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Talking Injury Recovery and Self Identity with Hillary Allen
1.7k Plays4 years ago
In this episode Steve House is joined by Hillary Allen. Hillary endured a tragic accident while competing in Sky Running (an ultra distance technical ridge running race). She and Steve recap her experiences of this accident, the grief and unexpected loss of sense of self that arose, and Hillary's path to recovery. Hillary documents this process in her book: Out and Back: A Runner's Story of Survival Against All Odds.
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Transcript
Welcome and Introduction
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to the Uphill Athlete Podcast. These programs are just one of several free services we provide to disseminate information about training for mountain sports. If you like what you hear and want more, please check out our website, uphillathlete.com, where you'll find many articles and our extensive video library on all aspects of training for and accomplishing a variety of mountain goals. You'll also find our forum, where you can ask questions of our experts and the community at large.
00:00:30
Speaker
Our email is coach at uphillathlete.com and we'd love to hear from you. We've been very pleased and of course gratified that our podcasts are being received so enthusiastically. We've had requests to enable a way for listeners to have a conversation about episodes.
00:00:49
Speaker
We certainly welcome this idea and want to encourage those of you who do want to do that to do so on our forum so that the whole uphill athlete community can join in and benefit from this exchange. To do so, please start a new thread on the forum using the title of the podcast under the most appropriate category. Thanks for being part of this community.
Guest Introduction: Hillary Allen
00:01:14
Speaker
Hi, everyone. My name is Steve Haus. Welcome back to the Uphill Athlete Podcast. I am super excited today to have Hillary Allen with me to talk to us about a lot of interesting topics that she has been through. And this conversation, I want to say, came up because she listened to some of the earlier podcasts that I recorded with Skyar Denny.
00:01:43
Speaker
A mutual friend of ours reached out and said, hey, Hillary has some similar experiences and stories, and this could be a nice bookend, a nice edition. And we got together and had some great conversations. It was really interesting. I read your book out and back, and it was great. And I'm really excited to have you here. Thanks for being here, Hillary.
00:02:07
Speaker
Yeah, thanks so much for having me on. I'm thrilled to be able to, yeah, to discuss some of these things that, you know, hopefully people have already heard a little bit, but, you know, through my perspective. So, yeah. Yeah. So let me, how do you, how do you introduce yourself, Hillary? Like, how do you define yourself? What is it? Tell us what you do.
00:02:28
Speaker
Yeah, so I think first and foremost, I would introduce myself as a science nerd.
Hillary's Background and Transition to Ultra Running
00:02:35
Speaker
I have a master's in neuroscience and physiology. And so I've actually been a scientist longer than I've been any sort of an athlete. But that curiosity in exploring the physical world and the human brain and kind of that aspect of life brought me to running, interestingly enough,
00:02:57
Speaker
I think curiosity is the kind of common thread that links everything together in my life, decisions and things that I pursue. And so, yeah, that curiosity, like, so I am an athlete, I am actually an ultra distance runner for the North Face.
00:03:17
Speaker
And running is not my only running might be my favorite way to move, but I'm also, I love the gravel cycling. I just, I love moving in the mountains. Um, but primarily that's running, um, cycling, um, maybe really, you know, slow hiking or fast hiking, depending on ultra endurance science nerves, what we have on our hands today, it sounds like you've been right in, right? Like that's just like, um, where do you go up? You grew up in the mountains, correct?
00:03:47
Speaker
I did I grew up in in Colorado so Fort Collins, Colorado. So it's kind of right at the mouth of Pooter Canyon, the Rocky Mountains Rocky Mountain National Park that was a place that I frequented, you know,
00:04:02
Speaker
like weekly during the summer as a kid. And yeah, I grew up just with something, the science. It runs in my family. Both of my parents are professors at Colorado State University. So that's in Fort Collins. And they also were just, they, how they met each other, they were like hiking 14ers in Colorado.
00:04:24
Speaker
And that's how they like went on first dates and like things like this. And so the, again, it's, it's kind of like the outdoorsy lifestyle merged with science. It just brought a pretty curious kid who that was me and I was, you know, out playing in the dirt and yeah, like asking questions and, um, answers probably.
00:04:46
Speaker
Yes. I was quite, I think I was in a handful as a kid. I was always asking why and I would always be, I mean, it was great because like I was always outside and like my favorite thing was to, whenever we'd go on fishing or camping trips, the first thing I would do is go dig worms in the backyard and get them ready. Got to prep the worms.
00:05:14
Speaker
I love it. I did similar things as in my, so I can totally relate to that. Let me, let's set the stage a little bit. We are talking about, let's say generally our subject is going to be recovery, injury,
00:05:37
Speaker
trauma, grief, healing, resilience, all these things. And tell me about Tromso. Tell the audience that story a little bit because that sets the stage, I think, for your experience with these subjects.
00:05:56
Speaker
Yeah.
