The Long Road Ahead

In the last 6 weeks I've only touched a barbell twice. Once to roll out my quads, and once to put away one that was left in the rack at the end of the day. Two weeks before Christmas, just a few days after getting my back "fixed" I stupidly went right back to the barbell and felt the pain again, but worse this time. Then a few days later when I couldn't deadlift 55lbs twice without pain (but did it 23 more times anyway - like an idiot) I tried to convince myself that this was just how it was going to be. I was going to have to train in pain.

It was probably half martyrdom, half stubborn delusion, but I spent the majority of that workout letting my coach push me, not telling him that the pain was excruciating, fighting back tears, refusing to quit, because I didn't want to admit that I was hurt again. I didn't want to be injured. Again. I didn't want to accept that being in that much pain wasn't okay. In my head, being hurt meant being broken again. It meant being isolated again. It meant restriction and time away from the gym. I meant I wasn't going to get what I wanted in the moment which was to spend as much time as possible doing what I loved and being around other people. I didn't want to be hurt because I was afraid of what it do to me emotionally and psychologically.

For a lot of people, working out is a chore. Something they dread, force themselves to do, schedule it like a meeting so they don't bail on it... and it used to be that for me. It was a lot like forcing myself to practice my instrument when I was a music major. I just couldn't lock myself in a windowless room alone for hours at a time and play scales. As much as I liked playing as part of a band I hated playing alone and didn't have the drive and focus needed to make me a good musician. Getting on a treadmill and walking to nowhere felt like locking myself in a practice room. I hated it. I was able to force myself to go for a few months, but when I failed to see any results it became harder and harder to talk myself into going. So I didn't go for almost six months. I still paid my membership, but I was perfectly fine wasting that money. I'm not that person anymore. Don't get me wrong, I would still hate to get on a treadmill and walk to nowhere, but in the last two years I have been able to find a way to work out that I have grown to love.

When I started CrossFit I started to change the way I looked at fitness. Every training session was something new and exciting. There were people to talk to. People that helped me. I had a team. I wasn't locked in a windowless room. I was seeing results. It was fun. But more than that, it made me feel good about myself. I started to feel strong and confident and capable. I never felt that way doing water aerobics. Not knocking water aerobics, if you love it go for it, but there's something about the feeling I get hitting a heavy snatch or locking out a solid jerk, that just is not equaled for me in any other way. 

So back into my head six weeks ago, knowing I was hurt again, being told that coming to train in pain everyday was not okay, being forced to back off training the way I wanted to, not getting to participate in group classes - I felt that everything I loved was being taken away. That my stupidity and my stubbornness was costing me the only thing I had to look forward to in my day. The one thing that I felt was my key to being happy and healthy. I was afraid and upset and I had a really tough couple of weeks. I was in a lot of pain and my head was a mess. Things were pretty dark and didn't feel like I could talk to anyone about it without sounding crazy. I couldn't quite articulate why I was so upset and scared and even if I could have explained it, I felt like maybe people would think I was being a baby about it all. It helped to have my family around during the holidays and I did my best to manage the pain until I could get back in to see the doctor, but it was definitely a one hour at a time struggle. It probably shouldn't have been, but it was.

When things are tough, and even when they're not, I tend to get stuck in my own head about them, and overthink them, and obsess about every detail of the situation, and I really didn't want to do that this time. I wanted to find a way to just be okay with what was and find a way to get through it. The first two weeks were the toughest because I was still in so much pain and I basically stayed away from the gym more than I had in a long time. It was just too hard and upsetting to be there. Once I got back to the doctor and was able to get realigned again, the pain started to go away for the most part and I was able to start working on getting better. I've tried really hard to not get stuck thinking about being injured and just focusing on getting better. So far I'm doing okay with that.

I started physical therapy a few weeks ago and though all the exercises are deceptively simple and a little boring compared to lifting heavy things, they have been surprisingly difficult. It's no fun to lay around contracting small muscles, rowing, or riding the AirDyne... it's all a little like walking on the treadmill to nowhere, but I know that it's what I need to be doing most right now. I've tried to keep things as consistent as possible, stick to what I've been allowed to do in the gym, and only that, and not push this recovery.

When I was trying to make a recovery plan, my coach told me that I needed to be patient. He told me that it was going to take time. This was difficult for me to hear because of my previous experience with the healing process and being patient. When I broke my legs the doctors initially told me that I was looking at 6-8 weeks. Considering how badly I had been hurt, 6-8 weeks didn't seem so bad. I was upbeat and hopeful and I put on my brave face. I made it through the first two weeks in the hospital, and then the next two in the rehab center and though those were really rough weeks, I got through them. I was scared about the prospect of having to go into a nursing home, but things worked out and I was able to spend the next few weeks recovering at home. After that month I went in for follow up x-rays and was told "let's give it another month." Okay. Just four more weeks...but at the end of those four weeks I had to hear, "let's give it another month" again. I was crushed. My easy 6 week recovery was now moving toward twelve weeks and I was starting to feel like I was going to be stuck in a bed forever.

Sitting up for the first time in 3 months
nervous about trying to stand.

All told, it was actually almost nine months before I was released from physical therapy, able to walk without a walker or cane, and able to drive again. NINE months until things were basically normal again. Recovery ended up being almost six times longer than I was originally told it would be. I could have made a human being in the time it took for my bones to grow back together and for me to learn to walk again. I know that the doctors weren't lying to me when they told me 6-8 weeks, but I almost wish they had been able to tell me how long it was actually going to take. If I had known in the beginning that I was looking at nine months and not two, I might have been able to handle all that time a little better. If I could have seen the end of the road, maybe the journey wouldn't have been so hard. I don't know that anyone could have predicted how long it was going to take, or if I would ever be even close to "normal" again.

