Will it be easy? Nope. Will it be worth it? Absolutely

In March I wrote a story about dreaming. Dreaming about opportunities, goals, and achievements. Those words are awfully close to defeat, failure, and bumps on the road. One thing is a good plan another thing is executing it and having luck on your side.

In April I crashed on a training ride here in Denmark and went down straight on my head. A boring (long) week of bedrest, closed eyes, nausea, vision problems and a couple of doctor check ups followed. Got myself a solid concussion and I knew that the road back would be challenging.
I felt sorry for myself in the beginning and didn’t really want to admit that I had an injury, because I didn’t have time for it! I was going to start my World Cup season soon.

But sometimes timing in life is a B**** and I had to shift my mindset and try to get the best out of the situation. I was lucky that my support system through Team Denmark was awesome from day 1, I was lucky it happened in April and not in May, I was lucky to feel the progress of the healing after 10 days and not years, and finally I learned a thing or two about the brain!

​In case you wondered – we use our brain a lot. Like a whole lot. When it’s not working properly you really feel how even the smallest action actually takes brain power. And that not everything is a resting activity for the brain. Breathing exercises, meditation, and audiobooks (mostly fiction) was what I found the most relaxing. I think I was lucky I had so much nausea the first week and vision problems, it made me stay at home resting.

Even tho I had a few more punches over the past couple of months than I dreamed of - it doesn’t take away my love for the sport and the love for the chase.

 After the week at full rest, I had three weeks of slowly building up some hours of training. In the end of week 4 I did my first cross country race in Sweden, after a successful intensity session earlier that week (meaning no symptoms) I got the green light from the doctor to try. I even won it, but I knew the game would be completely different Nove Mesto the following week. If I could race there it was already a success – only 5 weeks post-concussion.
I could! But it of course wasn’t my best result, nor did we expect it to be, but it was a start, and I was in the World Cup ranking.

Since then, it has been a bumpy ride back to fitness. The body hasn’t been responding as good to training as normal, longer recovery time, still some vision problems (they say time is my friend), and just in general slower adaption to my training. Frankly, the Garmin watch has been kind of crazy/interesting to follow.

Since my crash in April my Body Stress has been elevated. Often Low HRV and a high resting heart rate. It’s like my body has just been working a little bit extra. And I must really be causes with how I let my body rest and recover.

We’re now in a crazy month with 4 back-to-back events consisting of 7 races. My hope is that my body absorbs the efforts weekend after weekend, and that I get out on the other side of Val di Sole stronger, than when I arrived in Lenzerheide.

Even tho I had a few more punches over the past couple of months than I dreamed of - it doesn’t take away my love for the sport and the love for the chase. I’m sure I will get there. Even just now I still have 3 more races in the next two weeks. I’m home for 72 hours now before flying to the European Games in Krakow trying my best to recover, train smart and set myself up for success.

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So happy I finally got to write this blog. I have wanted to write, but the first many weeks I couldn’t write something this long without getting symptoms, but now I finally had the ability and time. Hope you liked it. Concussions are a strange beast, and a different journey for everyone. So much respect for this invisible injury.
 
All the best
Malene