The time it takes to heal

Every injured active person probably fantasizes about a magical moment of recovery, when they can release all of their pent-up energy into the activity they love, and have their body respond with pain-free, powerful bursts of unhindered motion. Funny how there's no way a clean line can exist between "injured" and "all fine, 100 percent, no fitness lost and no remnants of injury at all." And yet we still sit around anticipating the moment we can cross this imaginary line, and feel frustrated when instead we find ourselves mired in gray areas.

After examining my knee and warning me about some ongoing inflammation, my doctor gave me the official okay to ride my bike. Surprising no one, I took this permission slip a little far over the weekend, logging close to a hundred hilly miles over three days on the road bike, which I justified because:

a. My orthopedic knee brace allows me to all but immobilize the joint, making the side-to-side movements that aggravate the ligament almost impossible (at the expense of nearly every other part of my leg.)

b. I'd have to do something majorly wrong to crash my bike while pedaling slowly on pavement, and if I did — especially if that crash involved a vehicle — I'd have worse problems than a bum knee.

c. Biking makes me happy. Happy!!!

d. Dr. Chiu said it was okay. (Okay, he actually didn't.)

e. Any sign of trouble, and I can call Beat and have him come pick me up. Eventually. When he returns from that awesome redwood forest trail run that I wasn't able to join, and probably won't for who knows how many more weeks or months because this knee that is okay at turning pedals still sucks at walking.

f. Hills are okay but flats are bad because I can't pedal a high cadence with my brace on, and put too much pressure on the joint when I try. So I better stick to hills.

g. I'm now nearly six weeks post-injury. That's the timeline for early returns to activity in most cases of ligament sprains/minor tears.

h. Happy!!!

The knee made it through the weekend without pain, but many muscles in each leg were significantly worse for the wear, with burning, throbbing, soreness, and other complaints that I haven't heard in a long time. On Sunday I joined Liehann and Trang, who were pedaling a tandem, as we coasted out of the mountains to the ocean and then turned around to climb back out. Temperatures were pushing close to 90 degrees in the sun, which feels especially brutal in mid-October, and declines in my fitness manifested quickly. Still, I was so thrilled just to be outside and riding my bike that I had to consciously hold back not to chase my friends on flat stretches of road, and fight the urge to relieve the searing acid pain in my legs by standing out of the saddle to chase them up hills (Right now I have to sit at all times, a riding style I'm not accustomed to, and one I've learned leads to an angry butt and quads.) I was slow, out of shape, in a decent amount of non-injury-related pain ... and I was so happy!!!

Today I had an appointment with an orthopedic massage therapist who both Beat and I like to visit when we need some realigning. He's very good. He said my whole leg was something of a mess, but worked out the tightness in my hips and demonstrated several physical therapy exercises I can do at home to strengthen the ligament-supporting tissues around my knee. This afternoon I pulled out my newly acquired yoga mat and did several sets of these exercises, along with some core work — the first day of a new strength-training regimen that I promised myself I'm going to stick with, this time.

Yes, this time I'm going to stick with tedious indoor exercises in the interest of building better balance and all-around strength. Actually, I'm quite excited about it. Of course, right now I still have that magical moment of recovery — the moment I can run again — as a still-unobtainable motivator on the horizon. That's really all I want — to move through the world, as often and for as long as I'm inclined, swift and graceful and free, without fall-induced injuries. Is that too much to ask?

Still Grand, even from a limited perspective

 My plan for Fall Grand Canyon 2014 was to drive around the big ditch with my mom, who serves as the support crewperson every year, and often doesn't have any company for this thankless task. I thought it was a great plan to spend some quality one-on-one time with my mom, and still catch some glimpses of this geographical marvel from the rim. Like my Lonely Highway Drive, these trips sounded like great choices until I strung them all together, and realized I was setting myself up for A LOT of car time in the span of six days. (2,773 miles. Google Maps says it's 45 hours worth!) All of this sitting in one position aggravated my knee substantially. I'd been working daily on my range of motion, and every time I stepped out of the car, it felt like I had been set back two weeks at least. I was able to get my flexibility back after short walks, mostly, but some soreness and stiffness persisted.

