Amy Reinink

Pro runners always talk about tuning into their pain when they race–that winning requires a certain awareness of just how awful it feels to push your body to its absolute limits.  Sports psychologists say even amateur athletes can benefit from staying in the present rather than distracting themselves to disassociate themselves from pain.

I’m more of a “crank the iPod until it’s over” kind of girl myself, and I’m using similar distraction tactics to avoid going nuts before my next doctor appointment March 23, a week from tomorrow. I should get to trade my purple cast for a splint, which means I should get to start resuming my regular activity for the first time since surgery on Feb. 24 to fix the wrist I broke snowboarding.

Here are a few of the happy distractions keeping me sane, which are motivating me to get to next week:

Remember my quest to find stomach-friendly running fuel? I may not be running right now, but I’m still experimenting with fun and interesting runner-friendly recipes. I’m still totally jazzed about adding pumpkin to a wide variety of foods, with soups serving as my latest experiments. This week, my minor pumpkin obsession and an apparent canned-pumpkin shortage in local grocery stores led me to do something a little bit crazy: I actually ordered a dozen cans of pumpkin from Amazon.com to make sure I always have some. Somehow, knowing I didn’t have to wait to buy a favorite food made me feel more able to be patient until my next doctor appointment March 23.

I have to wait a week to get my cast off. I wasn't about to wait for pumpkin to be restocked, too.

I’m reading the books I didn’t have time to while I was training for a marathon. Among them: Running With the Buffaloes by Chris Lear, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami, Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (not a running book, but if I can get through that monster, I can get through recovery, too). Stay tuned for reviews.

I’m planning a trip! We were supposed to go to Stowe this week, but I deemed spending several days in a ski town without any skiing to be the most depressing thing I could think of. Instead, we’re going to New York to see a play and have a fabulous dinner in Little Italy! Details to follow.

Finally, like a runner focusing on crowds of cheering spectators to take his or her mind off the pain of a race, I am distracting myself by focusing on your helpful and inspirational comments, including those from Gary, a marathoner and race director who’s recovering from an injury that’s practically identical to mine, and my friend Tiffany, who has a great approach to her recovery from ankle surgery. She responded to my post about the truce I’m calling with my body by sharing her own recovery goal, saying she’s “going to spend the rest of 29 healing, so that when I turn 30 in June, I can hopefully be healthy enough to live the life I want to live.” I love this. If I can just maintain the truce until May 20, my own 30th birthday, I feel like I’ll be happier and healthier for it.

Lara at Saturday Morning Zen says after getting through the “anger stage of not being able to run,” she actually enjoys the stillness. It’s the idea of “sitting with injury” that they talk about in yoga classes, and she says when she’s able to “sit” with whatever feels uncomfortable, she’s stronger for it when she gets back to running. This is a little bit revolutionary to me. This strategy seems to be half distraction and dissociation, half tuning in to the pain. It’s how I survived the two-hour drive from Whitetail to the emergency room at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda with a badly broken wrist. It involves accepting the pain (or discomfort, or annoyance), then moving on, and I could stand to improve the “moving on” part. Wish me luck with that this week…

Regular readers of this blog know that during my first marathon in 2007, I became a big fan of cheesy motivational quotes. They have helped me a great deal in my efforts to keep my brain in the right place while recovering from surgery on Feb. 24 to fix my the wrist I broke snowboarding, but this week, I recognized it was time to find some new ones, too. I reached out to runner friends on Twitter and in person, and came up with the list below. If you’ve got a favorite motivational quote you feel would help an injured athlete stay positive while she’s sidelined, please share it by posting a comment below.

“There is more to life than increasing its speed.” Gandhi

“In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.” A. Camus

“He who argues for his limitations gets to keep them.” Richard Bach

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” Helen Keller

“Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” C.S. Lewis

What else keeps you positive when you can’t run? Let me know by posting a comment below.

***EDITOR’S NOTE: If you found this post helpful, check out my recent shout-out to all of you who have posted here, Coping Tips for Injured Athletes. ***

When you’re training for a marathon, there comes a time when you have to tweak your training schedule to make it fit into the reality of what your body needs. When your hip still aches from your long run over the weekend, you cancel your scheduled speed workout on Tuesday. Conversely, you know that when you feel totally fantastic after a tempo run, you can throw in a couple of extra strides before heading home.

