It's come full circle

For those of you who are new to my blog, all this "craziness" started in 2008 when, due to too much alcohol, I entered a "white collar" charity boxing event in London.  It was an amazing event, black tie, £400 per ticket and TV camera's.  Fortunately I lost, so gave up boxing, but not before raising £14,000 for Maggie's Cancer Caring Centre's.  I loved the training and the fitness, but not getting beaten up, so entered a triathlon as I couldn't swim!  That led to Ironman then Marathon des Sables  (5.5 marathons self supported across the Sahara Desert in 6 days) and many more crazy events and this blog has reported on my journey throughout.
I'm now approaching 62, how did that happen?  I still have ambitions to enter events that will stretch me to limits I don't know I even have.  But my body and mind need to hold up.
I'm still coming to terms with being diagnosed with Atrial Fibrillation but hope the medication and me keeping an eye on it will allow me to continue with these events - might have to turn down the ones over more than a week in the heat.
To do this, I have hired a personal trainer as I need to be become stronger to reduce my susceptibility to injury.  Before the Glasgow half marathon my training was affected by sore quads and then I fell and really hurt my left knee.  I was fortunate that it didn't affect my Glasgow half marathon but it has affected my training for the Amsterdam Marathon in a weeks time.  The strength training is going well, although my knee is still not good, but today I returned to boxing training after a 15 year gap.  Just circuits and pad work but, I managed to get tennis elbow FFS!  Couldn't believe it and had to miss out part of the training.  It was a tough session and I was blowing out my a@@e but I don't like failing and this was a fail.
Earlier today I read a race report from my pal Wilson who has had a tough year involving back problems and DNFs in half ironman races.  He battled through in his "A race", Barcelona Ironman, and was slower than he wanted but took pride in finishing the race in difficult conditions.  That's the mental strength you need to compete in these events.  He might be feeling his age, we're all getting older but mentally he's focused on his goal of a sub 10 hour ironman.  It's friends and stories like this that inspire me to work hard during the winter to get in shape for next year.  
So 15 years later I come full circle and back to boxing.  It will be part of my winter fitness training and hopefully I can get rid of the tennis elbow.  I can assure you however that I won't be going back in the ring.  That was an experience I wouldn't want to repeat.  Age may only be a number but keeping my body injury free is probably my biggest challenge.  Bring on the winter training.