December 4, 2014 by Ana To Athlete

What I’ve learnt from being Injured (and it’s not what you think)

Mountain biking in New Zealand about 6 months post-op. Probably wishing I was mountain running instead, but not a bad option B….!

We rarely come away from life’s challenges having learnt nothing. How we propel in the aftermath of major setbacks can be the major shapeshifter in our lives, and indeed in who we become as people thereafter.

I am finally at the point where I’m fairly comfortably through the trauma of what we shall call the “Everest” of my injury history. If I were to sketch a visual of my colourful history, it would look like a scattered flow of 13 stress fractures, starting at age 12 in relatively non-important locations and then escalating into some more heavy terrain as my eating disorder and distance running career progressed, finally reaching the peak at doing an Ironman with a stress fracture in my foot at age 29 and subsequently ending up needing major reconstructive foot surgery and a total of over 12 months off running. I can confidently say that that will be my peak, as I have finally, definitively, learnt how to respect my body. Which brings me to the 2 (yes, only two, but they’re BIG ones) things that this last 18 months has taught me:

1) Respect your body – you only have one (Yep That Old Chestnut)

Love it or hate it, your body is the only one you’re going to get. Sure, a surgeon can plate and drill you back together, but ultimately the bones and healing capacity that you have is still dependent on just that one body; you don’t get a new one just because you treated the old one like a rental car.

During the worst of an eating disorder it’s near impossible to comprehend or love your body, such a minefield is your brain at the time. And certainly, it’s something that I have really struggled with well into recovery – which is going on over 5 years now. It’s funny how it sometimes takes something so huge as threatening my ability to run and race – the loves of my life – to really “get it”. I guess in the aftermath of your eating disorder, those early months and years are spent just trying to survive the new life that you’re supposed to embrace – the daily climb of having to face food and weight gain, doctors, dieticians, psychologists….it’s all so much to cope with at the time. It’s often only years later that you can look back with some perspective and truly see what your body went through, and indeed how blessed you are to now still be standing here. Able to run. Able to love, and laugh. Able to grow a baby from scratch. It’s truly remarkable, what the body can come back from.

Eventually the trauma ends, the memories get softer and we get back into our routines….and then along comes a “choice point” in life. I had one of those a fortnight ago. After having a good few months of pain-free and enjoyable running, I started feeling an all-too-familiar pain in the butt….well, my right sacrum (tailbone) to be technical about it. I’ve had two stress fractures there in the past, so I know what it feels like. The fact that I’ve had two, indicates I failed to learn from the first one, as with most of my injuries up to this point. However this time was different: I was able to use my “logical” (Physio) brain, take a step back and assess the pros and cons of continuing to run on this. For the first time ever, I was able to take a week off running, knowing that it was the best thing for me because I want to be able to run not only after the baby arrives in a few months, but also when I’m 60, or 70 years old. And my poor sacrum has already been beaten up enough. So even though I hated having a week off running now, in the long term, it was the best thing for me. And sure enough – my efforts were rewarded: I was able to go back to my 5km run yesterday morning with minimal butt pain. Seems so trivial, but such a huge step for me – in all my years of life, I’ve never yet been able to not just keep “pushing through”. I am finally confident that going forwards with training and racing, I will be capable of making the right decisions, rather than living in fear of what I know I can do to myself. The thought of training and racing injury-free seriously excites me. I have a plan, devised together with my “moral compass” aka my husband, on how I will approach training and racing coming back from this surgery and after the baby arrives in March. I know I have posted some awesome results in the past being tired, injured and generally unbalanced, so I am itching to see what the future brings. Bring on the post-baby running and Ironmans!

Hamilton Island – hiking up that hill at 7 months pregnant was totally worth this view!

2) Enjoy the mundane routine of life – it is truly a blessing.

This is the big one. The surprise I got out of going through this surgery and the months of healing and rehab after was how much we take for granted the routines of our lives. Never before have I appreciated so much the simple acts of being able to walk, sleep, work, drive, cook dinner, do the washing up, hang out clothes washing, water the garden, and not to mention walking my dogs in the sunshine – that’s like ecstasy! The “daily routines” that I used to think got in my way of being…well…busy/productive/important/useful, I now see with a completely different light. Being in plaster and unable to do much of anything independently gives you a fair amount of time to think about these matters. The thing is, what we fail to realise while we get tied up in our own “busy-ness” and in seeming important all the time, is that the majority of our lives are, in fact, made up of us doing the daily routines. They are life. And if we can truly learn to appreciate how blessed we are to be able to have the health and the homes to do those ‘chores’ every day, then the daily grind suddenly becomes more magical.

