Amy Reinink

No use in burying the lede: I tore my ACL on Saturday, and am out for the rest of the ski season.

Steve and I had just finished our first day of ski and toboggan training as Whitetail Ski Patrol candidates, and I was skiing the couple hundred feet between where we parted ways with our instructors and the lift. I was merrily skiing along, making slow, short-radius turns, when a snowboarder slammed into me from behind.

Steve and I told the kid who hit me to stay put while I assessed the extent of the injury (we may have said something along the lines of, “You better stay put, buddy!”).  We quickly realized the kid we reprimanded was not a punk, but the concerned, apologetic son of another Whitetail volunteer. I didn’t detect any swelling, didn’t feel any pain and didn’t hear the “pop” everyone associates with anterior cruciate ligament tears—my right leg was just kind of wobbly. I told Steve I’d be skiing down to the clinic, because everything was clearly fine. I will forever give him credit for expertly managing his first crazy, unreasonable patient (i.e., me), and convincing me to accept a ride down. I will also be forever grateful to the S&T instructor who brought a snowmobile rather than a sled, which made the trip to the clinic feel exciting rather than depressing.

I got most of my self-pitying behavior out of the way before I reached the clinic, after asking the instructor driving the snowmobile if he minded cursing. I grew up in New Jersey, and Steve would describe what happened next as me “going from zero to Jersey in no time flat.” I’m sorry to report that the kid who hit me learned some new and exciting language, too (to be clear, I was cursing around him, not *at* him. Still: oops).

After hanging out in the clinic and icing my knee for a while, I was still convinced it was fine, despite a creepy catch in my walk. I now identify that “catch” as “moment when my knee does not support my body weight.”

Fast-forward to Dr. Pereles’ office on Monday. I expected a sprain. But when Dr. P. cringed upon bobbling my injured knee in a way I just *knew* wasn’t right, I braced myself for the worst. In addition to being a former college swimmer and marathoner, Dr. P. is also an expert skier, and he knows just what it means to me to be out for the rest of the season. He handed me a tissue box when he told me it was my ACL—basically, a skier’s nightmare.

But there’s lots of good news here. Surgery to repair a torn ACL takes about 45 minutes, and is an outpatient procedure. Recovery is actually pretty quick—I’ll be walking and in physical therapy within days, swimming within two weeks and running shortly after that. I won’t be doing any skiing or other pivoting for five months, but I’ve already found ways to stay involved, training-wise, at Whitetail, from working in the clinic to having Steve haul my gimpy butt around the mountain in a sled for our training (gives new meaning to the whole “in sickness and in health” clause, eh?).

Let’s get a few questions out of the way. Do you get injured a lot? Yeah, apparently. Let’s get past this, and skip the “wow, you have bad luck!” comments, as they’re simply not helpful. Wasn’t it a snowboard last year, too? Yes, and as part of my ongoing training, I plan to gradually increase my exposure to snowboards, in hopes that someday, I’ll be able to come within 10 feet of one without suffering some crazy, season-ending injury. Are you systematically trying to injure every body part at least once? No … but Steve says I should probably be careful with my shoulders, as they might be on deck. For background, please see the wrist I broke on my first and last day snowboarding, and the surgery that followed.

A few things I know for sure:

• Nothing I did or didn’t do caused this. It was just an accident that I had no control over.
• In the big scheme of things, this is not a big deal. It’s what I’d call as a class-3 knee on the mountain—nothing life- or limb-threatening. My best friend is fighting breast cancer with grace and strength—surely, I can manage the same with a knee.
• I’ve never gone through physical therapy without coming out stronger, physically.
• I’ve never recouped from an injury without coming out stronger, mentally.
• This is a mere speed bump (or misplaced mogul?) on my ultimate path to becoming a patroller.
• Sometimes, life throws you a bone: While something stopped me from signing up for a half-marathon in March and a marathon in May, I felt the opposite nudge to sign up for the 4.4-mile Great Chesapeake Bay Bridge Swim on June 12. Thank goodness for swimming, the sport of last resort!