Yesterday my coach wrote a post for our gym blog about making goals and staying focused on them. He talked about his own journey over the last ten years and in reading that it kind of hit me what he meant when he told me to be patient and that this was going to take time. Ten years ago I was a month away from being injured in a car accident. I was a month away from a nine month road to recovery that to date was the most difficult thing I have had to do in my life. But looking back on the last ten years, or the last 31, those nine months are just a brief, fleeting memory. I know how hard I had to work to be able to walk again, and I remember all the painful and embarrassing things I had to go through. I remember falling down, and being scared, and weaning myself off of pain medicine - but I got through it all. I got better and here I am ten years later, not only able to walk but able to run, and lift weights, and get down on the ground and get back up. Things that ten years ago, in the middle of those nine months, I doubted would ever be possible.

Six weeks ago, stuck in my head and focused only on the pain, I was worried that I wouldn't be able to get from one day to the next. I was worried that I was looking down a road with no end in sight. Now I realize that the road isn't just a road I'm on until my back is better, it's a road I'm on forever. I don't want to be able to just get back to lifting weights, I want to get back to working on being healthy for the rest of my life. Yes, lifting weights and doing CrossFit is something that I want to be able to do for a long time, but I also want to be able to live without pain for a long time too. If it takes me three months, or even nine, to get my core and back strong enough to be able to lift weights for the next 10-20 years, then that is time that I'm willing to devote to the healing process. If it means dropping out of another competition, and sitting on the sidelines for the CrossFit Open this year, and maybe not competing at all this year - those are choices that I'm going to have to be smart enough to make. I can't keep feeling upset and jealous about what everyone else is able to do, because that's not my goal right now. If I'm looking at them, I'm losing sight of where my focus should be, which is on my recovery plan and the long road ahead of me. I've already made it through the first six weeks, I just need to keep focused and keep moving down the road. I know that I am strong enough to get past this injury because I have been able to do it before.

When the Basket Breaks

Imagine you've got all these eggs that you've got to carry up a hill. Some are fresh, some are hard boiled, but you aren't really sure which ones are which. You've got to be careful with all of them. Oh, and you don't have anything to carry them in...

What do you do?



First, you try to hold as many as you can in your hands and you start up the hill. But you have really tiny hands and inevitably after a few steps you drop one. Luckily it landed on a particularly soft piece of grass and rolled down to the bottom of the hill. It was a pretty important egg, and you weren't that far up the hill, so you go back to get it and start up the hill again.

You're a little more tired because you've already walked this part of the hill once, but you keep going. It's still difficult to hold the eggs, and sometimes you bobble them. A couple of times you drop one and it cracks a little, but doesn't roll, and you're able to pick it up and continue on. Every once and awhile when the eggs roll, you chase after them and you're able to catch up before they get all the way to the bottom of the hill... but then you have to climb that part of the hill again.

Along the way you find a new egg or two, and they seem like eggs you'd like to have so you pick them up, even though you're having trouble holding the ones you already have. You get a little smarter and try pulling up the hem of your shirt and holding the eggs in a make-shift pouch of sorts. This is working pretty well, but even though you were initially careful with the eggs, the further you get up the hill, the more confident you become in your shirt pouch and forget that the eggs can still break if you don't hold onto the hem just right.

And then you trip. And fall. And the eggs scatter. Some crack, some roll, some break and splatter all over the front of your shirt. And there you are, halfway up a hill with half your eggs broken or smeared all over you, the other half out of your reach at the bottom of the hill. After you spend some time mourning the loss of your eggs, beating yourself up for being so careless, and after a fleeting moment in which you consider the idea of continuing up the hill without the ones you can't reach, you decide to go back down the hill and try to find the most important eggs.

Once you're back at the bottom of the hill you find yourself with far fewer eggs than you had at the start and decide that maybe climbing the hill isn't worth losing the few eggs you've got left. Maybe you can just hang out at the bottom of the hill and hold your eggs and that's good enough. Maybe the top of the hill is overrated. So you sit and hold your eggs and you watch other people climb the hill.

After awhile you get sick of watching people climb the hill, and you really want to give it another try, but you don't want to lose your eggs again. You actually liked climbing the hill the first time, even though it was difficult, and it would be really nice to get to the top. You start to think that maybe along the way you'll be able to replace some of the eggs you lost. But you're going to need a strategy this time. You can't just try to hold onto all the eggs and expect to not drop them again.

A basket. You need a basket for the eggs. Something big, and supportive, with a good structure. Something that won't let you down like your hands and your shirt did. If you don't have to do it all on your own the eggs will be so much easier to carry. Then you find a basket that seems to meet all the criteria and add in your few precious eggs and start back up the hill once more.

The climb is difficult, like it was before, but the eggs are safe in the basket. You're making great progress up the hill, finding more eggs, adding them to the basket. Never dropping one. Even when you switch out your basket for a different one for a little while and take a different trail up the hill - leaving a few of those eggs behind - you and the eggs are still doing okay.

After awhile you backtrack to the first basket and head up the original path again, but the basket you left behind isn't quite the same as when you left it and when you add back in all the eggs you don't notice that the bottom has become a little worn and the weave is not as tight as it used to be. But you really want the basket to be as strong as you remember it and as you try to make your way up the hill on the old path, you're finding the climb much more difficult than you remember it being.

Wasn't this easier before? Wasn't carrying your eggs in this basket all that you needed before to get up the hill with the eggs intact? Then the unthinkable happens. The bottom falls out of the basket. There you are again with your eggs on the ground. Cracked. Broken. Splattered. Rolling away from you.

They warn you not to put all your eggs in one basket.

So, what do you do when the basket breaks?