Sky Running and International Competitions
00:05:57
Speaker
So initially what, you know, I've been listening to your podcast for a while. I mean, we're in, you know, the, the endurance sports world and I think, you know, ultra distance trail running, which is what I do now competitively. Um, there's kind of a crossover between, um, especially when you're in Europe, you know, the alpinism culture and just mountain athletics. And so a lot of these races that I did, especially in Europe, they're quite technical and quite, um,
00:06:24
Speaker
extreme, this isn't air quotes, but basically something that I became kind of quite fond of and quite good at was this thing called sky running. And it's where you kind of run on super steep terrain up kind of a most direct way to the summit of these peaks during a race, traverse a technical ridge line and then kind of loop around, run
00:06:48
Speaker
some ridiculous distance like a 50 kilometers and then come back. So I was basically, this is what I've been doing. I've been on the world sky running circuit. I have won the US sky running series and then I was racing internationally. And so
00:07:07
Speaker
how I would do this is I would race during the summer and I would basically pack my bags and move to Europe. And so in competing in these different series, they land me at different parts of the world. And in 2017, I was actually, I was on in the World Series Sky Running Circuit and I was in Norway. So I was brought to this place that was
The Accident: Fall and Rescue
00:07:31
Speaker
insane. I mean, it's up in the Arctic Circle in these vast fjords and these granite peaks and these ridge lines just kind of rising from nothing. And this is like what I love to do. So this race was a 50, 57 kilometer race. And you have to run on this ridge. It's called Humper Rockin' Ridge. And it's nothing crazy. It's like third class. So you're putting a hand down to stabilize yourself.
00:08:00
Speaker
um, fast moving, I would describe it as. Um, but it was during this race where in one moment my life was changed. And I, the only thing I can remember, uh, is, you know, reaching the halfway point, coming onto this ridge, feeling in my element and feeling strong and happy. And then in one step I was falling.
00:08:31
Speaker
And all I remember was the world slowing down as the horizon turned upside down. And I was kind of watching myself as I fell and telling myself that this was it, that I needed to stay calm and brace myself for impact because I was falling and I was probably going to die.
00:09:00
Speaker
All in all, I fell 150 feet, so roughly 50 meters somewhere in there, bouncing on the ridge line. I do remember several impacts and kind of that narrative in my head repeating. And yeah, then realizing that
00:09:28
Speaker
Okay, somehow waking up on the side of this mountain with people that I kind of recognized around me and then the slow motion and still disbelief of what was happening, thinking that I was still dying as a kind of a rescue operation started to go underway. Yeah. And then how, so how did they get you out of there?
00:09:56
Speaker
Yeah. So this is honestly, so as an American, um, this is something that's foreign to me. We don't have that. We don't have kind of a, a team on call, you know, kind of ready to come basically rescue someone, you know, in the mountains in where I live, especially in the Rocky mountains and in Colorado and Wyoming, you can get pretty far back there and pretty remote.
00:10:25
Speaker
Um, and so, I mean, I was familiar with this idea of like a rescue team, like, you know, mountain rescue from racing so much in Europe. And so thankfully, because this happened during a race, um, someone had seen me fall and scrambled down to me to kind of.
00:10:45
Speaker
assess the situation first see if I was alive, and then they were able to call the mountain rescue team that was on, that was close by. And so thankfully for me the rescue operation from when I fell to when I was in the hospital was only about two and a half hours. But it was pretty intense because it was a ridgeline. And so
00:11:05
Speaker
they had to hover a helicopter by the ridgeline as rocks and debris were kind of getting blown around and lower a doctor who had to come down to me and then basically load me onto a cot and hoist me up and then take me
00:11:21
Speaker
Uh, back to the nearest city, which was, which was Trump. So, and of course I don't remember every instant of this. All I remember, uh, were blurs of faces that were kind of around me during the accident. Um, and like me moving my legs is just this weird thing that I had in my mind. Like every time I'd.
00:11:39
Speaker
wake up and I'd feel the pain pulsing throughout me. I would try to kick my legs because to me that was like, okay, you're not paralyzed.
Injuries and Challenges of Recovery
00:11:48
Speaker
I was doing these weird things in my head to calm me down to say, okay, you're going to be okay. Then I was just blurs of pain and familiar and unfamiliar faces getting hoisted into a cot.
00:12:08
Speaker
feeling that feeling of falling again as they, you know, took me up into the helicopter. Um, and then kind of the next memories I have are from the hospital in, in Tromso. Incredible. Well, we're glad you're here. We're glad that that was rescue guys. Rescue team got there as quickly and easily as they did and brought you back.
00:12:34
Speaker
I know the story because I've read your book out and back and those that want to hear the rest of that story should go pick up a copy and read that. But I want to kind of fast forward because really where I want to that, can you please just let's
00:12:55
Speaker
Let's skip forward. I don't know what's the right amount of time, three months or something, and you have what injuries and what does your life look like and what is your prognosis and what is the next year of your life revolving around. I can kind of guess, but I want to hear it from you.
00:13:14
Speaker
Yeah, so at this point, I had actually never in my entire life broken a bone. And so that was unfamiliar. And I went big. I broke 14 in total. Yeah, so it was both arms, five ribs in total, both feet in several places, my back as well.