I thought I’d gotten really good at listening to my body, and giving it what it needs–even when that conflicts with my idea of what it *should* need. But almost two weeks after surgery on Feb. 24 to fix my the wrist I broke snowboarding, I’m becoming aware that actually, it’s more like my body and I were at war, and I have decided to declare a truce.

This war against my body wasn’t the obvious, “My thighs look like sausages in these jeans and I hate them” kind (though I occasionally fight those battles, too–don’t we all?). It was more of a Cold War of disappointment in which I constantly spotted flaws or shortcomings.  One of many examples of what I’m talking about: I’ve only been unable to run for a few weeks now, but it already seems silly–no, crazy–to me that running 8:30-minute miles rather than eight-minute miles during a group run could leave me angry at my legs and confused about why they conspired with my lungs to fail me.

It’s the downside of pushing your body to perform better, and it can be really helpful in challenging and expanding your ideas of what you’re capable of–when it’s not creating an ugly, unfair pressure-cooker environment. My goal for this week, the third after surgery, is to declare a truce while my body heals. Here’s what the truce means, and how it applies to everyday training as well:

• I’m making health my main motivation. My love of working out started with health, both the mind-clearing, endorphin-pumping mental kind, and the obvious physical sort.I started paying attention to pace and distance only as a way to keep myself motivated. Along the way, I started putting some serious pressure on myself — pressure that had nothing to do with my resting pulse or my cholesterol or disease prevention. My No. 1 goal right now is health, in a great big general sense, which makes my hiatus from working out a lot easier to take. After all, an infection is about the least healthy thing I can think of, and that’s what I’d risk if I sweated at all right now. There are worse, less healthy things in the world than a couple weeks off from serious training–though I’ll certainly enjoy returning to it when it’s time.
• I’m focusing on making sure I consume enough of what I do need rather than berating myself for eating too much of what I don’t need. Right now, this means eating foods that will help my body heal–increased calcium, protein, zinc, and vitamins A and C, according to organizations like the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and the Cleveland Clinic. And as long as I’m eating my plain, nonfat Greek yogurt, I’m not going to sweat the fact that I put a bunch of dark chocolate chips in it (chocolate aids healing too, right?).
• I’m focusing on what my body can do rather than what it can’t. I’m annoyed that my wrist still gets sore at the end of the day, and that my hand swells when I don’t keep it elevated in a sort of Statue of Liberty stance. Why not congratulate my body instead for no longer needing mid-day naps–a sign the major, hard-core healing is done? I’m still really digging Deena Kastor’s suggestion of “forcing the positive” until it feels natural, and that’s what I’m going to continue to do in celebrating incremental milestones.
• I’m also pushing patience. In recovery and in training (and, let’s face it, in life), it’s tough to take things week by week, and to be flexible about your goals when things don’t go as planned. But most of us value that feeling of meditation in motion that makes us feel like when we’re running, we are living totally in the moment. I think my recovery can be a lesson in that, too.

Have you ever consciously declared a truce with your body? Which battles were you fighting? What tactics helped you reach peace?

I had my first doctor appointment on Tuesday after surgery last week to fix my broken wrist, and I wanted to share the good news: Everything is healing up nicely, and on schedule!

I will see my doctor about once a week until my recovery is complete. She’s encouraging me to take my recovery, and my return to activity, on a week-by-week basis, and I’m starting to think this is a pretty good strategy. One week is a short enough period of time that I can suffer through almost anything, from unbelievable pain, à la last week, to a slow return to normacly this week. At the same time, a week is long enough that I can see a real improvement. A week ago, my wrist still hurt so badly, I was counting down the minutes until I could take my next maximum dose of Percocet. I’m going on my fourth day without any Percocet at all, and there are a host of other indications that this week marks a new phase of my recovery:

• First, there’s the rest of my doctor’s assessment. When I bragged that I’ve been taking seriously the charge to do absolutely nothing, my doctor, a runner herself who’s aware that I’m a runner who is anxious to get moving again, smiled and told me she could tell, because everything is healing “perfectly.” Luckily, my desire to be perfect (personality flaw) actually trumps my endorphin addiction, so this was exactly what I needed to hear. And I got the official go-ahead to go for walks, provided I don’t risk infection by sweating, and to move my fingers, my elbow and my shoulder in ways I’d previously been avoiding.
• I have a brand-new purple cast, which greatly reduces my fear that I’m going to screw something up bumping into something or falling.

