for Trifecta World Championships. I am still unsure if I regret doing this. I was in so much pain and in the end I wasn’t able to do the Beast qualifier. The trip to Greece was another cancelled trip.
Accept, embrace, address
I had found Matt Fitzgerald’s ‘The Comeback Quotient’ really useful when dealing with my broken foot in 2022. Fitzgerald looks to ultra realism and suggests a three stage approach to major injuries:
1. Accept the situation – perceive the situation in a way which preserves your ability to make choices.
2. Embrace the situation – committing to make lemons into lemonade.
3. Address the situation – doing the best you can through maximal effort and good judgment.
With my broken foot in 2022 I addressed the situation, my foot healed a little slower than anticipated, but it was still progressing and within 7 weeks I could start returning to running.
I faced a completely different situation in 2023. I had accepted the situation (missing a second seas of running in a row, having a second major injury in a row that would be difficult to come back from) and felt confident by putting maximal effort into rehab protocols I was addressing the situation and would have progress. By May it was clear there had been no progress despite over 12 medical appointments and 70 hours of rehab at that point. I was still waking up every day in excruciating pain, limping for half the day before it warmed up, limping every time I sat down for more than ten mins, unable to ride my bike to work, and often I had to use breathing techniques to get me through the pain of simply waking.
Countless hours of rehab. Luckily I often had Tegan join me for these sessions.
Tegan did not join me for assault bike sessions.
Stand Up Paddle boarding is a tendon friendly exercise once it is no longer very acute.
Road bike riding in winter in Canberra = just keep adding layers stopping short of cycling in a puffer jacket.
Road cycling in Canberra in Spring includes getting copious amounts of helmet damage from magpies. This one was memorable because his beak got stuck in the foam.
Swimming is another tendon safe activity.
When hard work doesn’t work
I was left in a difficult place. Matt Fitzgerald’s framework which had so far helped with my sanity did not address the question of what to do when you are putting maximal effort into addressing the situation and the injury continues getting worse.
On a practical level I starting putting more effort into hustling the specialists to go to the next level with my injury. In July I had complete blood work done to see if there was anything that might show why my body was not healing. The blood work came back all clear except low but not clinically low iron, which I was already aware of. An MRI in June showed that in additional to severe insertional achilles tendinopathy, I had retrocalcaneal bursitis, haglunds deformity (bone growth), paratendinopathy, inflammation and fluid all through my ankle, and even inflammation of the fat pad. Basically this was one of the most inflamed ankles the specialists had ever seen and they commented they were surprised I was able to walk. I already knew it was really bad having lived with it for 7 months. In August I had an ultra sound guided procedure to treat the bursitis, and clean the paratendon. That took 6 weeks to recover from, and it was not effective, meaning we still had not found the cause of all the inter-related issues. We went back to the theory that the insertional achilles tendinopathy was the cause. There are basically no viable surgical options for my situation. If you remove the degenerate part of the tendon with surgery, the tendon may successfully reattach, but the likelihood of being able to run again is very low. So if it doesn’t heal itself that’s basically it. No running again.
From October we tried a 6 week period of shockwave therapy combined with a regime of very low achilles tendon agitation. During this time I did minimal bike riding and walking to try and calm the inflammatory response. This takes us to December 2023, 12 months after the injury. While there has been some minimal improvement the past 8 weeks, it is still too early to say if it will improve enough to be able to return to running. With almost all options exhausted now, it is not a great situation.
The hard things
This injury has forced me to sit down, address the hard things and make changes. Sometimes if you don’t deal with the mental or emotional things in your life, this can be expressed in the physical. It took me a few month to realise but this injury was a strong signal to address what I have been hiding from for a long time. A lot of these things are very personal, but a summary of these things are:
1. Doing scarily challenging things at work
The past couple of years I really focused on building expertise in government employment law. This specialty meant I was in smaller teams with limited opportunities for career progression. I consciously chose this because you spend so much time at work, you want to be interested in what you are doing, but after a few years it led to being quite comfortable with what I was doing on a daily basis. 2023 totally upended this feeling of being comfortable. For the first 6 months of the year I acted at a higher level during a really busy period, practised in areas of law besides employment law, and supervised multiple junior lawyers. Growth isn’t easy. I then applied for the position I was acting in and progressed to the interview stage, where I was interviewed by senior leadership. It is fairly terrifying being interviewed by a panel of people you work so closely with who already know your strengths and weaknesses. In the end they recruited someone already at level. Its hard to compete with people who have years of experience at that level, but previously I would never have been brave enough to put my hat in the ring. After only a couple of weeks after the 6 months of acting, I started a secondment (also acting above my level) in the bargaining team where I have been working on drafting the agreement. I created this opportunity and was supported by management in my team, but it was hard work and has been hard work every day since.
2. Relationships
This was where the real work was. I finally forgave myself for a relationship I ended but regretted ending. Just because I made a bad decision then does not mean I don’t deserve a similar great relationship now or in the future. In some strange way I think I had been punishing myself for 10 years over this.
The second thing I did was to finally end one very toxic relationship. I cant express how much relief it was to do this. Of course the person tried to get back in my life multiple times until I simple said ‘please do not contact me again’. It has now been four months since the last attempt at contact.
I still have not been brave enough to go on a date with anyone, which sounds outrageous, but I know I have made progress that I am happy with.
There have been many other things. I used to think that normal things people do like buying a house and a mortgage would not be for me. Almost everyone I know who owns property did so at least initially with another person. Turns out you don’t need another person. I finally got pre-approval for a mortgage at the end of this year and have been looking to buy an apartment. Yes I haven’t actually purchased anything yet but am in a good place after spending most Saturdays the past three months driving across Canberra looking at properties. I also addressed some long term health issues. This is a work in progress so not ready to report on this yet. Stayed tuned in next year’s year in review.
How did I find these hard things?
I wrote in my journal frequently in 2023. Running is a big aspects of my life. So is being outdoors. For most of 2023 these two things were unavailable to me. All of the social aspects around these two things were also gone. I looked really hard at aspects of myself that I am missing and that I need to be a more complete person. This is a difficult exercise to do but I managed to identify quite a lot and then I tried to lean in and get as much help as possible. I tried to identify things where I feel like an outsider looking in where I really want to be in. The missing pieces that would help me be a more complete person. These things takes time to identify and work on.
Growth can and will feel uncomfortable
What 2023 did give me was the opportunity to really challenge myself and grow. I was uncomfortable almost every single day.
It not might seem like much but I know there is a past me that is overflowing with pride for how far I have already come. Part of me is really wishing for the coming year to be much easier. How nice it would be to be able to run again, to be in a long term relationship, to be more confident with who I am. But more growth is required to get there. So I am getting ready for another uncomfortable year of growth in 2024.
There were some highlights in 2023! Going to the FIFA Womens World Cup in Brisbane with Michelle was one of those. I also had a really fun trip to the Blue Mountains with Tegan and Brendan and had a two week holiday in Fiji.