Even in these dark days (ok, a little poetic license there) there is still stuff to be learnt. In recent years I’ve had some worries about my eating habits.Particularly the “carb binges” (my phrase) I’d undertake. We are talking serious serious calories in a single hit. It felt like an addiction. I’ve now gone over 4 weeks with more or less no exercise and my eating habits have completely stabilised. I’ve got no desire to eat between meals. I can eat the odd cake without having any desire for more sweet stuff. I can see how my weight could be stable without exercise.

This is rather reassuring and confirms a belief I was starting to develop that my disrupted eating habits were fully down to the level of activity I was doing and not eating enough at meals. This was difficult to believe given what I was eating. As an example, in New Zealand Jo and I would eat breakfast and dinner together and we would more or less split the meal in half.  We were both training big though I was doing more and I’m about 50% heavier than Jo. I was eating rather a lot of cake, chocolate, crisps on each ride and still over the course of our stay I became very lean. it’s pretty obvious now it’s written down that I need to eat much more than Jo at each meal. This means no longer will we share a 6 egg omelet we’re going to have to do an 10 egg one and split it by our body weight ;o).

My foot is starting to feel like a normal foot again. The swelling has gone and there is more or less no discomfort. This makes moving around easier as the worry of bashing the cast is removed. I’m able to wiggle my big toe just a little bit. Not a huge amount of control but clearly the tendon is connected ! Even the bit of the scar that can be seen is healing really well. It makes me feel like I’ve got a normal foot again which just adds to the frustration of not being able to do anything.

Luckily Ioan is keeping a tight rein on me. The cast as it currently stands is on for another week. Next week my foot will be moved into a neutral position at which point I will be able to put weight on it. Then after two weeks it will be removed and I will get a splint above my toe. This is a sign of how rare this injury is – there isn’t some standard splint for this they’re going to see if one can be made. I will continue in the splint for probably 6 weeks. This will give a total of 3 months with the toe protected. Lanzarote is clearly out. Once in the splint I should be able to do some cycling on a machine. If I can construct some sort of cycling shoe   can get my foot in with the splint then I can ride on my normal bike as well.

The reason for being so careful is the diagram above. Thats how my tendon snapped – there was a longitudinal tear in it. At the moment there is a risk of re-rupture and of it stretching and being too loose thus Ioan is being very careful. He reiterated that this sort of degeneration is just one of those things and nothing to do with my level of activity other than the  fact a sedentary person could have the same problem and never notice it. He said this is much more common in the achilles. Lets face it we all know someone with achilles problems. As for the repair the outlook is very good. Ioan said that often the tendon fully repairs – ie not just back to being a re-connected degenerative tendon but actually a good tendon. Often with tendon problems even when they’ve not snapped they will open them up to encourage growth of new cells. This is similar to my final knee surgery which did micro fractures on the back of the patella to encourage cartilage growth. This is the most positive thing I’ve heard in weeks.