My cool new purple cast.

• I’m not so darn tired anymore. Even on Monday, which I thought would be my first “normal” day post-surgery, I ended up napping the entire afternoon. This, from the girl who couldn’t even nap during the regular afternoon siesta while studying abroad in Italy. Napping Amy=sick Amy. But now, I’m not only staying awake all day, I’m getting antsy, which brings me to my final indicator of better health…
• In addition to short walks through my neighborhood, I’m going to start doing my hip-strengthening lineup a total of once a day. I have the thumbs-up from my doctor on this, as I’ve promised to leave enough time between them–a set of lunges here, a few squats there–to make sure I don’t get sweaty. As if I needed any more reason to get back to my routine with these, who did I see on the way out of my hand surgeon’s office on Tuesday but Beefcake Brad, the sports physical therapist I’d been seeing once a week for hip and ankle issues. I knew his office was just down the hall from my surgeon’s, but it was still a surprise to almost literally run into him after my appointment. I’m taking it as a sign from the sports injury gods to get back to work, at least to the extent that I can. Here’s the lineup I’ll do every day this week:

3X10 Cook hip lifts

3X10 clamshells with a resistance band (shown here, along with lots of other interesting-looking running-specific exercises)

3X10 deep squats

3X10 single-leg squats

“Monster walks” with two resistance bands.

Lateral lunges, backwards lunges and leg curls with a towel placed beneath the working foot.

In other getting-back-to-normal news, I’ve set a new post-recovery running goal: a fast 5K, maybe the Earth Day 5K in Silver Spring on April 18. I’m not 100 percent counting myself out for the the Blue Ridge Parkway Half-Marathon the following weekend; I’m just developing a fun and do-able Plan B in case I don’t get enough time to train for it.

Better yet, I got a respite from my convalescence when I met my running buddies for a post-run happy hour at our favorite spot, a wine bar called Adega. Not only did I have a great time there, there was a sweet get well-card from the whole gang waiting for me when I checked my mail back home. If I can’t run, knowing my running buddies are thinking about me is the next best thing.

It’s hard to believe that just three weeks ago, I was writing a post about how I found motivation from the idea that I was fit enough to not only enjoy hours upon hours of fresh powder skiing, but to handle shoveling out an entire ski lift to earn my turns.

Almost a week after surgery on Tuesday to fix my broken wrist and stabilize it using a titanium plate, I am starting to feel more like myself again. I’m down to one or two Percocets a day, if that, and I’m generally getting back to normal.

But it’s a new normal, albeit a temporary one. As I focus on physical challenges like making a fist with my right hand (which I can *totally* already do, placing me squarely ahead of where my doctor thought I’d be at this point), and celebrate the fact that I’m letting my body rest rather than getting it moving, I’ve found I need some reminders of the hard-skiing, marathon-running, Chesapeake Bay-swimming rock star I normally fancy myself. That brings me to the talismans of hope with which I’ve started to surround myself.

First, a word about talismans. When I looked up the dictionary definition of talisman to find out how to pluralize it (talismen?), I found it perfectly describes my little collection of feel-good items: “an object held to act as a charm to avert evil and bring good fortune,” or “something producing apparently magical or miraculous effects.”  Just what I need!

It started with my lucky skier socks on the day of the surgery, which I wore until I had to trade them for the hospital’s “pillow paws,” which were also pretty comfy.

It continues with my new favorite shirt: The one I bought at Mount Baker after skiing the you-know-what out of that resort during a visit out West in 2007. The shirt says, “Mount Baker rocks.” But I’m using it more as a reminder that I rock.

You can't tell in this picture, but behind the SpongeBob-esque contraption helping to immobilize my arm, I'm wearing a skiing shirt.

I have so many T-shirts from road races in open water swims, I have little choice but to wear them to bed on a regular basis. But over the past week, I’ve taken a certain pride in each shirt, relishing memories of actually running the Broad Street Run, the Earth Day 5K, the Run for the Pies 5K in Jacksonville.

