A Devastating Injury Could Have Ended This Ultrarunner's Career — But It Didn't

In 2016, I fell out of a raft and badly injured my leg. It was our first day of a six-day wilderness trip down Idaho's remote Middle Fork of the Salmon River. For the next five days, my husband and I navigated 100 major rapids in 100 miles with a leg that couldn't bear weight.

When at last we got out safely, I learned my leg was broken and I'd have to have surgery. My surgeon said I would be on crutches for 14 weeks and told me I should never run again.

This is news no one wants to hear. As a competitive runner, outdoor athlete, and writer, my body isn't just my vehicle for running; it's also how I write. I was determined to prove my surgeon wrong. But I couldn't just turn my recovery over to my surgeon and physical therapist. I had to train my mind in order to heal my body.

For weeks I went to rehab, did strength work, and diligently followed my surgeon's orders. At home, I focused on inner exercises of healing—what I've come to call mental PT. These were easy to practice, required no equipment, cost nothing, shifted my outlook to positivity, and primed my body for full and lasting recovery.

Because of the dramatic nature of my injury, everyone wanted to talk about the accident: How did we flip the raft? How did I stay on the river with a broken leg? But talking about how I got hurt gave too much energy to the accident.

While I didn't want to dwell on the trauma of my injury, identifying my emotions helped diffuse them. Some days I'd see people running and feel such enormous envy and grief I thought it might swallow me.

Watching other people you know or admire pursuing goals and pushing their limits when you're no longer able to could be deeply demoralizing. Culling my social media feeds of posts I thought might trigger FOMO, comparisons, or self-doubt helped keep these reactions in check.

When I couldn't run a Grand Canyon event as I'd planned, my therapist suggested I run it anyway—in my mind. I'd completed Rim to Rim to Rim, as it's called, in record time once before, so I knew what to visualize.

Closing my eyes, I saw myself on the South Rim, jogging down the South Kaibab trail in the darkness before dawn. I pictured the rising sun, casting the North Rim in hues of peach and tangerine. I heard the soft slap of my sneakers as they struck the dusty trail. I smelled the Colorado River, swift and clear and cold as I ran over the Iron Bridge.

I'm a writer by profession and passion, so I'm biased toward this method. But even for non-writers, it works. Grab a pen and journal and set your cellphone timer for 10 minutes. Then, go.

Write everything you'll do when you're fully healed. The secret is to use present tense, not future, and active verbs: Not, "My body will heal," but, "I am healing my body."

Be vigilant with your physical therapy and creative in everything else. Do what moves you, literally. Are you able to go on walks in your neighborhood? Do you feel like pedaling your bike one-legged on a trainer? Have you always wanted to take up yoga or tai-chi? Follow your instincts and listen to your body and mind.

Even if you feel like all you do is sit, a short, daily meditation practice can help ease the stress of injury and prime your mind for healing.

Find a comfortable spot and position and practice counting your breaths for five to 10 minutes. Inhale one, exhale one. Inhale two, exhale two, and so on. When you get to 10, start over.

This phrase, popularized by Zen Buddhism, means stripping yourself of expectation and expertise and finding the joy in starting over. When we approach life from a position of open-minded curiosity, we free ourselves of our impossibly high standards and give ourselves room to try and fail, taking pride in and learning from both success and failure.

As Shunryu Suzuki writes in his classic guide, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few."

Adversity is opportunity in disguise. After my injury, I can look back and see what I gained—a commitment to strength training, a tai-chi practice, meditation, and the wisdom to know that true healing is an inside job.

If you're patient and committed to physical and mental PT, all it takes to regain strength is time. One day you'll realize you've forgotten which leg you broke or which rotator cuff was repaired. That's when you know you're through it.