Stay tuned for info about my surgery date, which will come as soon as I get insurance mumbo jumbo sorted out. In the meantime, check out the coping-with-injury lessons I won’t have to re-learn from last year:

Motivational quotes for injured athletes

How to call a truce with your body

Resources for injured runners

Coping with running injuries

And, of course, my story in the January/February 2011 issue of Women’s Running, Tips to a successful running comeback

If you’d seen me walking into Whitetail Mountain Sports on Thursday, you’d be forgiven for thinking I was on my way to adopt a child, or do something more momentous than what was actually happening: I was picking up my new skis!

My level of enthusiasm when I laid my eyes on the K2 True Luvs, my first new pair in a staggering ten years, was indeed closer to what one might feel about a new baby than new ski equipment: Hello, little skis. I’ve wanted you for so long!

They are pretty. They are springy. They let me ski the same way I did before, but with less effort. They have pink ribbons on the tail, making me think they’re giving a shout-out to my dear friend Alexis, who’s been diagnosed with breast cancer at age 30. And they came just in time for my first day of ski-and-toboggan training as a Whitetail Ski Patrol candidate Saturday—the main thing motivating me this week.

The training, which lasted all morning on Saturday, consisted of having a cadre of instructors carefully assess me and my classmates while we completed what should have been simple exercises: snowplow, side slip, and short-, medium- and long-radius turns. No brain-busters there, right? We all knew how to snowplow, sideslip, etc. What we didn’t know: All the stuff we were doing wrong, form-wise. One classmate learned he kept his skis too close together. Another learned he was leaning forward from the waist.

My lessons: Though I thought my upper body was the only part I got *right,* it turns out my torso is a hot mess. Rather than keeping my torso facing consistently downhill while my legs do the work, I rotate every which-way while I ski, which in turn throws off my whole stance. Steve and I had actually filmed each other skiing moguls a few days beforehand, and my bad habits are painfully obvious there: It looks like I’m trying to conduct a choir with my poles!

And that’s not my only bad habit. I also bail on my turns before I carve a complete “C” shape across the mountain, failing to engage the edge of my inside ski and making turns that look more like a “Z.”

Is there anything quite as motivational as knowing how to improve? I finished the morning exhausted, and anxious to practice my new skills. The only bummer: At the bottom of my last run, a snowboarder slammed into me from behind, and I tweaked my knee just enough to freak me out. I’ve been staying off of it, and am seeing my marathon-running, expert-skiing, former Navy SEAL, rock star of a sports orthopedist to get it checked out today. Wish me luck!

What’s motivating you this week?

It’s sometimes hard to connect the dots between your January speed workout and your half-marathon in March (stay tuned for details about that, by the way), or to remember that you’re doing jumping lunges in your living room so you can nail the moguls on your weekend ski trips. I find that the right song, image or mantra can go a long way toward transporting you to a place of motivation.

In honor of my first day of ski-and-toboggan training as a Whitetail Ski Patrol candidate Saturday, I offer the image that for months has helped remind me why I’m dragging my butt to the gym:

My snowboarder-friend Lauren, one of my favorite people in the world to be on a mountain with, sent me a postcard with this Anne Taintor print almost a year ago. It helped me channel my inner skier through the steamy D.C. summer—and still cracks me up every time I see it.

Wish me luck on Saturday!

It’s been a while since I posted my last new playlist here. There was a good reason for my radio silence—it had simply been a while since I found new music I felt fired up about enough to share. I was feeling stale and uninspired by the tunes I already had, and unmotivated to search for others.

