If you have been following along my most recent running journey, you’ll know the plan. Berlin is going to be my third Abbott World Marathon Major. What may not have been obvious, and unlike the last two, this one had a number attached to it. I was deep into a good training block, the kind where I was doing well with the structure, purpose and meeting the pace targets I set in the Coopah app – this race was going to be a marathon PB attempt.

Then, about five weeks out, I tore my calf… Crossing the street….

Not Even a Running Injury

I want to be clear about this part, because it’s the bit may make me laugh in a slightly deranged way one day: this didn’t happen on a run. No overstriding on a track session, no ambitious hill repeat that got the better of me, not even a rapid direction changing sport like padel or squash. I was just crossing a road, doing nothing remarkable, and my right calf (specifically the gastrocnemius muscle) decided to say: “Have a nice day, I’m out!”. Not a small calf tweak. Two tears!

Months of early mornings, of structured sessions, of keeping to the plan, and it very nearly came completely undone crossing the street.

You can do everything right and still get taken out by something that has nothing to do with running at all.

The Five Stages of “Wait, What?”

There is a particular kind of oh-no feeling that comes with a possible race-ending injury this close to race day. Not the ordinary disappointment of a bad session or a missed long run, the sinking, slightly sickening realisation that your goal that you have been quietly building your life around for months might not happen.

I will not pretend I handled it gracefully. There was many a ‘Dr Google’ search along the lines of “calf tear recovery time” and many a thought on what alternatives there are or am I actually done.

The Rehab Grind

To their enormous credit, my sports physician and physiotherapist have been the steady hands in all of this. I won’t bore you with the full rehab protocol, but the short version is it’s been consistent, it’s been unglamorous, and – most importantly – it’s been trending in the right direction. Enough that, as things stand, I’m still planning to be on that start line in Berlin at the end of this month.

That’s not nothing. A few weeks ago, I genuinely wasn’t sure I’d be saying that.

Rewriting the Goal Sheet

If you’ve read this blog before, you’ll know I do the A/B/C goals for every race. Quick refresher for anyone new here: A goal is the aggressive, everything-goes-right goal. B goal is the realistic, solid-day fallback and your C goal is simply finishing – this last goal being the one that survives a bad day, bad weather, or bad luck.

My Berlin Marathon was shaping up to have a genuinely ambitious A goal. That version of the race doesn’t exist anymore.

This is a C-goal-only race now.

And I won’t lie to you, accepting even that (as lucky as I am to still be able to try) has been harder than I expected. It’s strange how much identity gets wrapped up in a number you have not even run yet. Letting go of the PB attempt felt, for a few days, like letting go of the whole point of the training block. All those months, and the thing I was training for just isn’t on the table.

But I’ve come round to a different way of looking at it. Getting to a marathon start line five weeks after tearing a calf muscle in two places and getting through 42.2km without making it worse, will be its own kind of achievement – arguably a harder one than chasing a PB would have been. It just doesn’t come with a shiny number at the end.

Have you ever had to swap out your A goal for a C goal mid-buildup? I’d be curious how you made peace with it, if you did at all.

Where Things Stand

So that is my current Berlin Marathon update, currently: rehab going well, calf improving, start line very much still the plan. The taper looks nothing like I imagined it would three months ago (possibly the longest taper on record), and the race itself will probably feel more like a careful negotiation with my own leg than a hunt for a personal best.

But I’ll be there. And right now, that’s the whole goal.

Catch you on the road or, this time round, probably somewhere far behind my usual pace on it.