With a matter of days until I fly to visit the Dolomites, almost everything is ready to go, except for my body. I’ve long spiritualized my ankle injury, thinking (perhaps a little too deeply) about the meaning of why it occurred. Because I could never just roll an ankle, of course; I must’ve fucked it up for some reason I fail presently to grasp but will see clearly in retrospect…

In my more far-out fantasies, I busted my ankle for it to be replaced with a goat hoof that will propel me to mountain running greatness. Haha, a funny scenario, until last month’s “plantar fasciitis” graduated into a crippling disability to walk down hallways and such. I returned home from an attempted bike ride to find my foot physically disfigured, my arch being painfully wrenched back, the knuckle of my big toe driving into the ground. I sat on the floor appalled, feeling like my foot was actually transforming, and suddenly the jokes about a goat hoof weren’t funny anymore.

In the course of this episode — somewhere between racking up a buttload of km’s and vert on a shitty ankle last month and sobbing hopelessly because I can’t walk — I came to terms with not racing Lavaredo. With zero meaningful training this year, I was cool with trekking hut-to-hut and having more time to explore an incredibly beautiful area. Plus I got my name on the starting list for Cortina Skyrace, just in case. But as I sat there on the floor staring at my deformed foot, I felt very far away from the basics needed to make any of that happen.

So I did something radical and went to see the physio. A little internet research had already revealed the relationship between the thing that hurt (the inner arch of my right foot) with the thing I knew didn’t work properly anymore (my right ankle, especially on the inside). Once my rolled ankle had seemingly healed, I simply assumed it was good enough to run on: I can hike competently, I said to myself in April, therefore I must be able to run. And though things started smoothly, when I read my record from the second part of May, it reads like a record of stupidity.

Several sessions with Fabienne Moser at Banff Physical Therapy have helped elucidate and resolve the problem, deemed to be posterior tibial tendonitis from improperly rehabbing my ankle sprain. A few measurements revealed glaring differences in strength and flexibility between each ankle, so it’s no wonder I developed issues once I started running consistently. And “running consistently” last month meant up and down Sulphur almost every other day. Now I’m relegated to resistance band exercises on the floor as my foot slowly heals and the days tick closer to my departure for Cortina.

One thought which keeps occurring to me is how different this year is from last. Last year was the first season that I approached training in something of a structured way and felt like I performed really well. I was pretty proud of my achievements last year. This year was supposed to be even better: my training more dialed-in; my mental game stronger; my name higher up on the list of race results… But so far I feel like I have nothing, like everything has been stripped away, like I’m even being asked to suspend my hopes and fears leading up to this trip. To be objective, I have vastly improved in the past two weeks (hiking is possible now, if slow) yet my foot is still quite weak, a glimmer of my usual state of mobility.

However I’m optimistic and still feel there’s a positive outcome to be gained from all this, and that letting go of expectations and embracing the virgin novelty of this situation is somehow part of it.