Diversification

Its been more than 14 months now since I've played Frisbee in a more than heavily incapacitated condition. Going from training 3-4 times a week for the Fakulti nationals quest, and at the time world juniors aspirations training has left a big gap to fill that has taken quite some time to work out.

Things were slow at first as I came to the realisation that its called cultimate for a reason. My whole social life, sport life and even the good part of my uni-life was centred around ultimate frisbee. I made the choice slowly to try and get away from it. So a couple of things changed, and a coupe of things didn't. Involvment never dropped to 0, I came to a few suufa training sessions, went to all the socials, still dude all my stuff as treasurer of suufa (I am the only person in the admin/exec body who has never played on a suufa team at any point in my 1.5 years of suufa and 1 year as exec).

Last night I had a dream about playing waterpolo with my friends against some crap team, but it'd been so long since I'd played it felt like I was just starting again struggling with basic ball handling skills (picking it up quickly off the water) but we won anyway. It reminded me that there is other things out there that aren't just frisbee.

I still went to unigames for a holiday in melbourne with a good friend Simon, and got to see the most painful final ever. Suufa who had pumped themselves up the whole tournament finally faced a challenge, combined with only a supporting crowd of me, simon and bretts mum left suufa feeling a little unloved.

I went to melbourne and had the most amazing week of friends and food in a new city and some very excellent road trip adventures. I also managed to score a melbourne had tshirt for volunteering.

The road to recovery started out very slow. Walking quickly would often pull my hamstring it was so weak. I remember sitting on the physio bench and him telling me to try and tighten my quad. I looked at it, and tried as hard as I could but there was just no connection between what my mind wanted and what my leg was doing. One of the first exercises (after trying to straighten my leg out and flex quad) to conquer was lying on my stomach and lift my heel upwards like I was doing a quad stretch. I couldnt get it off the ground and had to use my other leg the entire way for about 2 weeks until i could get it halfway unassisted.

A few weeks later I was on a bike, and hitting the gym.

I remember the first time I'd gotten my heart rate up because of exercise since being injured. The familiar feeling of my lungs burning, and legs screaming to stop came back. It was tough, and it hurt. Then came the flood of endorphins when your tired body wakes up, you stop and just smile and enjoy the feeling. I was buggered, I remember I got home, barely able to walk up the stairs and fell asleep on the ground after saying hello to my dog.

A few months later with my friends cheering me up, I went for my first run since before surgery. There is photos on facebook. I was meant to do 7-8 60% runthroughs for about 30-40m. I had to stop by the 5th one becuase Id pulled my hamstring. I still had a long way to go, but this was an important step.

Another trip to the physio, he congratulates me on my progress. Not only is my left leg the same size as my right now, both my legs have bulked up and my strength is a lot better. "For the next 2 months we need to focus on agilty, strength and rebuilding your confidence," I'm now im up to jumping, turning, side stepping and pivoting.

With the increased confidence of not getting injured, I asked a friend to come ride around Manly Dam mountain bike trail with me. It'd been about 2 years since I'd done it because my bike was stolen and the person I rode with had left sydney to move to ANU.

Evan comes with me for my first ride in a long long time. The ride is challenging, and scary. My feet slip off the pedals in several of the downhill bits as I scream bouncing up off the seat holding onto only the handle bars. I go over my front handle bars once, and off sideways once. Evan goes over the handle bars twice. I have this image of him coming down into the creek he pulls the front brakes too hard (terrain looks like this: http://nobmob.com/system/files/images/333-3344_img.preview.jpg), and doesn't lean far enough backwards. For a moment he realises he is fucked as his back wheel lifts, and he jumps over the handle bars. I am thinking to yell at him to keep running forwards as his bike bounces down behind him.

I get to the end of the trail and realise I miss this. I also decide to get a new bike. Deliberation and $700 later, I'm set up with a sweet hard tail, got some sweet disc brakes and ready to take on the world. Evan is there yelling at me, "Come on, 3 more, I can tell you are digging deep but you are almost there!" As I painfully push through the last 3 pushups after a drop set of dumbell rows.


My friend Allan ran a half marathon with Evan, and some triathlons this year. One day they call me out before exams 'Hey come do a power circuit of northhead, meet at Evan's at 4:30,'
'Sorry man I gotta study,'
'Shutup and get over here, if we can get there soon enough we will see the sunset,'
'Okay fine see you in 30 minutes.'

Evan lives in Clontarf on the side of a big hill. The ride down is really fast, the ride up is not. The feeling of burning comes back and lungs grasping at whatever oxygen it can reach. This time though something different is there. The sense of achievment as we sit a top Northhead looking out over the city and inferior southhead I recall the familar feeling of team bonding of going through the pain of fitness training together. It's all coming back.

The day after exams, I'm heading to Canberra (on the 19th of June) and meeting up with my mountain biking friend and hitting up the excellent trails around there, its something to look forward to. On a group trip to Lake Mac, we're bringing bikes and heading into Ourimbah State Forest, and the Awaba mountain biking trails.

A few days later I'm going up and over hills that usually I'd have to stop on. The sense of achievment and improvement makes me feel good.

Evan comes over for a throw, I ask him to give me 10 hucks to catch, and do two sets of death runs (back and forth between cones sprinting catching and throwing a disc at each end). At the end of it I feel sick in the stomach. I realise how far I still have to go.

Tiger asks me again "When are you coming back?"
Middle of July, I'm allowed to start playing again if I do my rehab properly.

I don't know how people like Nikki Shires manage to do this more than once. This ACL has been nothing but grief, and even when I do get back it will never be as good. The dick who nailed me at Nationals mangled up my cartlidge and I had to get it removed. I don't know if his inconsiderate and retarded move that hospitalised me should be something I deserve to be bitter about or not.

I watched terminator the other day and heard that iconic line:

"I'll be back."