Sports

Cautiously Optimistic

Anna Blankenheim Exercise, Sports , ,

I met with my surgeon today to discuss my options with regard to my poor, torn ACL.

Right now, my knee is still a little too swollen for him to tell 100% if it’s a complete tear or a partial tear. He can tell from the MRI that it’s definitely torn though. A partial tear would open up a door to a non-surgical solution. Essentially, I can work through lots of physical therapy to build up all of the muscles in and around my knee to help support it if the tear is partial. If it’s a full tear, I’ll pretty much need surgery without a doubt.

Here’s what I really liked about this surgeon – he’s not rushing me into surgery, but we have a game plan. It’s still a very viable option, but we’re going to give it a month of PT (which I would be doing if I had surgery anyway). After that month, I’m going to meet with him again and he’ll mess around with my knee some more. That will tell him one of two things – it’s fully torn or it’s not (that month is enough time for the swelling and fluid to go down). If it’s fully torn, we do surgery. If it’s partially torn, I have a choice to make based on how I feel the therapy has gone – if the knee feels great, I can try life without part of my ACL. If I don’t like how it feels or am worried about future stability, then we go into surgery.

I feel like I’m rambling, but I’m so so so excited to have a plan and something to work towards. Over the next couple weeks, I get to start weaning myself off the crutches (seriously, I’m so amazed at how weak my leg muscles have become over the last two weeks) and then the brace. I start PT on Tuesday, so in addition to biking and swimming (my only two approved activities) I’ll have some exercises to work on.

Fingers crossed!

The Story of the Torn ACL

Anna Blankenheim Exercise, Sports , , ,

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be splinted, packaged up, and sledded down a mountain by ski patrol? No? Well, I found out the hard way…

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Yup – those are my legs and my skis, strapped into a sled.

Let me rewind to the beginning. My sister won tickets for a day of skiing through work and decided to take me as her skiing buddy. Last week was a really long week for a wide variety of reasons, and both of us were super excited to have a “mental health day”. We headed up to beautiful Squaw Valley, got our skis, and hit the slopes.

We were having a wonderful time. The runs there are ridiculously long and it was an absolute blast. We were getting close to the end of the last one and had decided that we would go grab some lunch when we got to the bottom.

Then, I fell. It was not anything dramatic, or exciting, or spectacular. The edge of my downhill ski caught funny and as I fell, my boot stayed hooked in, and my knee twisted awkwardly. I heard and felt a very audible “pop” – much like bubble wrap. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel much pain. Then I tried to stand up. I instantly felt super queasy and clammy. Kati and I got me over to the side of the run where I decided to sit for a while. I tried to stand back up and get my boot back into the binding, but my knee felt super squishy and started to hurt. I knew right then that something was really wrong.

My sister skied down the hill to find the ski patrol, who came up pretty quickly. They were super funny and took really good care of me. They splinted my knee, strapped me into their little toboggan, and skied me down to the medical center, where there happened to be a sports medicine specialist (talk about good positioning!). He took some x-rays that showed nothing was broken, moved my knee all over the place, and told me I had torn my ACL.

We headed home with a brace and crutches, and the small hope that maybe the doctor at the resort (who probably sees five of these a day) didn’t know for sure. I have spent the past few days at my parents house because we’re having our floors replaced and mine is a hot mess. They’ve taken such good care of me, giving me plenty of time to rest, ice, and elevate! I went to my doctor who sent me over to the orthopedic specialists. They did an MRI and yesterday I got confirmation that my ACL is completely torn.

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I had my pity party, a good cry, and now I’m ready for action. Surgery is pretty much the only option if I want to get back to riding and the other activities that I do, so now I’m waiting for my surgery date. I will be happy to talk to the doctor, find out which surgical options are best for me (there are a couple different ones), and to ask all of my questions. Most of all, I just want to get it done so that I can get to work building my muscles back up and can get back on my horse!

Snowshoeing

Anna Blankenheim Exercise, Sports , , ,

Today I went on an adventure with my husband and our friend Mark. Let me start with the fact that these two are crazy when put together – they do things like the Death Ride, climb mountains, etc. Sometimes I tag along and sometimes I can’t hang. Today’s adventure was to go snowshoeing. Mike and Mark have been doing it for years, but I decided to borrow a friends (thanks Kassie!) and give it a try. It was seriously fun. We ended up hiking almost six miles in right around two and a half hours… having a blast the whole time.