 My dad hiked across the canyon with his friends Raj and Chad. Raj is an Ironman triathlete and Chad has posted a bunch of fast marathons, and I'm working to coax them toward the dark side (trail running.) The fact I needed walking sticks and a brace to walk 300 feet to overlooks probably did not help my cause.

 After we drove from the North Rim to the South Rim — a 200-mile drive to bridge a 24-mile hike — I decided to meander down the Bright Angel trail to greet my dad and friends. In my memory this trail was buttery smooth with gentle inclines, but in my current physical state it morphed to something perplexingly rocky and steep. I clickity-clacked down very slowly, making a visual note of every foot placement, and went down the rockier steps sideways. My mother was adamant that this hike was a bad idea and I admit it was a risk — any fall or fast motion against the aggravated tendon has the potential to re-injure or worsen the tear. Since I'm still fighting that feeling of instability, I can't really trust the leg to hold its own weight, so even simple walking carries this risk. Beat will be shaking his head vigorously as he reads this ... "long-term thinking!" he'll scold. But, gah, this slow walking just felt so good. On the way back up I was able to keep up with my dad by stiffening the whole leg and effectively not using the joint — climbing peg-legged, at the expense of my calf muscle. There was more soreness afterward, and I admit to some regret, but ultimately I don't believe these motions aggravated the healing process. Really, there has to be a point where I start the path back to mobility. That is never an easy or straightforward divide to bridge.

Before I headed home, my dad and I walked for an hour on the Bonneville Shoreline Trail. I was happy that my knee felt strong for that entire outing (by strong, I mean, "not feeling like it might buckle underneath me at any moment.") I do believe the healing is going well — I have no more swelling, only infrequent and low-level pain, and a full range of motion. But I do worry about that stability issue. If ligaments are torn, the instability can persist long after they're technically healed, because the ligament isn't tight enough to support the knee. I suspect my left MCL was compromised last year, and that old injury was possibly aggravated in this year's knee-shredding, which also involved enough soft-tissue damage to cause bruising. Now I likely have a compromised LCL as well, and while I can pedal a bike without issue (although not much in the way of strength), any and all weight-bearing activities still feel iffy. I plan to discuss this with my doctor at an appointment this week, although he is likely to scold me as well because he recommended I do nothing for four weeks.

I realize this is a boring blog post. I keep going back to posts from last summer to try to get a better grasp on the symptoms and recovery of what I believed to be an MCL injury, but there's nothing useful. So I'm posting now just to have some record of the recovery process, boring walks and all.

But it certainly was a beautiful fall weekend in Utah and Arizona. I'm glad I went. 

Taking the lonely way home

 Injured is a strange, somewhat hollow place to be. It's not a crisis and it's not even sad, really, but it does feel like losing a form of expression — like a painter who's been temporarily stripped of her palette of colors. I've become accustomed to expressing myself with movements through the world — I leave footprints on the trail, therefore I am alive. When I'm limited in my movements, there's a quieting in my voice. I become less of a participant and more of an observer.

After I hurt my knee, my parents assumed that I wouldn't join them for the annual trip to the Grand Canyon. I assured them that Fall Grand Canyon meant more to me than just another rim-to-rim hike — it's always been about spending time with my family, in a setting that feels more intimate and natural than the typical craziness of the holidays. So I set out for Salt Lake City on Wednesday, after rejecting reasonably priced plane tickets in favor of the long drive. Even in my own mind I couldn't quite make up justification for this, except to admit a rather ridiculous response to my injury. Like a painter holding a crude chunk of charcoal, I was curious to see what I could draw with my car.

 The goal was "no freeways" and I started sketching in Stockton, since the Bay Area is effectively a maze of freeways, and it's a little too ridiculous to try to find a way around this. The sun came up over the parched Central Valley, and I thought about an article I recently read about California communities where taps had gone dry, entire towns running out of water. On this morning there was an eerie stillness to the air that enhanced the apocalyptic progression of my daydreams. I started to feel uneasy about it all so I turned on NPR, where the news was, of course, about the tricky politics of water rights.

 Highway 88 provided a winding escape into the Sierras, where traffic dissipated almost entirely and a sudden chill pierced the air. I kept the window rolled down anyway, until my skin was pocked with goosebumps and my ears and cheeks were numb, smiling at the mountains.