My drawer full of race T-shirts.

I even wash down my pills with water sipped from my Gate River Run glass.

All these things do something I desperately need in order to heal: They remind me that I’m tough, and that I’ve conquered challenges in the past. The challenge I’m facing now is vastly different from these athletic pursuits, but the mental toughness and determination I’ll need to apply to it is the same.

I’m staying in touch with “normal me” through my actions, too. I’ve met all my deadlines since first breaking my arm, and I’m proud to share that this story about the Lamond Riggs neighborhood, which I reported, wrote, and took pictures for, was published over the weekend. Tomorrow, I’ll celebrate my first post-op doctor visit–and my one-week anniversary of being done with surgery–by meeting with my running buddies at Pacers Silver Spring for a post-run happy hour. I’ll have to skip the run, but that doesn’t mean I have to skip the happy!

Wish me luck at the doctor tomorrow!

It’s been a few days since my surgery on Tuesday to fix my broken wrist and stabilize it using a titanium plate. Having been through a recovery process that’s quite a bit more intense than I was expecting, I am now inclined to agree with my surgeon, who told me beforehand that, “there’s no such thing as a minor surgery.”

But enough whining. I’m mainly posting so I can share the photo below, which I hope brings a smile to your face. The hospital gave me this amazing contraption to keep my arm from moving in ways it shouldn’t (which is more helpful than you would imagine). I think it makes me look like a cross between a Green Bay Packers fan and a SpongeBob enthusiast (I’m neither).

I’m happy to announce that after two horrible, painful, doped-up days following surgery on Tuesday to fix my broken wrist, I’m officially back in the world of the living.  I ended up spending Tuesday night in the hospital (apparently, sobbing in pain and begging for morphine when your nerve block suddenly wears off about an hour after surgery, leaving you with absolutely nothing to ease the pain of someone cutting into you, is not the best tactic to use when you’re looking to go home), and slept through most of the day Wednesday once I got back home. Today, though I’m not exactly feeling productive and perky, I feel human again, and actually able to look forward — like, beyond my next dose of pain killer.

It likely won’t surprise you to hear that on my way into surgery, I was asking my doctor how realistic my various race goals were. I tempered my questions with the caveat “I know this seems trivial right now, but…” Then, I asked how soon I might be able to run, swim, hop on the stationary bike, do a single set of lunges or squats, etc.

Here’s the amazing thing: My doctor is a runner!  She told me as soon as the wound heals and I get into a cast, I should be able to do a little bit of running, though I could tell she didn’t want to get my hopes up about when that might happen. “The first month might be kind of rough, activity-wise,” she said, wincing sympathetically. But like a true runner, she also didn’t want to dampen my hopes that I might realistically be able to run the Blue Ridge Parkway Half-Marathon on April 24, or compete in the  1-Mile Chesapeake Bay Swim on June 13, and she told me to try to view recovery on a week-by-week basis.

This week, my goal is to let my body rest to let some good healing begin, and to make sure I don’t sweat at all to avoid the risk of infection.  I am, however, cleared to do whatever short bursts of activity I feel up for, provided I don’t get sweaty, and I actually did a set of single-leg squats today just to feel my muscles move again (I’ll need a nap later as a result, I’m sure).

Looking a little farther ahead, I’m also considering what I think are some pretty reasonable goals for returning to activity. I could be done with all manner of splints and casts within six weeks, which brings me to the first week of April. Ideally, I’d like to run the half marathon at the end of April (nine weeks away), and do the swim on June 13 (a whopping 16 weeks away). If that proves to be overly optimistic, my plan is to train for a fast 5K or 10K sometime in the late spring, and to be back in fighting/running shape for the Annapolis 10-miler in August.  For swimming, the backup plan involves choosing one of the many great-looking open water swims closer to the end of the summer. These should give me some exciting goals to work toward, while letting me be flexible enough to roll with the punches if my body needs a little extra time to recover.

I have one other major goal that will serve as an incentive to get strong again: Steve and I will spend next season as ski-patrol candidates at Whitetail! This is a major lifetime goal for both of us, and a great way to give back to a sport that’s given us so much.Twice-weekly outdoor emergency care classes will start in August (on Tuesday and Thursday nights, sadly, necessitating a break from our running group at Pacers Silver Spring) and continue through the fall, with on-the-hill training every Saturday once the resort is open. That gives me plenty of time to get back into top skiing shape (though don’t expect to see me snowboarding up there again anytime soon).

