I’ve now concluded the first week of the running component of the rehab of my heel. It’s going to plan and I’ll be increasing distances and continuous running time this coming week. Although I’ve run nearly 130,000 km in the past thirty years, I am still learning new things – about stuff I’d never previously considered. For example, I now know that a tendon can be thought of as sort of a hybrid between a muscle and a bone. After all, tendons are the transition between muscle and bone. A tendon doesn’t just suddenly end where it attaches to a bone. It gradually morphs into actual bone. In fact, the tendon material itself varies along its length. It graduates from muscle at one end into bone at the other. The Achilles, for example, is constituted of different fibres and cells near the calf muscle to what it is when it wraps around the heel bone. The upshot is that sometimes it needs to be treated more like it’s a bone than a muscle. I think this true in my case, because my problem – at the insertional point – has not responded to normal muscle treatments.

I’ve reviewed more than half the book now. I’m confident I’ll have a first draft to the publishers next week.

Now for today’s look back in time: March 14 was memorable in both years of my world run. One year ago I was at Cluny in France, which once was home to the largest cathedral in the world, until Notre Dame was built in the 1100s. It was almost as big as Notre Dame, and must have been an impressive architectural feature in a small French provincial town a thousand years ago.

Two years ago today I reached Phoenix in Arizona. We were dinner guests that night of Walter and Nancy; one of the culinary highlights of the run.

Photo book link: http://www.momento.com.au/gallery?cpid=1575172&auth=52ef5b04ec6ac8.11540117