As a pleasant secondary offshoot to this, this new appreciation for the simple things in life has translated into being able to be still, and just be with “me”, for the first time in my life. A big factor in eating disorders is that inability to relax and enjoy the quieter moments in life – for so long, I was fearful of weekends or holidays, and always had to plan every moment. I’m still not great at it, but I am much, much better. And it’s just so lovely to be able to take a big sigh of relief and know that everything will be OK with the world if I am just still for a little while.

Every experience in life – good or bad – can be a blessing in disguise if we can learn from our experiences. Sometimes this takes time, so be forgiving and gentle on yourself, especially in those early stages of recovery. You are a champion just for embracing the fight of a lifetime and let me promise you, it will all be worth it in time. Life truly can be a beautiful thing.

K xoxo

Even looking at this photo is hard….early days post-op. Never again!

December 8, 2013 by Ana To Athlete

Here comes The Fighter

“Only a man who knows what it’s like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even”. – Muhammad Ali

Today, I ~~commiserate~~ celebrate the half-way point of my foot rehab journey. 4.5 months since the surgery, 4.5 months until I can run again.

Never before have I yearned for running, the first and longest love of my life, so fiercely. When I was running competitively at university, I had a beautiful old man of a coach who was in his 70’s (and still running…) and had been coaching distance runners for most of his life. After thrashing ourselves and giving 100% of what our hearts had to give at any given session, we would warm down and joke and laugh amongst the group. When all was said and done, he would look at me with those wise wrinkled eyes and say “I have never met someone who loves running like you do”. In my youthful naivety, I used to laugh at him. But right now, if you asked me to choose between running and my husband – my two grand loves – well I’d have to think about it! I’m joking ~~sort of~~.

Early days….

And yet, never in my life have I found it so hard to keep the “athlete mindset”. Not as in, screw training why bother. As in, screw rehab I want to go run, PRONTO. I want to get back to racing ~~weight~~ fitness, PRONTO. Hell, I want to race, and feel the best pain in the world. Not rehab pain. Not idle resting pain. Or surgery pain. Just the deep, all-encompassing fantastic pain of racing. I want that. And my heart yearns so extremely deeply for it, I feel a black hole that can’t be patched back up.

And God knows all too well that I am not patient. Ironic given all those years of being a patient. I suspect this may be God’s way of testing me….so that I learn patience. And so that I learn the most valuable lesson of my life to date: I am an Athlete. I am no longer Anorexic. Or an Athlete with an Eating Disorder. Facing the surgery, all those months ago, I remember with clarity driving home from the surgeon’s office crying, desperately hoping, but desperately fearful that I could not do this. I could not do this, without Ana. This was going to be the hardest test of my “recovered” life.

And in these last weeks that have passed, I cry again – because I know I am there. Throw vulnerability to the wind, I’m fighting the good fight.

There you are. I finally found you.

K xo

July 22, 2013 by Ana To Athlete

About Me

About me –

Anorexia and I shared space in my world (Ana hogged it 85% of the time…) between the age of 12 and 21. While the onset was pretty sudden at age 12, of course the interchange between “Anorexia Patient” and “Recovered” labels was not an overnight exchange – but I have put it as age 21 as that was the first time I honestly, truly decided for myself (and was not forced) that I wanted to recover. The actual road to recovery was a rocky one but I am happy to report that I have maintained a healthy weight for 5 years now. It’s part of my history, but I don’t allow it to define me. It is what it is. I would rather not have gone through it, but I do try to now focus on all of the lessons that I have learnt and am certainly hoping that some good will come from it via Ana to Athlete. I still refer to it as “Ana”, or the “Ana years”, for many reasons – not as an affectionate thing, more because “Anorexia” sounds so harsh and scary and brings back too many horrid memories. And I guess, because it’s a safer name, with softer connotations – it’s too easy to pigeonhole people with the more formal name when really, no two cases are ever the same and no two people are the same.

