Maximising Potential
With food, sleep and the natural passage of time.
Over the past week, I’ve been working on an audiobook about the myths and lies in the health and wellness industry. It’s brilliant, it feels like a relief, and the narrator and I laughed to be able to flush out entrenched beliefs about “inflammation” and “toxins” from our minds. Ironically, we have indeed detoxed from all the marketing that means absolutely nothing, phrases like “aids recovery” and “supports immune function,” vague enough to be legal. But you know what really does those things? We all know, really. Good food and sleep. You cannot cheat it, and you cannot beat it.
I’m seeing a private physiotherapist about my knees, because although I’m running, walking and cycling fine, they’re still swollen from the trauma of the crash. I currently really struggle to crouch down to get something from a low shelf in a supermarket, for example. Although the physio at the hospital said my knees would probably be like that until the end of the year, that didn’t seem right to me. Even if it is right, it doesn’t work with my lifestyle, and I wanted to know if there was anything I could do about it. I feared the swelling would be slowing down my running in ways I couldn’t necessarily locate. I feared I would be doing damage, and I wanted to be sensible about it.
He has a plan, we have a plan, and he even found a bit of scar tissue in my right hamstring that I knew nothing about. It was kind of amazing - he measured the bend in my knees, comparing them, then asked me to stand and briefly prodded the back of my leg. We were chatting away until he yelped, “Found it!” Later, I found it myself, a gristly lumpy bit that stung for me to press it. I love this about physios: you can think you know the map of your own body, and within a few seconds, they can poke the side of a knee or the back of a leg and make you aware of the source of your troubles.
He’s great. I’ve been to him before, he was recommended to me by a friend, I trust him. But in light of recording the book this week, I noted that over the course of my half hour appointment, he referred to touching wood for luck a fair few times. At the time, I went along with it, oh yes, this should be a straightforward process, hopefully we won’t discover any other issues, and touch wood, his diagnosis will be correct. Even in the realms of science, with all of the measuring devices and names of tendons and pictures of the human anatomy on the walls, we’re playfully relying on luck.
It’s just what we do when things are a little unknown, isn’t it. If it could go in a series of directions, we call on luck to make it go the way we want. I don’t believe in luck for this, I want things that I can pro-actively do, which is where we might get swept up in the other direction, and start buying creams and turmeric shots and teas that generically “reduce inflammation”. I was quite close to seeking out any of these, feeling like it would do some good, but then I remembered that none of it has ever actually speeded up a process or made a difference in the past.
So, what am I doing? I’m eating well, sleeping, and drinking water. My water is not ionised, it is not oxygenated, it is not placed outside overnight during a full moon. It’s just tap water. And with time - that other magical treatment that we’re always trying to maximise and hack - and the help of a qualified physio, I trust that my knees will get better.
The Diamond League is back, baby. I love watching athletics, I love following the cast of characters at these events around the world, I love seeing rivals pipped against each other and records broken and the camaraderie of the field events. Last night, it was in Rome, and the men’s 100m race was the last event, following a light display. They turned off all the lights in the stadium, and the athletes were apparently supposed to be spotlit as they came out to take their positions, but this didn’t really happen. Anyway, we definitely saw American sprinter Noah Lyles come out, bouncing around on that bouncy track in bouncy shoes like he could simply catapult himself 100m.
The gun goes, and Noah Lyles is not fastest out of the blocks, it looks like Marcell Jacobs is, but Lyles builds his speed over those short 100m until he’s level with the competition and by the finish line, sure enough, he’s the winner in 9 minutes 88 seconds.
Hannah England pointed out in the commentary that that’s how he won the Olympic games. He got a good enough start, was close enough to the rest of the field, and then withstood the pressure of the last 20 metres. The race is 100m long: You don’t win by getting out of the blocks first, you win by finishing first. So many things are like that, aren’t they. Something about that race execution just struck a chord with me yesterday. When you’re in the middle of pursuing something, it’s easy to feel like others are getting ahead, you’re not where you want to be, and being able to achieve what you’ve set out to do is uncertain. But you have to play to your strengths: get a good enough start, stay close enough to the goal, then withstand the pressure.
And the Diamond League circuit has only really just begun.