Tough Choices

This is Griffin. He is a 7 month old black lab cross and he is our baby.

As you can imagine he needs a fair bit of exercise - and running round the house with a pair of stolen undies doesn't quite cut it. So most days I take him for a walk. One of our favourite walks is the Camborne walkway that walks around the edge of the Pauatahanui Inlet. It is really stunning and quite sheltered, but the best bit is that Griffin is allowed off the lead (and straight into the water!) for the
entire 3+ km walk.

So, a couple of weeks ago while doing this walk Griffin was running round like a puppy loon, splashing in the water and learning to properly swim. And I was watching him. Perhaps a little too much as I soon rolled my ankle in the drainage ditch. OW. Ow, was not the term I used at the time I tell you. I persevered with the walk as best I could and when I got home, applied R.I.C.E. The next morning it felt worse. A lot worse. So I was off to the doctor with visions of fractures and snapped tendons.

The good news was that I hadn't snapped my Achilles tendon, the bad news was that I had injured it quite badly. So strapped up and told to take it easy with the walking, but no cycling for 2 weeks! That’s not good for my training!

I also have a mild heart arrhythmia so my Doctor asked me while I was there if I had been having any heart palpitations after cycling ( which I had ) and how long it was taking to recover from a long ride. He also had a listen to my heart. He then took a deep breath and said that he was pretty sure that my arrhythmia was worse (an ECG would be needed to confirm), but I should give serious consideration to slowing down my training.

Seeing as I have a time frame (and now an injury!) its not really possible to slow down the training.

I was gutted. Without actually saying "You need to quit the challenge" this is what was being suggested. I took a bit to think about it but really, I can't mess with my heart.

So I have had to resign as a member of the relay team. I will be replaced have no doubt about that, and hopefully I will be able to tell you who that is shortly. I am really disappointed not to be able to complete this, but rest assured I am still committed to helping any way that I can to help meet our goals. And there is an awful lot to do to get there!



Tamar



P.S we have a couple of great fundraising ideas coming up, so stay tuned to find out about them!