From zero to ultra within a year

A story about coming back from an injury. After breaking my ankle June 2017, needing several surgeries, I was determined to finish the multi-stage ultra run December 2018.

March 2018 I was finally able to start running again. Normally I wouldn’t bother lacing up for just a few kilometres. Now I am happy with whatever I am allowed to do. Five times one minute of running it is. 

"You are as limited as your mind." 

During the time of my injury I kept training. And I am happy I did. Somethings you can not control, like using my left leg for that moment, but staying fit I had control over. I just had to get creative with my training. I knew I would go back to running at some point and I know I would regret it, if I then would not be fit enough for it. 

As my friend Emma, who’s in a wheelchair permanently, always says; “you’re only as limited as your mind”. And I did not want to be the one limiting myself. So whatever I could do to stay fit, I did. Also if that meant rolling my wheelchair to the gym and training with one knee on a bench, or even asking people for help. Something I was never good at, but I just could not carry the dumbbells to the bench myself while hopping on one leg. 

"Step by step my confidence came back."

My running program went well. Every other day I was allowed to run, with the condition that I had no reaction from training. Within three months I was back running on the trails again. I went to Switzerland for the weekend, and a little anxious I ran my first trails. Step by step my confidence came back, and I started to trust my body, and especially my ankle again. 

Soon I was running thirty kilometer trails, and the progress was going well. I started to feel normal again. I decided that if I could run more than forty kilometers, I would consider myself back to normal, ‘back on track'.  

ANOTHER SETBACK

However there was one thing that stood in the way. I had one more, my third and final, surgery to go. The surgery was planned for the end of September, and undoubtedly would cause another set back. Therefore I made the decision to run forty kilometres before the next surgery. I needed that feeling of being back, even just for a moment. 

I decided on the forty three kilometre High Coast trail in Sweden. A beautiful area where I had hiked and camped  in snow earlier this year. I looked forward to see it in summer, and this time being able to run there.

Höga Kusten Trail 43K

September first, with some minor struggles of a stiff ankle on the technical course, I reached the finish line of the High Coast trail on top of a mountain. Such an amazing feeling. I wasn’t fast, but this time I could not care at all. I was back! I was back running again. The thing I had been working towards for more than a year. This was the conformation I needed. I could still do it.

“You receive this mail because we believe you are capable”

A few weeks later I receive an email, starting with: “You receive this mail because we believe you are capable”. This mail is about a Coast to Coast adventure in Dubai. It explained about running from Dubai to Oman, 180 kilometres in four days, a little over a marathon a day,  with a team of seven girls. Each girl running the full distance. It is not a relay.

So many thoughts went through my mind reading this e-mail: So cool! What an adventure. A chance of a lifetime… but why would they think I can do this? Would I be capable of doing something like it? I still have my surgery coming up, which makes my preparation time considerably shorter and more challenging,.. but I do like a challenge. 

And if I have learned one thing over the past year, is that you can do more than you think and a lot can happen in three months. 

I decided to go for it! Read here how this went.