What I am these days, is a Physiotherapist, Exercise Physiologist and director of a successful sports physiotherapy clinic with my amazing husband, who is also a physio. I am a 5-time Ironman finisher (and counting), and my favourite thing in the whole world is running – I think my relationship with running is borderline unnatural. But running and I, we have been through A LOT (I started running at the age of 12, so, you know…..we have a bond that is unbreakable!). I have two dogs, love my job, adore traveling and use baking as my therapy (did you think that went away after recovery? Sorry!! Haha). After almost a decade of Ana, you get pretty good at baking, so as a result I now do wedding cakes as a side hobby to Physio when I am not in full Ironman training (random? Extremely. Overachiever much? Yep that sums me up). I also have a small addiction to roses and forster the “nanna” within by sporadically tending to my rose garden.

Life is magical and you are beautiful. Embrace it.

K xo

July 22, 2013 by Ana To Athlete

About Ana To Athlete

ABOUT “Ana To Athlete”

This blog has come about 7 years after I was officially “recovered” from Anorexia – you know, according to the medical charts you now have a BMI above 18, are menstruating and managing to eat. You look pretty normal, you are expected to be a normal functioning part of society and to have the same normal problems that everyone else has….whoa hold up?! What the hell is “normal” anyway!?

As far as modern medicine goes, you are now recovered, but every ED patient knows that this is where the really hard work starts and alas – there is no-one there to help you anymore. You’re “recovered”, right? So everything must be fine. But no-one taught you how to live. How to laugh. How to enjoy food. How to be OK with this new “healthy weight” body. How to cope with the physiological issues that may remain with you for a while yet. How to address the fears and coping issues that got sent you down the ED pathway in the first instance. And not to mention the depression that is all too common in this stage.

WHAT THIS SITE IS, is a place for those of us who have been through the merry-go-round of “ED-Treatment-Recovery” (often with an addition or six of “relapse-recover-relapse” because let’s be realistic, no-one is perfect….) and have popped out the other side, now having our two feet relatively firmly planted in the healthy side of the ground, 90% of the time (what a mouthful!). My mission is to TALK ABOUT HOW TO LIVE AFTER ANOREXIA. And not just survive, but thrive. With a healthy dose of humour, experience, success stories, epic failures and celebrations. I don’t know it all, not even close. But I do know a lot, and I’ve been through a lot, and I would love to be able to help others in an area that is sadly lacking any information – the bridge between “Recovery” and “Happiness”. I would prefer they not be mutually exclusive anymore! So first and foremost this is a safe place to come to, like a “guide to life after Ana”.

Secondly, hopefully, Ana to Athlete will provide a platform for development of better recovery pathways, so that we can one day aim for reduced relapse rates and reduced rates of depression and anxiety disorders in recovered anorexics. There exists very little in research or practice to bridge the gap between leaving treatment, and achieving full participation in society (encompassing both health and happiness). Too often, the patient goes from a full support network – typically including a dietician, psychologist, nurse, fellow sufferers, and the routine of either a day or inpatient program – and once they have reached their goal weight it is assumed they are “healed”. But the mind is only partially healed, and the situation can be ten times worse because they now look normal – so they are assumed to be coping fine. It can be a fast and slippery slope into relapse from here, or worse – the improvement might remain static, so the person goes on to half-live a life carrying around a sub-clinical eating disorder. Too often, patients can hide behind their sport, “genetics”, or at times, their family network, and it never gets talked about. I would like to see more research and subsequent resources into bridging this gap in the future, and welcome any input from all of you out there regarding ideas and resources based on your personal experiences. In the meantime, I’m going to share what I have learnt along the way to becoming a successful athlete and happy adult following almost a decade of Anorexia.

And of course, as an extension of my recovery – the blog will delve into all that I have learnt about Ironman and in particular, female athletes. How best to train, eat, recover, race, psychologically prepare and generally celebrate life through the amazing sport that is triathlon. I don’t know many Ironman athletes who aren’t preoccupied with food and weight so to a large extent, the content is mutual.

WHAT THIS IS NOT, is a pro-Ana blog. It is not a “how-to-starve-oneself” manual, nor does it glorify ED’s – I wouldn’t wish one on my greatest enemy. Think of it more like a “how-to-love-life-and-become-a-kickass-athlete” guide: jump in and enjoy the ride.

Happy Training!