Heading Home!

Today I had an early morning again, not for rehab though... FOR CLASSES. UGHH, I had a lot of classes last semester that really interested me and so far this one has been on the boring side. I know it will come around, I have been pretty preoccupied with both racing and now with my injury. I have become almost obsessed with trying to do everything I can for my knee that it has been the only thing on my mind lately. The good news is once everything calms down I will have a lot of time to just focus on school this semester which I am sure will help me a great deal in the long run.

Tomorrow I am hopping on a flight back to Minnesota and will enjoy the company of a few old friends and family members until Monday afternoon. This will be a nice time to just relax and let the whole injury thing settle in with me. My teammates are racing at Lutsen and Spirit Mountain so I am going with to get a little midwest flavor back in my life and cheer them on. Its going to be a little strange watching a ski race in my shoes from the finish area but at this point i'll do anything to just be back near the action. I am going to do some more therapy in the morning with the company of my new rehab buddy,and coach, Jaka. He tore his ACL two days ago and will be going through the same surgery and recovery as I am. It is unfortunate that it happened but it will be good for both of us to be going through this process together.

Today I only hit the training room once, because of my class schedule on Tuesdays. I did 30 minutes of Normatech compression, 20 minutes of Game-ready and stem, then hit the workout program hard! Today we amped up the plan a bit from the previous days. I started with quad firing sets and straight leg raises followed by 20 minutes on a spin bike for a warm up. Then came the fun... I did wall sits with a physio ball behind my back, 10 sets of 1 minute. This under normal circumstances is something I could do easily, but with a leg that is ready to shut down and quit it is not easy. I followed those up with hamstring curls on a physio ball and some balancing drills. I went through the program twice and was really sweating today. It feels good to know that I can start to push it a little bit. Unfortunately there was a little reminder that my ACL is torn right after I finished my last set of wall sits... Up until this point I haven't had any real problems with my knee giving out or feeling unstable. But after the workout my quads and hamstrings, which are helping me to be stable, were pretty tired and as I went to take a normal walking step my knee totally gave out and I was quickly reminded, with my face on the ground, that my ACL is in fact torn. Pretty weird feeling, not one I ever want to feel again. My trainer Nick wanted to make sure everything was alright and I nodded and walked back into the workout area and we went through ANOTHER set of everything. My feeling is when something like this happens it feels like a step backward was just taken so in order for me to move on with a high head I have to prove to myself that everything is alright. Doing that last set proved to me that I was alright and I left training today feeling strong and ready, instead of scared and uneasy. Well, I have to go to my three hour meteorology night class now, wish me luck! I am gonna try not to fall asleep this time.

Until next time, take care

Ryan