Ciara Mageean has revealed she has been in pain for a decade despite her fantastic athletic performances.
The Irish athlete was forced to drop out of the Paris Olympics earlier this year due to injury, but has admitted she has been running in pain for years.
Now, following on from surgery, she is hoping to be able to run pain-free for the first time in around 10 years soon.
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“I’m excited to now have the prospect of running pain free, which I haven’t done for… a lot of years. Maybe 10-plus years,” Ciara said.
Ciara underwent another surgery on her ankle when she was a student, telling the Irish Independent : “It worked really well, and I had a — probably a short period — where I was running pain-free. But pretty quickly after it, the right foot started getting similar symptoms. So actually, I’ve been coping with this for a lot of years now. I would say I’m just very stubborn.
“But the pain has been pretty high for a long time. I’ve had to adjust training in order to keep it controlled. It’s pretty much every day I would be in pain.”
She added: “There’s certainly been points over these past number of years where I’ve come in from a run and sat down and thought, ‘I actually can’t keep going’. I’ve thought I might have to retire because it’s just so painful."
Now, Ciara is thankfully on the road to recovery.
“Physically, I’m on the mend. I’d say mentally I am, too. I was certainly very heartbroken afterwards,” she said, referring to being forced to drop out of the Olympics. “I think the mental side just takes a lot longer.
“Obviously the season didn’t end the way I wanted it to, but sometimes there needs to be a catalyst for change. I suppose it blowing up like that was the catalyst for me to say I do need to go through with surgery that I was recommended before. I would say I was a victim of my own success. I was running so well that I couldn’t stop.”
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