Then, Steve and I watched a couple Warren Miller ski videos over our holiday travels (they were Christmas presents for my dad, a lifelong skier), and immediately started searching for their soundtracks. The top of this playlist is composed almost entirely of those songs. Some of these are ideal for sprinting (“It’s a Dull Life” will make you break your mile PR), while others seem perfect for a longer run (“Hip Hop” is hard-driving but also chilled-out). All of them make me think of nailing a mogul run like Olympic medalist (and ski-movie narrator) Jonny Moseley, which helps take my mind off whatever hill I’m currently running up. 

It’s a shorter playlist … but I make it longer mid-run by listening to some songs twice.

Babylon of the Occident – The Shanghai Restoration Project

Hip Hop – N.A.S.A, feat. KRS-One, Fatlip & Slim Kid Tre

Kids – MGMT

Dull Life – Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Down and Out – Cam’ron

What a Wonderful World – The Ramones

Shimmy Shimmy Ya – Ol’ Dirty Bastard

Crack a Bottle – Eminem

Clan in Da Front – Wu-Tang Clan

Power – Kanye West

How Many Mics – Fugees

Cunninlynguists — Lynguistics

Have you found any great new running songs? Share them by posting a comment below!

It’s that time of year again—the time when gyms and running trails fill with New Year’s resolutioners, and lapsed athletes attempt to stage movie-montage comebacks. If you’re a regular runner or gym-goer, though, you know gyms and sidewalks will empty out within a few weeks, when those hard-core comebacks lead to injury or burnout.

It doesn’t have to be that way, as I was reminded via a recent assignment from Women’s Running. The story, which appears in the magazine’s January/February issue, focuses on how to stage an effective comeback, and I’d like to offer a few of my favorite tips from it here:

* Start slow. Running coach Janet Hamilton says people tend to “bludgeon their bodies into fitness.” Sound familiar? I know I’ve been guilty of going for one, big, boot-camp-style comeback workout that leaves me sore for days and unlikely to return to the gym for weeks. A better strategy: Take it easy out of the gates so your body and spirit can’t wait to get back out there for another round.

* Listen to your body. General guidelines are great, and it’s certainly helpful to know that you’ll decrease your chance of injury by not increasing mileage by more than 10 percent per week. That said, if a 10-percent weekly mileage increase aggravates your old ankle injury, those guidelines are not guaranteed protection against a stress fracture. If something hurts in the wrong way, back off until it feels better.

* Get a workout buddy. This is so obvious, but so helpful. It truly is harder to bail on a workout if you’re accountable to someone other than yourself.

Click here to read the story in its entirety, and share your own comeback tips by posting a comment below!

Amy will be on vacation, and will be posting sporadically until the New Year. Thanks for stopping by!

I planned to do a long run and lifting workout yesterday. Then, it snowed, and the day got crazy, and I had all of 30 minutes to exercise.

I could have given up on my workout for the day, and almost did. Instead, I headed down to my building’s mini-gym for a repeat of Tuesday’s speed workout. It was not inspired. It was not creative. But it challenged my muscles, worked my heart and cleared my mind, and reminded me that, in running and in life, an all-or-nothing mindset is dangerous and counter-productive.

Today’s similarly busy, which means I’ll be heading down to the stationary bike for my favorite Just Do Something workout. There will be plenty of time for longer, hard-core workouts in the coming weeks; for now, I’m patting myself on the back for doing anything at all!

What do you do to work out when you’ve only got 30 minutes to work with?

A weird side-effect of the blistering cold and gusting winds beating up the D.C. area this week: The weather actually forced me to do my first speed workout since … well, let’s not go there. The forced workout came after I spotted a terrible little snow tornado out my window right before my lunchtime five-miler. I headed to the treadmill instead, where I did the following:

1X1 mile at 7:30-minute-mile pace

2X .5 mile at 7:15-minute-mile pace

4X .25 mile at 7-minute-mile pace or below (the last one was more like 6:30-minute-mile pace).

This was a change from my standard treadmill speed workout, 3 X 1 mile at 7:30-minute-mile pace, and it felt great! Let me clarify: After it felt terrible and demoralizing and exhausting, it felt great—which is sort of what we’re going for with speed workouts, right?