Mike & I Snowshoeing
Mike & I Snowshoeing

We haven’t had a very good winter this year, so the snow was not as fresh as we would have liked it, but this really was a blast. And, it was great exercise!

Mike & Mark Hiking
Mike & Mark Hiking

We hiked in a little along a road that runs between our neck of the woods and Placerville (it’s closed in the winter because they don’t clear the snow). We then detoured off into the fresh, untouched snow. It was so beautiful… every now and then we would stop and there was nothing but silence or the wind in the trees. The weather was absolutely beautiful – we almost didn’t need gloves (and at the hardest parts I thought about taking off my top layer). The wind picked up a little at the end, but it wasn’t too bad. It was a beautiful day!

The View From The Top
The View From The Top
Mike & I At The Top
Mike & I At The Top
Mike & Mark At The Top
Mike & Mark At The Top

Super Bowl Musings

Anna Blankenheim Sports , , , , ,

As most of you know, I’m a born and raised San Francisco 49ers fan. As is Shadow:

Die Hard 49ers Fan
Die Hard 49ers Fan

The first half of the game was really disappointing for me – it really looked like they weren’t there to play. I thought overall Colin Kaepernick played a pretty good game – he had some rookie mistakes, but for only being his 10th NFL start, the kid did ok. The power outage thing was crazy… definitely a game changer (in the 49ers favor), but they just couldn’t pull it off. If they had come out in the first half like they played in the 2nd, I have no doubt we would have won. It was a good, fair game, and the 49ers just didn’t have the extra oomph to pull it off.

Now, onto the ads. I was pretty disappointed with this year’s selection – I felt like they were mostly boring. There were two commercials that I really liked. My favorite (of course!) was the Budweiser Clydesdale commercial – I’m a sucker for the horses! I seriously got all misty-eyed at this one!

The other commercial that I thought was pretty cute came from Tide. I loved the Joe Montana Miracle Stain commercial. It was such a cute concept!

There was one last commercial that seriously made me laugh. It was on after the game (we actually didn’t see it until we got home). Even though I was on the losing side, I think this is pretty darn funny. Because, you know, “nothing masks the bitter taste of defeat quite like the sweet taste of pudding”. Apparently they’re really giving pudding away in San Francisco tomorrow!

Marathon Marker

Anna Blankenheim Sports ,

After I ran my first marathon last June, I had thought about getting a tattoo… a tiny palm tree on my foot (in honor of San Diego, where the marathon was run) with a 26.2 on it.

Instead, I finally decided to get the car sticker. Way more commitment than a tattoo, right?

26.2
26.2

In other seriously scary news, I heard the words “Someday I might do another marathon” come out of my mouth the other day. Yikes. I must be crazy!

My Thoughts On Lance Armstrong

Anna Blankenheim Sports ,

As most of you know, Lance Armstrong sat down with Oprah this week to discuss the doping charges against him.

Through the whole interview two things warred in my head. The first was how hard it must have been for him to actually admit all of this. The second was what a jerk he is. I have a hard time believing that he felt that he wasn’t doing anything wrong and that he wouldn’t get caught. He even made the comment that if he hadn’t made his comeback to the sport that he likely would have gotten away with it. I also wondered what his motivation for admitting this now was. I can’t imagine that he thinks his ban will be lifted, so maybe it’s just that he’s reached his breaking point.

I was really impressed with Oprah – she asked all of the hard-hitting questions that had gone through my head and really pushed Lance when he seemed like he was trying to skirt the issue. I am curious what it is that makes people want to spill their guts to her.

Part two of the interview is on tonight… we’re definitely watching it, but I don’t think there’s really much more to be said (who knows though, Oprah might surprise me). There are several questions that I still have – what happens to all of the money that Lance won in the anti-deframation lawsuits? Does he pay back prize or sponsor money?

Then there’s the whole impact on the sport of cycling. It became very apparent that many of the top cyclists of that time period were also doping and using illegal substances. In fact, it was so apparent that when the UCI disqualified Lance in his seven wins, they left the spot vacated, as opposed to filling it with the 2nd place winner (as was done in 2010 when Alberto Contador was caught doping and the win was given to Andy Schleck). I think this whole thing is a devastating blow to professional cycling and, more specifically, American cycling. It makes me sad that in sports today we see this more and more – baseball, football, and soccer. I’m all for being competitive, but think it’s really sad when people feel they have to win at all costs. What happened to good sportsmanship?