Injured? It happens to us all

I had a great email from one of my clients recently. He has been through a lot in the past couple of years with crashes putting his cycling on hold multiple times. A few weeks ago, he was involved in yet another freaky crash. Throughout the past few years, I had similar experiences with a bad crash each season: an almost broken neck in 2009; a broken femur in 2010; and a broken back in 2011. Stuff happens when riding, but come on! Let’s keep it within reason.

How do we deal with these kinds of situations, when the sport seems to always be beating us down?

In my case, people were telling me my career was over after I broke my leg in the late summer of 2010. The universe was telling me that it was time to quit. All I could think was that the universe could get stuffed! For me it was a case of proving that I could come back from something so dramatic. I was old and near retirement, but I didn’t want to let that be the way I stopped racing. Being able to compete again at a high level was something that I felt I needed to do for myself. I wanted to experience that feeling of racing again with the world’s best. I got it when we did the Trofeo Laigueglia in Italy the following spring.

My client took a different approach to figuring out how to deal with his setbacks. He tallied up his injuries, which was a long list. He then took a pro-and-con approach. In spite of his injuries, he figured he was fitter, slimmer and happier than he was before he started riding. All in all, he was better off despite the setbacks. When I got his email, it hit home and I thought it was great that he had come to grips with his situation.

To another client suffering knee pain just as she felt like she was getting back into the swing of training, I said all of us suffer setbacks. It is how we respond and overcome them that defines us and whether we succeed or fail.

Remember that idea when you are injured and that road back to health seems insurmountably long and painful. Really though, despite it seeming that way, it is a bump in the road. You just can’t see beyond it at that moment. You will get past it and look back and think “that wasn’t so bad.” It was a pain, and you were likely really upset for a while, but it wasn’t something so bad that it was worth giving up on riding. Be consistent and diligent in your recovery and you may even come back stronger than you were before. Irony of ironies.

OK, enough preaching, but I wanted to share what I thought were some positive experiences in the hope that it might lift someone up that might need a boost and help the rest of us appreciate the joy we experience through our active lifestyles.