What’s your go-to speed workout? Do you have different ones for the treadmill and track (I do mile repeats on the treadmill and Yasso 800s outside)?

As a University of Colorado student, I could always tell when ski season was coming. I ran on Boulder Creek Path or on trails in the Flatirons most days, and I would get lots of extra company around this time of year, after the first ski day of the year left students out of breath, tired and sore.

Ever since then, I’ve used the start of the ski season as a motivating force to work out, adding jumping lunges and other plyometrics to my regimen to prep for the season. It seemed like a simple choice to me: I could skip the squats and leg-presses, or I could ski a back bowl at Vail from top to bottom without stopping—but probably not both.

My first ski day of the year on Sunday, which consisted of six joyful runs at Whitetail after our CPR class, has got me thinking about my ski workout again. This year, I have two additional factors to consider: injury-prevention (though I feel like I’m still in college, my muscles beg to differ), and the ski-and-toboggan portion of ski-patrol training, which I’ll be doing just about every Saturday at Whitetail through the ski season.

This means I want to beef up all the little muscles around my knees to preserve my ACLs, and increase my overall strength to pull sleds, or generally feel able to tackle whatever the class throws at me. SKI magazine offers these injury busters to answer the former, as does this Women’s Health feature about knee-preserving moves. My answer to the latter is this part of my ski workout:

3X15 reps, leg press, with 300 pounds (or more, if 300 pounds starts feeling easy, which I don’t see happening soon).

3X10 squats with barbell. I’m just mastering my form on this one, so I’m only loading 20 pounds of weight onto the barbell for now.

Walking lunges with 15-pound kettlebell held out in front

Squats with 50-pound kettlebell, on top of BOSU (I do these with the round side down, standing on the black, flat side)

I’m keeping my plyometic/balance stuff, too:

A minute of mountain climbers, with elbows or hands on a BOSU

A minute of side shuffle with resistance band. If this gets too easy, put a band around your ankles AND above your knees. If that’s too easy, do as I just did, and tie another knot in both bands. Yeowch! Bonus: Skier and Olympic medalist Ted Ligety does these, too.

A minute of jumping lunges

3X15 jump squats

3X15 single-leg squats

3X 1 minute back extension holds

Plus, all my other usual stuff, like planks, and some other additional stuff, like pull-ups and Turkish get-ups.

Some other great workouts: Bad Ass Fitness offers this killer lower-body workout, which reminded me about mountain climbers (see above). Also, SKI magazine had a blog a couple years ago following a staffer who got in shape for the season with CrossFit.

Regular readers of this blog know I’m a bit obsessed with butternut squash, and won’t be surprised to see yet another recipe using the delicious orange wonder-food.

It’s also yet another recipe offered as a sneaky way to get kids to eat vegetables (see Cauliflower Mac ‘n’ Cheese from last week). Jessica Seinfeld, who wrote a book on the topic, offers her version of the butternut squash quesadilla here. Kid-friendly basically just means it’s a really delicious use for vegetables, right?

Yes, I ate a piece before photographing it. Don't judge.

My version is so simple, I’m not even going to offer formal directions (i.e., “Heat a frying pan …”). You know how to make a quesadilla. So do that, but just add half a cup of pureed butternut squash to the cheese before you place it on a tortilla. If you want to jazz it up, add onion, garlic and chili powders, cumin and coriander to taste.

In other runner-friendly recipe news, Mastersinhealthcare.com, a guide to online master’s degrees in health care (I know … who knew?) has compiled a terrific list of 100 runner-friendly recipes in its blog. It includes some from Runner’s World, others from blogs I frequent, and others still from blogs I don’t yet frequent—but I will. I’m excited to try this recipe for homemade multigrain energy bars, among others on the list.

Find any great runner-friendly recipes lately? If so, please share them by posting a comment!