Day 27
S85 8' 12.84", W80 54' 48.24"
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Martin's Achilles problems cause the team to stop for the day.
“Hi everyone. It’s Martin, on day 27 of the expedition.
We got up this morning at Thiels, and started off. And we had some great conditions, some of the best terrain we’ve had on the entire expedition, if not the best terrain. Not much sastrugi, and we had a good rest last night.
Unfortunately, within about 75 minutes of our first shift (Lou’s always up front on our first 90-minute shift and I tuck in behind him). After about 75 minutes, I couldn’t walk. My Achilles was on fire, and I couldn’t put any load through my left leg.
The right hand side was a little bit sore, but that’s probably just aches and pains from walking to be honest with you. The left one’s the issue. We cut a bit more Thermarest up, the foam Thermarest, to create a bit more of a heel plate tonight, and put that in this morning. And that helped for the first half hour, but after 75 minutes, the pain came a lot faster than what it had been for the previous seven to ten days.
I’ve been managing this issue with a mild dosage of anti-inflammatories, icing it of a night, and stretching. So after 90 minutes, we had to stop basically. It took me about… we covered three nautical miles in the first session, and then the last 400 metres distance took me about 15 minutes. I could hardly walk. When I got to Lou – Lou was a bit further ahead, he’d stopped; and when I got to him we disconnected my harness from my pulk; to see if weight was the issue, with a view to Lou potentially taking some of the kit off me. But I couldn’t even ski or bear weight on the left leg with no pulk attached at all. Basically, when you ski forwards, you raise your heel and your toe is kept in place. You try and keep your skin on the ground and drive momentum forward. But I wasn’t able to lift my left heel at all, so my left leg was flat the whole time, for about five or six hundred metres. I ended up stopping. We took the decision to pitch the tent, which we did. We’ve now been in the tent all day, resting it. I’ve been doing some mild stretching; I spoke to the doctor at ALE, Paddy, who’s been fantastic. I took a stronger painkiller earlier on, just to help with rest, and an increased dose of the anti-inflammatories. I’ve been stretching it this afternoon. The plan now is to hopefully get a decent night’s sleep tonight, wait and see. The pain’s calmed down now, I was getting quite a lot of shooting pains up it, and that’s all stopped now thankfully. So we’ll see what happens in the morning, and then we’ll make a strategy as to what to do next.
The plan at the minute is to get out, not put a pulk on at first, just to get ready, normal routine. And to go out and try and ski and see if I can load any weight through the foot itself. And if I can, we’ll then collapse the tent, pack up and crack on. If I can’t we’ll have to see what we’ll do next.
Not the best of news today unfortunately; it is what it is. We’re going to try and manage it as best we can.
Thank you to everyone for following. I’d just like to give a shout out to all the kids in Abu Dhabi, Miss (Emily) Louise’s class, who I know have been following the expedition. Thank you for your support.”
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