I see you…

Let’s rewind 4 weeks back and I was writing my latest blog with the British stiff upper lip saying everything would work out just dandy and I’d be here in a months’ time…

The Op
Suzy and I travelled down to Oxford after she finished work for the day, I was keen to just travel down there later to avoid the after-work rush hour that generally blocks up Lowestoft, so after tea we were off. Arriving in Oxford around 9pm we had booked a Premier Inn just off a main road and within 5 minutes of the hospital. I remembered we had stayed here before when I had my first ever consultation with the surgeon, not great memories to be fair as it was more of a truckers’ stop and was a bit rough around the edges – first world problems right?
Anyhow, Suzy had booked an accessible room as we were going to stay here for a day or so post-op and I needed to get around the room without any issues. An accessible room is really a walk-in shower, a few grab rails in the toilet, slightly lower beds and an emergency string/switch just in case I got into any difficulty, but that’s about it.
7am the following day and we were at the hospital for the check-in. I wasn’t allowed anything to eat from 2am so breakfast was missed and I was already starving hungry. I was allowed the occasional sip of water but that was it. I was checked in and shown to my bed – one of 4 beds in the bay. Opposite was a guy who had some kind of infection in his shoulder (eaves dropping when his surgeon came in to talk to him). He looked quite old and appeared to be very weak and frail. The surgeon asked him his date of birth – “10th of November 1972″… what?!!!! He was 6 months younger than me – bloody hell. I guess poor health, life and nutritional choices can do that to you eventually.

My surgeon arrived and told me I’d be going down to the theatre around mid-day as there was one case that had a more important clinical need than I so they’d go in first. Fair enough I thought.
With that I settled on my bed, admired my fancy new black arrow mark on my right thigh (you really have to wonder what mistakes were made for them to now do this) and Suzy went downstairs for a coffee as she too missed breakfast.
Within a few minutes a hospital porter arrived to take me down. What? Wait? I messaged Suzy and said I was going down and prepared to go down to the theatre. I hadn’t even put on my sexy circulation socks and my flattering open-backed operating gown, by the time I had Suzy had returned and was by my side, I smiled and I was off to have my leg broken.

I woke up several hours later in the recovery room with nurse by my side trying to wake me up. The fact I was under general anaesthetic and I also had a spinal nerve block meant I was feeling very little discomfort so once awake I was full of spirit, so much so I was joking about being able to run the local Park Run the following day – I jest of course, I hadn’t ran since May 2021 and had no intentions of starting any time soon.
Suzy was worried, it seemed that she was told I would be back on the ward by 1pm but I hadn’t returned until gone 4pm. She had imagined a plethora of scenarios but as it turned out the case before me had a few issues so needed a bit more theatre time. I was already going under anaesthetic so no going back really. They just kept me sedated until I could eventually go into surgery. My surgery wasn’t complicated at all (according to the surgeon). He broke my femur on the inside just above the knee, he didn’t break it all the way through to the outside, just on the inside. He then opened up the break and then put a wedge in there which in turn changes the angle how I stand. Simple I thought.
It was only when I saw the follow up X-ray the next day did I realise I had some serious hardware in my thigh bone and recovery might now be a little longer than I had anticipated.
I was discharged on the Saturday evening, the Operation being on the Friday morning. I could’ve gone home around 10am that day but the discharge notes hadn’t been written and medication such as pain relief and blood thinners hadn’t been prescribed – being the weekend they were short-staffed so we had to wait…

Staying at the Premier Inn that night was a good call, I didn’t relish the journey home that night whilst being in pain of any sorts for 4 hours in a car. The accessible room was also a good call and worked well. This was clearly not my first rodeo so walking around on crutches wasn’t complicated and I was quite surprised how the pain hadn’t kicked in after the spinal nerve block had now worn off. Suzy had purchased every treat available – chocolates, biscuits, Crisps, Coke Zero, everything that she knew would keep me happy and probably distracted! The Sunday we travelled home with absolutely no issue.

The Journey so far…
It’s now 4 weeks since the Operation and I’m going to concentrate on the physical side right now.
Immediately after the Op I could engage my thigh muscles and raise my legs whilst on the hospital bed – since then I can’t. Maybe the spinal block did its job and stopped the pain when doing this movement but it’s clear that a surgeon put a 6 inch hole into the side of my thigh and it’s going to take some time to do that action again. I have no brace which is a good thing so flexibility is fairly ok, I still can’t fully straighten out my leg – I never have been able to since the crash in 2021 so that might come. The pain is there, it has come back, but I think that’s down to me trying to get back on my own two feet quicker than my body is letting me. It’s nowhere near the pain I suffered in 2021 but it definitely wakes me up at night and I occasionally have to take medication as a “breakthrough pain” thing.
I am not sofa-bound, I was for nearly 5 months back in 2021 but I was only sleeping on the sofa for 6 days this time round. Stairs are an issue still so it’s crutches one step at a time of the moment. I do get carried away and try every other step (normal walking) and get that sharp pain and realise I’m not ready yet.

