In the days after the race, lots of people asked me, “What’s the next big thing?” An entirely reasonable question, since in the past I’ve always had a ‘next big thing’. I’d answer “there isn’t, this was the big thing”, and struggle to explain that this wasn’t just another challenge ticked off, it was a quasi-spiritual experience.

I didn't get the usual 'post-big race' blues. However, I did keep crying lots, in particular (and most embarrassingly) while watching 'The Finisher' (the documentary about Jasmin Paris' Berkeley Marathons finish) at the Sheffield Adventure Film Festival. Unsurprisingly, after a couple of weeks, I did start thinking about my next, Arctic, adventure. Years ago, I’d thought that a European Arctic ultra would be a step to doing one of the events in the Yukon. But my body’s reaction to the low temperatures on day one of the training course confirmed my feeling that my middle-aged female body doesn’t handle the cold well enough any more for this to be sensible. I wish I’d been able to do an Arctic event (and discover how much I love the Arctic) sooner, but there’s a limit to how much can be fitted into a single life. Even without the training course, the full Lapland 500 km requires too much time off in term time to normally be viable for me. Doing the 185 km race, which just covers the 1st loop, is a possibility, but it was the solitude of the 2nd loop that I loved.

After a few weeks, I started dreaming about, and researching, backcountry skiing across Svalbard (something that several people on the training course had done). I did a little bit of cross-country skiing when I lived in Sweden, but I’ve never downhill skied, and my approach to slowing down on descents was to fall over sideways (and once backwards, leading to a ‘broken’ tailbone). I bought books on Svalbard, found companies that ran trips and training courses in Norway, and almost got to the point of booking some skiing lessons on a nearby indoor ski slope. However, before doing that, I thought I should try to address the knee injury and get back to running. With more spare time, I’d been catching up on jobs around the house, and putting weight through it at odd angles (rather than moving slowly forwards in a straight line) kept making it twinge.

The last month or so has been a rollercoaster of wildly varying diagnoses and prognoses. I first saw a physio at my usual practice (the White House in Sheffield) who does ultrasound imaging. The ultrasound didn’t show anything abnormal, and the only obvious issue he could find was very tight muscles around the knee joint. He said there was nothing that indicated that an MRI would be sensible at this point, and suggested I see one of the other physios who specialise in leg issues. Cheered by this, I made an appointment with the physio who’d provided my Arctic strength and conditioning schedule and did a tentative 30 min of alternating running with walking. The running felt weird, but not painful. The next day, the knee was grumpy, though. And a few days later, at the end of a not-too-long stroll in the Peak District, a rocky descent made it decidedly angry.

At the next physio appointment, another careful examination of my knee revealed a potential meniscus tear, which might or might not need surgery, and an MRI was suggested. At this point, I was mainly relieved that I’d managed to convince someone that there was something wrong (and I wasn’t just being a wuss), and to know what it probably was. I got the MRI done, privately, a week later and was expecting to have to wait up to a week for the results. However, the next day, in a gap between appointments, the physio phoned me to break some very bad news. It was a meniscus tear, but a worse one than he’d thought (a radial tear through the posterior horn with extension to the posterior meniscal root, with partial extrusion of the body of the meniscus into the medial joint line). My memory of the phone call is fuzzy, but I got the impression that because of the position, repair wouldn’t be possible, and the best-case scenario would be trimming it to delay the onset of severe arthritis (thankfully, despite having walked quite a lot on it in the last year, only mild arthritis has developed so far). He strongly recommended talking to a surgeon and suggested a couple of specific people at Sheffield Orthopaedics. I tried not to get too carried away with Google/ChatGPT doctoring, but over the weekend, the significance of the injury (an eventual knee replacement and no running) sank in.

Due partly to work commitments, it was a couple of weeks before I got an appointment with one of the recommended orthopaedic consultants. I’d originally been planning on walking the LDWA Hunnypot 100 in the meantime. However a LDWA 100 didn’t seem like a great use of the remaining ‘life’ of my knee, so instead I spent a couple of days (legal) wild camping in the Yorkshire Dales. I’d intended to spend time reading in the Sun, but due to broken reading glasses and a surprising amount of wind, I came home early. On the train home, a migraine (my first in over a decade) started. Fortunately, I got home before the vomiting started and was only sick 3 times in an hour before falling asleep (in the past, I’d regularly have hours of intense pain and vomiting). My migraines are stress-induced, and on top of the knee injury, there’s a lot of very bad stuff going on at work (for particle physics and astronomy nationally, the whole of the University of Nottingham, and Nottingham physics specifically). Most of my colleagues, including some research superstars, have received ‘at risk of redundancy’ letters, but (so far at least…) to my huge relief, I haven’t, thanks, I think, to the research fellowship which allowed me to do the Arctic race.

Unlike all of the other medical professionals I’ve seen in the past few years, the consultant didn’t start the appointment by telling me how old I am. Instead, he asked me about my activity levels and what I’d like the outcome to be. “Up until a year ago, I was running multi-day ultras. I’d love to get back to that, but I’m guessing that’s not possible. The thing that’s really important to me is being able to continue covering long distances in the hills on foot for as long as possible.” (I’d given a lot of thought to this over the last few weeks.) To my surprise, he told us (the OH had come along for moral support and to take notes) that he could repair it. Apparently, it’s something that some surgeons have started doing in some cases relatively recently, so there’s limited data on how long the repairs last, but without a repair, I’ll likely need a knee replacement within 5 years. This sort of tear is common in middle-aged women with high BMIs (it usually happens when stepping onto a curb), and the high BMI and already severe arthritis mean repair isn’t viable. I have, however, found on the internet several 40-60-something female ultra runners who’ve had similar tears repaired.

I’d gone into the appointment expecting to be able to fit the 8-week recovery from a meniscus trim in between some work travel in mid June and our planned holiday in Japan in early September. Working out how to fit in the more major recovery from a repair, including 6 weeks of no weight bearing, was a bit trickier. I asked about postponing the surgery until December, but was advised that sooner would be better. We went home, and within a few hours, I decided to cancel my upcoming work travel and schedule the surgery ASAP to give me the best chance of being somewhat mobile by the end of Summer. (I was supposed to be at a dark matter workshop in Pollica in Italy this week, and at CERN the week after, for a primordial black hole workshop and also to give a seminar to the theory division.)

I haven’t yet asked the million-dollar questions (not just “will I be able to run again?” But “If so, will multi-day running significantly increase the risk of the repair failing?”). In the ~ 2 weeks between the MRI and the appointment with the consultant, I’d sort of come to terms with having to give up on my six-day running targets (400 miles and then, maybe, in a few years’ time, the British women’s over 55 record). In the last two decades, I’ve done multiple things I didn’t think I was capable of (finishing the (full Winter…) Spine in 2014, respectable finishes at various multi-day races and getting tantalisingly close to 400 miles in 6 days). Being somewhat slow, I was always more focused on challenges than competition, and over the last few years, challenges have evolved into projects and adventures. And for the next 6+ months, the project is rehab, to hopefully allow me to keep on having adventures on foot.