Julie Dibens Unsure About Future Kona Racing
Dibens was very candid about her future in triathlon in a recent blog post.
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Ironman 70.3 and three-time Xterra world champion Julie Dibens was very candid about her future in triathlon in a recent blog post on Juliedibens.com. Dibens had to drop out of both the Ironman World Championship 70.3 and Ironman World Championship races this year on the run due to a foot injury that has plagued her throughout her career.
In the blog post, Dibens explains that she has chosen to forgo surgery in favor of rest and rehab.
“Even though microfracture surgery is an option, it appears that it wouldn’t fix the problem,” Dibens explains in the post. “It may give me some short term relief, but that would only be after a fairly lengthy lay-off and rehab. I think I have also learned that any time you are cut open and things are done surgically that you may just be opening up a can of worms to get other problems… and should be the absolute last option. The alternatives to microfracture surgery, was to rest it and rehab it, or look at getting a prosthetic toe…. even though the latter sounds kinda cool in a sick kinda way, I opted to rest and rehab it.”
Dibens makes it clear that it will take time before she can make any future plans, as she has not run in quite a while. The biggest revelation in the post is that we may or may not see Dibens make the start in Kona again. The 2010 third-place finisher says that training for multiple Ironmans each year may be too hard on her injuries.
“It may mean no more IM…but we will see,” Dibens writes. “I still have a hunger… ok, it’s more like a starvation to compete in Kona, but in all reality my foot may not allow that. If I had the choice of trying to get to Kona and risk not racing at all, or racing successfully over the Olympic/ middle distance and Xterra, I would have to choose the latter. I think my body ‘could’ handle 1 IM a year, but with the new qualification rules this isn’t possible so the Kona dream may have to go on hold. There are soooo many other races out there that I can get excited for and ones that I hope to be at next year include 5150, Rev3, Abu Dhabi, Vegas, Xterra and the list goes on.”