I visited my local GP surgery to have the operations’ staples removed…turns out there weren’t any! The surgeon had used dissolvable stitches and I didn’t need to have any removed – the fact I was issued with the special scissors to remove the staples on discharge and they were in my discharge notes unnerved me a little. What also caught my attention was the surgeon was someone else. I’ve talked on the phone to my surgeon since and he reassures me it was him holding the knife!
Physio is just as it was back in 2021 – stretched. I was contacted (eventually) by the local physio department and was offered a face-to-face appointment some 50 miles away. Erm…I’ll walk there shall I? I think not!
Instead I picked a telephone 1-2-1 appointment which wasn’t until 3 weeks post-op. The day before I was reminded by text message and it said it was now a face-to-face appointment…50 miles away!
After a phone call and a receptionist refusing to accept I booked it as a telephone appointment, it was finally converted to a telephone appointment. He called the following day and was pretty basic in the information. It’s fair enough I guess as they deal with the average patient with little or no health & fitness aspirations. I asked about getting on an exercise bike and he said I would benefit from it – that’s a green light as far as I’m concerned! Caveat: I’m not going silly, sitting at 90 watts for 30mins and stopping if pain was too much so I’ll coach myself over the next few weeks to get back up to at least some base fitness, with no efforts of course.

Let’s now look at the mental side of things. Having had such a busy and high-volume year it’s pretty hard to do just nothing. I understand the reasons for doing nothing and I accept that jumping in too early will affect my recovery but mentally I should be training right now for the 2026 season. I do not have the ability or talent to just start training on January 1st and be competitive in the spring & summer, so training from October onwards has always been the methodology in my seasonal preparation. Any delay in this means my season will be delayed. The rational part of my brain understands that it is what it is and I just have to roll with the punches and adapt my racing season as and when I recover enough to start pushing the pedals. My irrational brain, my “chimp” is well and truly shaking its’ cage right now and wanting to get to the gym, get on the bike, get in the pool etc and just crack on with the training required. My fierce independence means that although I want to do things on my own despite the pain, I do need help occasionally admittedly, so I turn into one of those miserable old men you bump into at the supermarket who refuse to any help from the shop assistants and walk around the aisles aimlessly mumbling to themselves!

Suzy would need to take me to the gym an pool so I’m actually not ready for that just yet, but the indoor bike is upstairs and I have climbed on it when no-ones looking just to see if I’m ok. I have been restricted to 50% weight bearing until my review which has been booked in just under 7 weeks post-op (3 weeks’ time) and it didn’t look pretty when I first tried to mount the bike a few days ago. Swinging my operated leg over the saddle is painful at first and I can’t clip-in my right foot as I can’t put any kind of pressure down on my knee to force the cleat to clip in so that’s annoying.

Distraction is the key from a mental perspective. I knew this was going to happen so I had prepared with books to read, podcasts to listen to, Netflix series to watch etc. My coaching keeps me busy quite a bit of the time so I’ve concentrated in setting up over a dozen new systems including over 300 new training sessions across swim, bike, run and strength & conditioning for my athletes to take on moving into 2026. Another distraction is a book I’m writing – I haven’t titled it yet but it’s random memoirs of a dodgy cyclist with anecdotes of funny, serious, happy and sad moments over the years. It’s also served as a bit of therapy, just as this blog does, and I’ve welcomed any stories from my cycling friends so I can pad-out the book maybe into a publishable thing. I’m currently at 45,000 words, I think a lot of books are generally around 80-90,000 words so although there’s more to write. I’m coming up to the start of my Ironman Journey which coincidentally where this blog started, so reading back through my 106 previous posts on here might give me some material to write about.

Nonetheless, all these distractions never fill up the entire day and you’re always caught with the occasional negative thoughts which blindside you. Being stuck indoors, four-wall syndrome as they call it doesn’t help with those thoughts developing into something more negative.
My mind casts back to the crash in 2021, the friends who visited me and the fiends who never did after nearly being killed roadside. I see them for who they are – I see you. I’m well past the initial upset, it’s more disappointment that I believed they were my true friends and they’ve shown themselves to fall far short of that. I am also reminded of the people who commented on how I was faking my injures from the crash, some of these are health professionals too who should know better than to diagnose without any knowledge of the injury. I see you too. It’s also quite amazing that these people still try & be friendly towards me knowing what they’ve done & said. To just be polite and smile is the way I’ve dealt with these people – frankly speaking I just don’t think they have the emotional intelligence to realise what they did or said.

Human nature always goes to the negatives first, I must remind myself that I have filtered out my true friends in this whole journey. I also need to say that the people who never visited, the people who never messaged me, this time or last time, aren’t part of my new circle.
I’ve learnt a lot about myself over the past 4 years and how resilient I actually am, I’d joke about it and say “ignorant more like” but there’s a drive within me to not stop until I’m physically unable to continue. I do hope that’s along time away and this recent bump in the road isn’t it…

Onwards!