Author: Joss Winn

I experienced a metatarsal stress fracture on 9th October, on the 7th day of consecutive running and 185km of running over two weeks. I didn’t realise it was a fracture to begin with a went out running on it again (twice!), which no doubt made things worse. Then a few days later, I came down with (mild) Covid and didn’t leave the house for 6 days. Altogether, I didn’t exercise for 12 days and when I returned to exercise, I used the bike and rowing machine at the gym. It was my first experience of using a gym, as far as I can remember.

While laid up in bed, I decided to bring forward my idea to take up rowing on the water. For a while, I had thought that I would learn to row when my legs were no longer up to running so much, but the injury brought that decision forward. Rowing is low impact, exercises over 90% of the muscles in your body and is a way of being outside in nature, like trail running. So I joined the Lincoln Rowing Centre, located a few minutes from my house, and on November 1st, started a structured training plan on the indoor rowing machine (‘Erg’). The training plan finished on Saturday 11th February with a 2km time trial. You can see the overall trajectory of exercise (‘stress’) in the chart below as my training load dropped rapidly in October and gradually increased over the next three months.

I was very pleased with the time trial and feel like I’ve regained the running fitness I lost in October as well as gaining rowing fitness. From hereon, I’m running and rowing…