In other news: I wrote this post using this nifty software, MacSpeech, which converts my speech into text. There is a bit of a learning curve in using it, so please forgive any typos. My hope is that it will eventually allow me to post here more frequently.  But just like the rest of my recovery, I am taking things slow, and being as easy on myself as humanly possible, so please excuse my infrequent posts here and my infrequent presence on Twitter and other social media.

First, let me share the news that will shape the next two weeks of my life: I am scheduled to get surgery tomorrow to fix my broken wrist. My doctors last Friday said the bones aren’t setting the way they’d hoped, and said if they stuck my arm in a cast and let it heal, my right wrist would likely be a little unstable forever.

Instead, I will come out of surgery with a sort of bionic wrist reinforced with a metal plate and some pins and/or screws. This ensures I won’t be worrying about my wrist every time I fall skiing (notice I did not say snowboarding, as chances are slim I’ll be giving up a ski day for *that* hooey again) or every time I hoist a heavy pack onto my back while camping. Friends who have had similar surgeries tell me this also means I’ll get to be more active sooner than if I’d just gotten a cast.

I will be laid up for at least one week, probably more like two. Until the wound heals, I am absolutely not allowed to sweat, unless I care to risk infection (I don’t). Given how I felt this week, with my poor broken wrist in a splint, I’m not worried about jumping the gun. The idea of running isn’t even remotely appealing when you can feel your broken bone shift a bit when you’re walking across the room.

I’m getting the surgery done at National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda–probably the best place in the world to have an extremity put back together. It’s outpatient surgery, so I should be home and resting comfortably in time for LOST Tuesday night.

It didn’t take me long to start whipping out the marathon metaphors, and the more I think about it, the more it strikes me that, when you train for something as difficult as a marathon, you’re really just practicing for how you’ll get though greater, real-life difficulties. Here’s how recovering from surgery is a little like training for a marathon:

• It helps to break down the big challenge into manageable chunks. I caught myself thinking about how uncomfortable my cast would get after six weeks. Then, I realized that was like thinking about how rough you’ll feel at mile 20 when you’ve just crossed the starting line. I’m taking this recovery one day and one week at a time, and vowing to take it slow if that’s what my body needs. Again, judging by how rough my first few stationary-bike rides felt on the arm this week, I’m not going to be in any hurry to return to normal activity.
• I’m amassing my support squad. You know how you learn pretty quickly during marathon training which friends will offer to ride a bike beside you on long runs and which ones will say thing like, “Did you hear about that guy in Chicago who died during the marathon?” Or: “Aren’t you worried you’re going to hit the wall?” I’m surrounding myself with my positive, low-drama friends and family members and mentally blocking out negative ones.
• I’m getting a little cheesy. I have a whole new set of motivational quotes taped to the fridge, my bathroom mirror, my nightstand. Luckily, I’d gotten comfortable with this flagrant show of earnesty and sincerity during marathon training, so it doesn’t feel *so* cheesy now. If you have a good quote relating to mental toughness, pass it along. Bonus points if the quote is from an injured athlete!
• I’m not taking myself too seriously. Runners move pretty quickly from abject disappointment over a bad race to laughter and self-deprecation about it. The more I tell the story of the injury, the more I laugh about things that happened, such as the trifecta of things you don’t want to hear in the ER (all of which I heard): “Wow! Can I take a picture of that?” “Do you usually bleed a lot?” “I’m impressed. And I’ve been an ER nurse for 35 years, so it takes a lot to impress me.”
• I’m going to view food as medicine–except rather than focusing on muscle recovery after a long run, I’m looking at bone and wound healing. The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons lays out the basics here, saying that “protein, calcium, vitamin C, and vitamin D are absolutely necessary to heal broken bones.” According to AARP Magazine, researchers at the University of California, San Diego, have reported that a higher intake of omega-3s additionally appears to preserve bone density. And the Cleveland Clinic says the body needs increased amounts of calories, protein, vitamins A and C, and zinc during the healing process. It recommends consuming at least 1 serving a day dark green, leafy vegetables, orange or yellow vegetables and orange fruits for vitamin A; and at least 1 serving a day of citrus fruits, strawberries, tomatoes, peppers or spinach for vitamin C–which sort of sounds like what I eat already. Today’s Dietitian also gives some good advice about wound healing, too.

