The author Darragh Zaidan riding in the colours of French club UC Aubenas on a trip home to Ireland during a very tough 2013 season.
Having set out for his second season in France at the start of the year, this time with UC Aubenas, former junior international Darragh Zaidan’s season went from bad to worse. A crash in March saw him break his fingers, which later became infected. He also suffered a bad leg injury but didn’t realise it was so serious until much later in the season. His year became a write off. Back home in Dublin now, the 20-year-old says in this latest dispatch that it’s going to take more than one poor season to keep him down.
I have finally found the motivation to dust down the old typewriter, refill the ink and re-enter the world of blogging.
Advertisement
To refresh your memories; I haven't blogged since that season-destroying crash way back in March, after which I never fully recovered and spiralled into a deep black hole.
Following on from the crash, I got back training after 10 days in bed with a dead leg and broken fingers. It hurt.
It was a type of suffering that I had never previously experienced and to be honest I loved it. I felt alive again and my motivation was soaring.
After a solid two weeks of turbo training, we had our first real summers day and I decided to get back on the road. Pins or no pins, I was not going to miss the sun.
Week after week, I was getting progressively fitter and chomping at the bit to get back into the peloton. But with the pins in my fingers I knew I was a liability to myself and others so I took the doctor’s advice and waited.
All was going well until two weeks before I was due to restart my season; my fingers had become infected just as I was due to get the pins taken out.
I did a 14 day course of antibiotics but for the first four days I continued to train hard until I could do no more. To put it bluntly, the antibiotics knocked the shit out of me.
All of my hard work pretty much disappeared. I could do no more than one hour a day on the bike and with that I would sleep for the afternoon and eat like I was training normally.
Weight gain and plummeting morale were not making life easy.
I got back racing and I struggled. I was back training normally after the antibiotics but I was lacking in sharpness. I was getting to the finish of the races and my morale was on the up.
I was training and racing as best I could with the plan to ride a good National Championships and finish out the season strongly. But that was not to be the case.
Related News
My trip home came and went. I took 3rd place in one of the Mondello Series races and rode OK at the Nationals but I abandoned with a couple of laps to go. This was to be the beginning of the end.
I returned to France and rode solidly in a stage race and a got a few flashes of some form but I must have been imagining it as it never materialised.
My demise continued. I was training well and still motivated but when the race days came I was nowhere to be seen. I struggled to hold the pace in Mickey Mouse races and I was getting a kicking week in week out.
After missing the time cut in a horrendously difficult stage race and going home early, that marked the end of my season in my head. I couldn't hack it. I cracked.
I just couldn't get my head out of the sand for the last few weeks of my time in France. I would occasionally ride my bike if I felt like it.
I chilled by the pool with my non-cyclist friends. I would do everything and anything just to not ride the bike. I ate, drank, partied and I even started running.
I came home grossly overweight but relieved to be home. Seeing my family and friends I quickly got my head out of my arse and climbed out of the rut I had fallen into.
Since coming home I have got back down to my normal weight, my drive and ambition has returned. And I solved the problem which hindered my performances; an injury to the leg I busted up in the crash.
It wasn’t obvious just after the crash, but in time it slowly got worse and worse. I have now started a tough rehabilitation programme focused on strength and stability and hopefully it won’t take too long to get back to the levels I know I'm capable of.
I had a bad year. But that’s all it was.
One bad year. I am only 20 and it’s going to take a lot more than just one bad year to keep me down.
Until next time
DZ
http://darraghzaidancyclist.blogspot.fr/
Topics
