I’m back and super-excited! My shoulder has been sliced and diced and the hole in my shoulder muscle repaired. I’ve just had my two week check up and the doc, bless him a million times, says it is perfectly fine to walk my ass off, as long as I wear my sling. The first thing I did was enter a 10km walk next weekend! Now all I have to do is get my walking speed down a bit so the 21km runners don’t lap me!

The other super-exciting thing is that in four weeks time the doc reckons I should be able to introduce a little bit of running without the sling – as long as I stick to even surfaces – no falling about on dirt trails, etc. Fine, I can do that.

What is more, I have found the silver lining in this particular cloud. The theory goes that every runner, when starting out, should build a big aerobic base. This involves running very easy at below one’s aerobic threshold – zone 2 to the lower end of zone 3 on the heart rate monitor. As the kilometres rack up at a low heart rate we build an aerobic base making running at all speeds easier. As this base builds, a person should be able to run faster and faster at that low heart rate, which means being able to go for far longer before tiring, whilst avoiding overtraining.

What this boils down to is that I am turning this whole shoulder debacle into a scientific experiment where n = 1. I will use the month of only walking and then a further month of only a little running and lots of walking to try and build this aerobic base. If the experiment is successful I will be taking the running world by storm come November!