I’m still aiming to post here about once a week. I’ve finally ordered Mac-compatible speech-to-text software to make typing easier, but for now, I’m hunting and pecking.

Send healing thoughts my way tomorrow!

*Editor’s note: My posts may be less frequent during the next four to six weeks because of the circumstances described below. At least for now, I’m planing to post once a week, on Monday. My comments on others’ blogs will likely be sparse, too. But stick with me: I’m doing my best hunting and pecking with limited use of my right arm for now, and will be back to posts every weekday as soon as I can.*

On the two-hour drive from Whitetail to the emergency room at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda on Friday afternoon, I relied on a few key distractions to keep my mind off the knowledge that my lower right arm was purple, throbbing, and shaped like an “S” after a gnarly fall while learning to snowboard.

Snowboarding was fun, until it wasn’t.

I took deep yoga breaths while repeating the mantra, “Choose peace” as I felt bone grind on bone. I closed my eyes and hummed Bob Marley songs while I tried to ignore the bumps in the road (who knew there were so many bridges on I-70?). And I focused an NPR interview with Willie Mays on NPR in which the baseball great talked about how he chose not to hold onto anger about the way he was treated during his rookie year, when he was one of only a few black professional baseball players in the league. “I go forward all the time,” he said. “I never back up.”

I’m choosing to make Mays’ quote my mantra for the next four to six weeks, which I’m told will be my recovery time with or without surgery (I find out about the surgery at my follow-up appointment at 8 a.m. Friday). Focusing on those thoughts kept me from crying even a little bit from the moment I fell until we pulled into the hospital, where my misshapen wrist became the story of the night. It looked so nasty, the doctor who set it asked if he could take a picture (we have photos, too, but Steve says they’re too gross to post for general audiences). And they’re already helping me see this injury, a distal radius fracture, the way I want to: with positivity and grace, not self-pity and regret. Here’s how I’m choosing to approach the next four to six weeks:

• As a time to retrain my brain. Our neurons fire some circuits out of habit, and right now, my neurons have an awful lot of bad habits. If I “force the positive,” as Deena Kastor puts it, I can establish healthier thought patterns to replace them. I can come out of this mentally tougher than I already am by refusing to indulge self-pity, worst-case scenarios, whining.

• As a time to heal. I’ll be in occupational therapy as soon as they’ll take me. But in a larger sense, I’ve gotta believe my hip and ankle will benefit from some real time off—like, stationary-bike time off, not just reduced mileage. I will know more about when I can run and swim again after my doctor appointment on Friday, but for now, I’m just going to give my body all the rest it needs.
• As a time to work on my weaknesses. I may not be able to manage Turkish getups for quite a while. But single-leg squats, monster walks with resistance bands and the rest of my hip-strengthening workout are a different story.

My motivation board was decorated with photos of Stowe, where we were planning to ski in March (still might go; I clearly won’t ski); the Bay Bridge Swim in June (should be OK, but who knows?); and generic running-themed stuff. I’ve added a photo of Lindsey Vonn, the hardworking, gutsy skier whose Olympic dreams are in jeopardy after a shin injury; Deena Kastor, whose own Olympic marathon in Beijing was shattered when she had to drop out because of a stress fracture; and Willie Mays, who’s reminding me to keep looking forward.

One thing I will look back on: my amazing ski week last week. Steve and I volunteered to pick up extra shifts with the Mountain Safety Team as soon as we heard record snowfall in the forecasts, and actually got stuck at Whitetail overnight during the blizzard on Wednesday. My ski season may have ended early, but it certainly ended on a high note!

So I broke my arm while trying out snowboarding on Friday afternoon. More details on that later. For now, I’m hunting and pecking, and wanted to share photos from what may have been the best ski day ever at Whitetail on Wednesday. It stinks that my season ended sooner than I wanted, but it’s pretty cool that I got to end on a day like this.

Really, how can you follow up on a day like this?