Friday, November 25, 2011

burying Wongstar 1.0


Ok, this is it. I turned 30 today. Hello, Dirty 30's! I'm hanging out in an airport...WITHOUT A BIKE BOX, on my way to chill for four days at a beach in Florida, where temps will be in the 70's (both highs AND lows!) while Delaware's impending winter looms and I try to figure out what to do next.

People keep asking what I'm doing next year, regarding races. I don't know. They tell me once I get over this injury, I'll be motivated again. That if I still had the passion and desire, the best is yet to come.

Confession #1: I never ordered the Wongstar fan club stickers. My knee hurts right now and it felt wrong to a) promote "make pain your bitch" and also b) take your money when I don't know if there is anything worthwhile I'll be doing that would require fans or a fan club.

Confession #2: My knee still hurts. (Wait I said that already.) Maybe I've been downplaying it because I'm from the school of "having a good sense of denial to achieve things you're not destined for" but I honestly can't tell if it's getting any better. There's the questions of "will it ever get completely healed?" and "how long until it gets better?"

So in the meantime, I stopped doing things that kept hurting the knee.

I put White Tiger away in the garage. And put all my biking things away.

I stopped running too, since that even flared up the knee. How did I get through a marathon on this? Was it because I took ibuprofen during the race?

And I don't see the point of swimming if it's not followed by biking and running. What, did you ever think I actually swam because I enjoyed it, or even wanted to?

Sometimes I feel like I went through what Buffy the Vampire Slayer did, when she died in season 5 and her friends brought her back in season 6...against her will and back into a new world strange and unfamiliar to her. Sometimes I think too much about my bike accident and how close it was to being fatal. How I swerved into the glass at the last moment, which probably saved me.

How maybe I got the option to return, but the trade-off was to return in a body with a bum knee. My new life is so different from the one the previous Wongstar knew before. I did go through the 5 stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance.

It's been a strange year. I'm not one to just sit around and get fat. I'm looking for another sport to do, that doesn't hurt the knee. So that's what's next. I just don't know what.

4 comments:

  1. Happy Birthday Jocelyna!

    Sorry to hear about the undetermined amount of recovery time you're suffering through. I've been there several times, and it sucks. Do the best you can with what you have, stay healthy in mind and body, and wait to see what life has in store for you! When you look at biographies of great people in all walks of life, rarely did they know where they were going to be 10 years down the road. I'm sure wherever you end up, be it Kona or the head of a hospital, you'll be smiling and inspiring. I'm betting on it!

    Matt

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  2. No dobt:Your knee will heal,just give it some time..

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  3. Happy Birthday Wongstar. Are you doing PT? That might help your knee. Your mind might be another issue... the power of the brain is sooo strong and is the hardest to overcome.

    Yoga for now? I don't know if that would be too hard on your knee. I look forward to more of your blogs though. I hope you keep writing.

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  4. Happy birthday, Wongstar.. I think you were having a breakthrough at IM Korea and not far from being a podium threat at most IMs.

    I had two operations on my right knee and have been able to return to running, thanks to diligent PT.

    However, if you're not motivated, you should probably give things a rest for a bit ...

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