Peaty forteller:
I was at the British National champs at Rehola and had been practicing all day Saturday. I went up for my seeding run at 6pm, and was on a good one – four seconds up on Marc Beaumont at the split.
Then I came into the infamous “Star Wars” section of the track. I slipped on a root coming into it and stuck my left foot out to take a steadying dab, little did I know at that speed there was a big hole that my foot went into and as soon as it touched the mud it popped straight out of socket. I carried on with my crash knowing that when I would eventually stop rolling around my foot was going to be pointed in the wrong direction to the rest of my body. I let a few swear words out, then crawled out of the mud pit to some dry land to wait for the Extreme Medic guys to come help.
The first prognosis was that I had dislocated my ankle and fractured a bone. I was gutted - all I could think about was Ft Bill and getting better for that race.
They got me loaded into the Ambulance and off to the hospital where they could assess it more thoroughly. I was pretty out of it at this point as I had made them give me more Morphine, saying I was a big lad and needed a large dose.
Thanks to Titley’s friend making a call there was a doctor waiting for me at the hospital who took good care of me. He ended up opening my foot up so he could watch the bones and see that the dislocation had gone back into place properly, and it wasn’t until 2 days later when I came down from the Morphine that he explained what he had done.
It turns out that he learnt something from me that night, as he has never seen a foot dislocated before. It came out below my ankle bone which is apparently really rare. Anyway it went back in fine and I don’t have any fractures in my bones. They put me in a pot (cast to the other half of the World) and said to stay off it for 6 to 8 weeks, very conservative I thought. However, once I see the specialist on Friday I will know a better recovery time.
I would like to thank Matt and Rich from Extreme Medical, very professional guys. And I would also like to thank all the guys and girls that helped carry me out of a muddy forest, much appreciated everyone.
Cheers…………………………..StevePS; I hope to see you all in Ft William.
