My left achilles tendon has been the biggest source of trouble in my entire athletics career, and by early July I was once again at a decisive point as far as the severety of the injury was concerned. There was a lot of inflammation around my left heel, and even just walking around hurt my foot. This was obviously the direct consequence of climbing 4000m of elevation over the course of 4 days in Chamonix in late June; but in general the previous months had seen a gradual worsening of the situation even though I’d already decreased my training volume and intensity.
Thankfully, I had already made an appointment with a doctor specializing in sports medicine; who on July 7th diagnosed a Haglund’s deformity. We initially agreed that I would try to maintain a certain level of training volume, so I still did a couple of runs in the easy 5-6km range throughout the next week; but these runs merely confirmed that the achilles definitely wasn’t going to get better if I kept subjecting it to impact forces. My last running activity for July was on the 16th, a simple 2km warm-up that was quite painful.
On my second appointment on July 24th, we decided instead that as long as the achilles didn’t improve, I’d keep not running; which of course meant that I would not be able to compete at the Red Bull 400 in late August.
Obviously, all of this had quite an impact on the type and quality of trainings I was able to do all throughout July:
Track trainings: Only 3 track trainings. Did warm-up, jumps and stretching on July 2nd, then regressed to merely doing a warm-up and stretching on July 14th and July 16th; and finally stopped going altogether to make sure I didn’t succumb to the temptation to run even after the start of my running break.
Road&Trail Running: Only 3 short sessions on mixed surface; which all confirmed that even just a 5-6km run was too much for the achilles in its current state. 18km, 2h12, 549m elevation.
Walking: 46km. Lower than previous months, which is both due to the achilles, as well as the high temperatures in July that made me less likely to go on my typical 1-hour lunch break walks. 11h09, 46km, 991m elevation
Cycling: I was planning to do quite a bit more cycling on the MTB to compensate for the lack of running; but I still only ended up with 7 sessions. Furthermore, I spent more time on the road than I did on the trails, with 4 road sessions and just 3 trail sessions. Still, I managed to spend more time on the saddle than ever before, so at least there’s that. 7h40, 184km, 1742m elevation
Total time outside: 25h
Average body weight: 81.03kg. Body fat 14.43%. Needless to say that a decrease in training volume had a negative impact on my body composition. I also didn’t do well as far as healthy eating was concerned. Gained 1.3kg on the monthly average, and went up almost 1% in body fat.