September 16, 2005 – Sometimes in the life of an elite athlete there are speed bumps. For the past fifteen months, I have been plagued with a chronic IT band problem. I was able to race the past season because of a needling technique called Intra-muscular stimulation, a technique involving the insertion of acupuncture needles into tight bands of muscle, causing the muscle to release. But as the season ended, the needling started to become less and less effective. As a result I have spent the entire summer searching for a solution that would allow me to run and skate again. The past four months I have spent very little time with my teammates and a lot of time with every type of specialist in the book.

In April and May I was treated by a chiropractor, and I received laser therapy which, according to research conducted, significantly aids the body in healing itself. This was not my case, the treatment showed no improvement. Then I returned to what I had been doing this previous fall and winter: traditional physiotherapy combined with active release massage, and IMS needling. Again, there was no change in my leg. In July, I had an MRI which found no damage, and then in August I had a bone scan to look for any stress fractures from the hips down that could be causing this chronic pain. Again, the test showed no damage. At this point my Doctor suggested that there may be a nerve trapped in scar tissue on my lateral knee, and since no other diagnostic tool had given any clue as to what the problem might be, treatment of this possibility was the only real option. This treatment was painfully simple, an injection of cortisone into the tissue. It was painful!

The injection was administered two weeks ago, and I am now very slowly easing back into training, with a gradual increase in running from 30 minutes of walking only to, hopefully, 30 minutes of running three weeks from now. From there, I hope to be able to skate again very soon.

My training routine since the dryland season began has included classic rollerskiing, double poling, swimming and ridiculous amounts of time in the weight room. While my upper body strength has benefited immensely from the extra emphasis, the lack of endurance training and leg strength is catching up with me. The ultimate solution to physical problems such as this one may be physical solutions, but the art of surviving a year-long injury in a mental one. As an elite athlete, I want nothing more than to get the best out of myself that I possibly can. Having an injury meant that I had to put aside my grand ideals of toughness. Toughness, I have learned, comes in many forms, the most important of which is not physical toughness in the form of endurance or ability, but mental toughness and my ability to get up every morning knowing that I cannot train that day. Knowing that I am losing ground to my competitors with each day, but instead of focusing on that gruesome truth, true toughness is meticulously following the recommendations of the myriad of health professionals helping me so that one day I am able to simply ski again.

As a dear friend told me last year, and this will always ring true, the world has a strange way of making things right. While my fitness may have taken a hit of late, my mental game has never been better, and my core and upper body strength (two glaring weaknesses in my pre-injury physical preparation) have improved enormously. I am confident that because of what I have learned during the past year that when I am fully recovered, regardless of the lost fitness, I will be miles ahead of where I was before this all began.