Well its been another fun pack couple of weeks, which in the end did see me back on track. First off my hopes of running the national 12 stage and the bristol 10km were wrecked by my achilles becoming increasingly bad. This was to a point were event short easy runs were very painful and almost pointless. My first piece of luck was speaking with Nick Anderson at a running camp i was helping out at for Reebok. He couldnt believe the lack of support for myself, someone that only 4 years ago was 4th in the World indoors and only just over a year a European indoor 8th place. He spoke with Pure sports medicine in London who's director Michael Dawson has agreed to help me get back to health, which is amazing and im very grateful. This came at such an important time when i was starting to think would i ever get over the achilles problem. I am due to see the Achilles expert Hakken Alfredson in the middle of May and of course any surgery would mean an end to this summer. I therefore decided to take one more role of the dice to try and save the summer and maybe delay surgery by a few months. This was in the form of an steroid epidural in which i had last wednesday, after which i had to take four days off all exercise. Even after three days my achilles was still hurting, and i really thought this ment my season might be gone. To feel better jimmy watkins went to watch the rugby league (thanks to Ian Mitchell) and had a few beers and even a kabab! Thats how bad i was feeling and the facted that i had kind of given up on the season. Come Sunday evening i did a 20mins jog and still had some pain, but did 30 the next day and it felt a bit better. I did 30mins the next day and some strides that evening, and decided to try and run on teh track wednesday evening as was ment o be racing in new york that saturday. I ran 2 x 600 and 2 x 400 ( 2 and 4rec) in spikes with no pain and was ok at 1:32 and then 56's which was more than pleasing. Thursday saw me boarding the plane to new york to race, something that even a day before seemed impossible. After a few easy runs around central park and some top quality french toast and coffee i was toeing the line at 6pm on the saturday. A week before i was eating kababs and drinking beer, funny how a week goes. The race was the NB last chance meeting, and i took part in the 1500m. The race started out slow 63 and then picked up to 2:04/5 and hit the bell in 2:51 and raced home to win by 3secs in 3:48.30- solid in windy weather and after the last few weeks. Felt really good and was just pleased to be back in one piece, but thi didnt last too long as after a few miles on the sunday morning in central park the achilles was a bit sore, i did the walk of shame back to the club and hit an hour on the bike, This leaves me not knowing quite where my legs at and it could mean im under the knife in a few weeks, but then again could just as easily be a start line near you!!!

Hello James

Good to hear you are making some progress. I've just added your 1500 time to AD. Sounds like one of the races you love and do so well in! Is there a web link to doubly confirm the time?

Do you want the last blog moved under your name? It was a general one.

Please keep us posted of your progress.

http://www.icahnstadium.org/Results/NB%20Last%20Chance.htm

there you go tim- even though they had me down as thei!

cheers james

yes time if you can re-name my second blog that would be great!

cheers again james

Thanks James
Just noticed the guy that was 2nd (Iain Whitfield) is also British. Think he is one of Dave Newport's group up at Cheltenham. If anyone spots any other British please in this or in any other overseas meet please let us know.

ian- won heat one- and i won the last race- but often in the US they combine the results- so it looks like he was 2 and we were in the same race! cheers james

How many races were there? 3 or 4?

i won race 4, iain won race 1.

cheers james