 Before the 2009 Tour Divide I used to travel with a view mainly fixed forward, but now when I drive I find myself looking up, most of the time. This shift in perspective was dramatic enough that I noticed —suddenly my immediate space took on astonishing depth as the familiar foreground of storefronts and road signs faded against a dramatic background of forested slopes and jagged peaks. I'd nearly forgotten there was any point in my life when I didn't let my eyes drift upward and visualize running and climbing along the ridges that outline the sky.

 A screaming descent down the eastern slope of Sierras, followed by a short diversion through civilization via Carson City, brought me to U.S. 50 — the Loneliest Road in America.

 Ever since I traveled this way last autumn, I've wanted to ride a bike across Nevada via the Lonely Highway. With an average of only one town every hundred miles, desolate basins, a steady progression of steep passes, and not even trickles of streams from which to siphon drinking water ... it would be a difficult but beautiful tour.

 I spent an hour pondering all of the places I'd like to ride my bike when I'm strong enough to ride a bike again. Then I spent another, more anxious hour pondering how I'd cope if I couldn't ride a bike ever again. Life is, after all, unpredictable, and such abilities can be lost permanently and without warning. Even minor injuries coax contemplation on the root of passion — if passion could continue without one's chosen medium, or if it would just wither away, like cracked paint on a forgotten canvas.

 I think about buying a motorcycle and using that instead. I think I would love piloting a motorcycle, and I'd cover so much ground. But as my mind continues to wander, and I imagine crashing my motorcycle and not surviving, I don't even really care that I'm dead. I don't want to live in that world. It's not a happy thought and not even a complete one — of course I believe there's more to life than bicycling. There's more to it every day that I visit a friend or work on a book project or order the 2014 reissue of my favorite Modest Mouse album, "This is a Long Drive For Someone With Nothing to Think About." There's more to it right here, right now, amid the frozen-in-time quirkiness of Austin, Nevada. It's just that these are the kinds of thoughts that escape the filter when I'm driving the Lonely Highway.

 I listened to an NPR segment featuring an interview with Ann Druyan, who helped produce the gold record that was launched into space on Voyager in 1977. The record is the ultimate mix tape, a montage of Earth sounds, languages, music, and analog images, currently hurtling through space as a lonely but enduring record of life on this world. Druyan described the love story surrounding the creation of the record, how she became engaged to the executive director in the process, and they were married two days before she laid down to meditate and record the impulses of her brain and nervous system for eternal preservation on this record. Her husband died years ago, and it's going to be another forty thousand years before Voyager passes another planetary system. The odds that this tiny craft is ever found and decoded by some distant being in the far future are astronomical, beyond contemplation. Still, Druyan marveled at the notion that these sounds of her body in love will endure on this uranium-plated record for billions of years, long after the sun swallows Earth. As she described this, tears were rolling down my cheek, and I didn't even really know why I was crying, but it was a beautiful notion.

 Shadows grew long again. I stopped at the pullout of a dirt road to walk for a bit. I had to strap on a skin-blistering hinged brace and prop myself up with walking sticks — the joint still has that weird feeling of instability that makes me reluctant to put all of my weight on it without support. So I clickity-clacked along the flat surface and let my eyes gaze up at the distant ranges, scaling dusty slopes and sheer cliffs in my imagination.

 I crossed into Utah on U.S. Highway 6, which I remember well from a road trip when I was a junior in high school, and my friend Adam planned an intrepid Friday night adventure to the "West Desert." We swung around mountain range after mountain range until it seemed like we had reached the western edge of the world, and the sagebrush-dotted plain of the Great Basin stretched out like outer space in front of us. Rich took out a cigarette and blew hazy puffs into the air as four of us sat on the hood, watching the sun set, and my blood was coursing with so much wonder that I thought my heart might explode.

Even after thirteen and a half hours, with another day's light fading and the cold cup of coffee from Ely nearly drained, I wasn't quite ready for my trip to be over. My sister called shortly after I turned onto a small road hugging the western shoreline of Utah Lake. She told me she was coming over in a half hour, so I punched on the gas, grinning as I wheeled around the tight curves of another empty road. The lights of Provo sparkled across the indigo void of the lake, and civilization still seemed a long way away, but I knew I'd be there, soon. All things — injuries, long drives, uranium-plated gold records — must reach their conclusion, eventually.