no pain no gain

The Stornoway Iron Maiden, a regular competitor and winner in ultra-endurance and triathlon events, has been forced to put the brakes on her winter training regime after a doctors diagnosis revealed the cause of some debilitating pain.

“It turns out I have a chipped bone in my shoulder,” said Christina cheerily this week.

“It’s not as bad as I anticipated to be honest as I feared the worst. The surgeon has advised me the shoulder is chipped at the cuff and the source of most of my pain is muscle damage coming from that.

“That must have happened when I came off the bike in September and the bone must have been chipped then.”

Since coming a cropper on the bike some eight weeks ago, Christina admits she has been in considerable pain and unable to swim at all which is far from ideal for a triathlete.

“I had gone to the doctors and the hospital the day after I came off but they didn’t x-ray me so I thought it must be tissue damage,” she said.

“I will have treatment assigned after an MRI scan to show the extent of any tissue damage or muscle damage.

“There is nothing that can be done regarding a chipped shoulder though. I initially thought the whole thing was cracked or broken.

“The pain of it has been very difficult to sleep or swim which is very disruptive and I was unable to even complete a couple of lengths of front crawl.”

Although the triathlon season won’t start until April/May next year Christina’s calendar of events will see her back in competitive action sooner than that with an ultra-endurance race in Donegal in May.

“That will require 15KM of kayaking which of course I will need to use my shoulder for but I’m quite optimistic though it’ll be ok,” she said.

“I have been riding though this pain for a little while. During the recent cyclocross races most riders would lift their bike over their shoulder when they needed to but for me it was too sore I couldn’t do that and I was more carrying it when I needed to lift it.”