Free Jessica Ennis: Unbelievable - From My Childhood Dreams to Winning Olympic Gold by Jessica Ennis

foot. Bill Ribbans, a top orthopaedic surgeon, handled the process. He was caring and brilliant and got the time frame right – two long, hard, bitter months. My physio Ali worked with him to create a rehab programme, and there was a lot of travelling to and from Northampton to see him, and then to and from London for more scans. I spent ages sitting in the car and simmering in near silence, angry that this should happen to me.
    The year was a write-off so I looked ahead to 2009 and the indoor season the following spring. Then, looming far enough in the distance to be a realistic goal but not too far away to feel intangible, were the World Championships in Berlin in August 2009. I went to the gym and did weights and core exercises, although they were literally exercises in frustration as I could not put any weight on my foot.
    Ali and Derry were devastated too. They felt they were in some way to blame, because it was their area of expertise, but never for one moment did I think like that. The unfortunate thing is that with a stress fracture you hammer away in training and it’s only when the bones fracture – literally when the cracks appear, if you like – that you feel pain and know anything is wrong. They wished they could have done something but they did everything right. It’s such a vague feeling around the navicular that it is hard to diagnose anything unless you have scans every day. I told them they were not to blame at all, because I knew that we were a team and that Chell, Ali, Derry, Mick and I were all collectively heartbroken.
    They responded with a huge show of faith. Ali had been working with UK Athletics for a long time, nursing Kelly Holmes through her chronic injuries to a double gold in Athens in 2004, and I sensed she was trying to phase out of it all. I was not sure of Derry’s plans either, but Olympics are turning points for lots of people, not just athletes, and many choose to do other things after them. They sat me down during those rehab days and Derry said: ‘Ali and I have had a chat and we’ve decided we’re going through until 2012 with you.’ I broke out into a rare smile because it felt like such a commitment from them. ‘All of us are going for it,’ he added. ‘We’ve got unfinished business.’
    Ali had already helped a lot, not only with her expertise but also with her attitude. She said she thought things happened for a reason. I believe that too. I am not religious but I am fatalistic. I believe you have a journey in life but I don’t believe that it’s all out of your control. I also think you have to be able to blame external things sometimes. If you constantly blame everything on the internal then it’s very hard to get over a disappointment. I don’t mean you always want to be able to say that it was the fault of the weather or the track that you didn’t perform at your best, and I am not advocating passing the buck. But it helps if you can look outside yourself.
    Not that I felt that in those early days. I was so down and needed to get my head around it, but before long I wanted to do the rehab. I wanted to get down to the EIS, but I was up and down. Some days I felt like that, flushed with a new sense of positivity and wanting to do the pool sessions or the programme I had for my upper body, but on others I felt terrible and angry that everybody else was getting on with their careers.
    I tried another way of coping one night. My friends dragged me out for a night on the town. I didn’t want to go because I was on crutches and wallowing in misery, but I went and enjoyed myself. A bit too much as it turned out. It was the drunkest I have ever been in my life. I got home and could not get the key in the door. Andy was asleep because he had to go to work the next day, so I struggled along in my drunken state and eventually went around the back. Andy later told me that he found me sprawled out on the back step, crutches and rehab boot all over the place. It was