But as it turned out the timing of his first major injury could not have been better.
The 22-year-old had been pushing hard to qualify for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Perhaps too hard.
The Dunedin middle-distance runner picked up a stress fracture in his pelvic area in December and it was not until the middle of February that he could resume running properly.
About a month later the Olympics were postponed until next year, due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
For some older athletes the delay is a huge disadvantage. But for Chignell it is a wonderful opportunity.
He is perhaps four years away from reaching his peak and the new schedule has bought him the space he needs to cut the 20-25 seconds off his personal-best time for the 5000m. If he can do that, Olympic qualification is a very real possibility.
He clocked a best of 13min 46.68sec for the distance while competing in Belfast last year.
He had been sick leading into the race and faded during the final 800m, so still has plenty more to give.
"I know I can still chip a decent amount of time away, so we were definitely targeting 2020," Chignell said.
"But then obviously the injury came. We were still trying for 2020 ... but it was pretty much at the point we decided to back off that Tokyo was postponed for a year.
"This is my first proper injury and I couldn’t have timed it any better, to be honest.
"The idea of going to the Olympics all seemed a bit foreign, really. But with having an extra year — a solid year of training — I know I’ll definitely be able to take down those times a decent amount. So we might be actually looking quite good for Tokyo 2021."
There are two ways to qualify. There is a set qualifying time of 13min 13.50sec or an athlete can qualify through a points system.
Chignell regards the latter as his most realistic option.
He made significant gains while racing overseas against more competitive opponents last year. But in the long term he sees the 10,000m as potentially his stronger distance.
However, he is firmly focused on the 5000m and is slowly building back up to a full training load following his injury.
He is running about 90km each week and adding an extra 10-15% each week until he reaches about 140-150km.
"The whole [injury] took quite a while, mainly because of the amount of load and stress it was under from just walking. It took about 11 weeks for the bone to fully heal."
Most would welcome a break but Chignell said it was "pretty rubbish".
"One of the things with running is you don’t really realise just how nice it is to be out and get away from everything. It was pretty tough not being able to run for that long."
These days he could pretty much run straight down the middle of the road, with so little traffic. But, of course, Chignell is far from a middle-of-the-road runner.
