Muscles heal. Bones grow. It’s the mental part of injury that haunts us – that keeps us awake at night. It’s the demons and the voices in the head – the fear that we’ll “never get back” to where we once were, or we “threw away all that hard work and training” or that we were in the “best shape of our lives” and now can only sit by as first-row spectators to watch as we lose our muscle, our endurance, our speed, our V02Max, and, at the core of it, our sense of self and our confidence.
And, if you really, truly, love your sport, what eats at you day and night is the overwhelming sense of losing a part of yourself. You mourn those missed opportunities. Toeing that start line. The joy of a hard training session and the feeling of accomplished soreness. You feel…lost. A ship without an anchor. Or fries without ketchup.
http://www.ameliabooneracing.com/blog/rehab/identity-injury-and-the-athlete/
Side note: I actually met her when we were crewing BK out at Tahoe, and she was a chatty, friendly soul whose boyfriend was also racing. I had no idea who she was, but in talking with us she merely said her "background is in adventure racing" which cracks me up to this day. Modest, much?! She was on the motherfucking cover of Runner's World at that very moment!! She is the World's Toughest Mudder!
Anyway, this is a good read about how to deal when your life seems to crash down because you can't [insert your beloved hobby here].
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