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What I tried this week: Returning to running after an accident

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Jessica Kuepfer was in top shape having gained the fitness to race the Transrockies 120 Miler in the summer. When she was hit by a car this fall, she had to stop her training. Now, she blogs about starting over and gaining her strength back.

It was a couple weeks into September and I was headed to a meeting on my bike. I had recently folded some extra cycle commuting into my daily schedule for additional cross-training – I had a busy fall race season ahead of me and I wanted to make sure that I arrived strong and uninjured.

I was in the shape of my life. I had just returned from running the Transrockies 120 miler in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. Days on end of towing a team mate up steep inclines combined with altitude training had left me floating through paces I normally needed to reach for. I was ready. But then, as I was heading to that meeting, I was struck by a car on my bike. The crash caused me to go through a windshield and end my season.

I remember the first moments after being hit. My two first phrases were lamenting that I was supposed to race that weekend and pleading with paramedics to stop my Polar watch because I had been tracking my ride. The rest of the evening was a bit of a blur of needles, x-rays and assessments. I ended up being beyond fortunate with the accident. For starters, I could have been killed but wasn’t and I had no severe injuries or broken bones. I truly did believe I could be back on my feet and training within a couple of weeks. So what were the immediate effects?

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Stress: Not only did I return to work the day after getting hit, but it happened to be one of our busiest events of the year so I was working more days and more hours than usual. I was also handling insurance and police reports over this time so it felt like I had limited capacity for anything else.

No Training: My training stopped immediately. I needed to heal my body because I had suffered blunt force trauma to my legs and training on them would only put me behind. I spoke with my coach and our formal training plans ended. From there, I just listened to my body. Over a month later, I am actually still without a formal training plan as I heal, recover and try to restore everything back to normal.

Illness: One thing I was not expecting was the amount of nausea that arises from an accident like this. Although I didn’t have a concussion, the whiplash caused me to be severely ill for the first couple weeks and I started losing all of the muscle that I worked hard to maintain over the season. As runners, we get used to a certain level of strength and to have that removed is extremely off-putting.

Treatment: I began physiotherapy immediately which involved dry lasers at the beginning to loosen muscles. As the sessions progressed, we incorporated acupuncture to fix the new imbalances (and their potential injuries) that happened as a result of the accident. I have participated in a number of races since all of this happened but just as training runs to use as a guide to see where my imbalances lie. That way, my physiotherapist and I can continue working on them. It was difficult to go from feeling like I knew my body inside and out to realizing there are new, and most likely chronic, issues that will be a part of my running.

Those were the first number of weeks following the accident. I will be doing a mini-series that looks at how I am coming back to training from a set back and how I dealt with it physically and emotionally.

You can find me on Twitter @lacesandlattes and my personal blog.

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