00:13:43
Speaker
And so my mobility was extremely limited. And I go into this kind of some details of it in the book, but it's so hard to describe because I, you know, in one, literally in one step, my whole entire life has changed. And, you know, I go from peak physical, yeah, like peak physical performance to needing help just to bathe myself or feed myself.
00:14:10
Speaker
You know, if you break your arms and I had surgery, I couldn't lift more than like a beer can.
00:14:19
Speaker
I mean, like 12 ounces of liquid or 16, whatever, but not very much. And so how could I eat? How could I cook? How could I even bathe myself if I'm only standing on one leg and that one leg already has a broken foot in it? And so, yeah, and so I was on...
00:14:42
Speaker
And I had to have one of the major injuries I had was in my foot. I had actually fractured a ligament in my right foot that needed surgery and required
00:14:55
Speaker
about three months of strict non-weight bearing for it in order to heal. And so I had a scooter that I had to take with me everywhere. I couldn't walk. I had to move out of my apartment because it had stairs and there was no way that I could go upstairs. Aside from on my butt, if I was scooting on my butt, using my elbows to shimmy my way up the stairs.
00:15:26
Speaker
In those initial moments, and I know we're going to get into this, that was the physical. It was easy for me to focus on the physical as an athlete, even as one who had never broken a bone. I understood that. I had taught physiology. I know the timeline for bones healing. I know what that looks like. I know what's happening on the cellular level. So I was thinking of that day to day. But that's also different, because as an athlete,
00:15:55
Speaker
I like to move and to be completely dependent on other people and basically a little machine to get me from my bed to the bathroom. It was
00:16:13
Speaker
It was humbling, but I also felt, I just felt defeated. I felt embarrassed. I felt like a shell of who, of this strong person that I always thought that I was. And
00:16:34
Speaker
Yeah, that was even the first three months. Sure, it was physically hard. But that was just the beginning of what I was struggling with from a mental side of things and this whole concept of loss of sense of self and this grief that I was living through on a day-to-day basis.
00:17:01
Speaker
but actually not even knowing that that's what I was experiencing. Right. And I just want to pause right there for a second, because I want to dig into this a little bit if it's not too painful. Excuse me. But let's talk about, tell me about your identity. I mean, this is slightly different for everyone, but I think that there are a lot of parallels. And I would like to hear your words, how you identify yourself
00:17:32
Speaker
let's say before that step. And then three months later, six months later, nine months later, your identity is as an athlete. I don't want to put words in your mouth. I want you to tell me how you see that. Yeah.
Identity and the Impact of Injuries
00:17:50
Speaker
And so, yeah, I think definitely before the accident, I would define myself as strong. Trail running was something that
00:18:02
Speaker
It was this source of strength and power and independence that I could take myself with my running shoes and a pack full of snacks and water and I could just go. I could just be free and I could explore. It was one of the most liberating feelings when I discovered that and it made me feel strong. It made me
00:18:24
Speaker
um, a better scientist. I mean, I was in grad school at the time when I first started trail running and then I transitioned to teaching. It made me a better teacher. I could pull examples, you know, in my physiology class or my chemistry class from literally the trail. And you know, my experiences, I felt that it made me this, this whole person. And honestly, I think I, especially when it became then my job, um, there was this
00:18:54
Speaker
I couldn't tell where different parts of me ended and started again. I wanted to clarify that. When becoming an athlete became your job, it shifted. How so?
00:19:11
Speaker
Yeah, so because then it was this, you know, then it became this thing of like, oh, this is Hillary and she's a North Face athlete. It became almost a part of my identity, like how people, especially, you know, in a place like Boulder, where I live now, where, you know, it's almost like in the same breath, like I'm Hillary Allen, North Face athlete.
00:19:31
Speaker
you know it's like okay but who you know who are you it's it's okay who are you in what sport do you do or even like they don't even care who you are it's like oh i need a trail runner friend oh i need to like a sponsored athlete friend you know so it it doesn't it became that it almost became
00:19:49
Speaker
just how I define myself, how I would introduce myself, right? Especially when I was traveling for races, it became, my job almost became like who I was, like what I was doing. And then as far as the, you know, professional competition side of things, who I was, like Hillary Allen, the North Face athlete, and what's your next race? Like that was almost the same thing. And so, um,
00:20:15
Speaker
It became harder for me then when i wasn't running you know outside of training or doing this thing that i loved it started to become more of almost an obligation and a necessity to do in order to feel you know good or satisfied about myself as a human being.
00:20:35
Speaker
And yeah, so, but of course that's good and fine if you're healthy and able to do these things. Even if you, you know, even if you go through a period of rest, like you can see it as part of the bigger picture. But after the accident,
00:20:55
Speaker
that completely changed. And I was really struggling with, then not only with, you know, the loss of physical mobility, I was then dealing with this loss of identity of who I was. Like now it felt almost like a lie to be like, Oh, I'm Hillary Allen, the North Face athlete. When I was, you know, what cast it up and on a scooter, and I had no idea if I would actually be able to run again, let alone compete at the elite level. And so.
00:21:26
Speaker
Yeah, that was, I think, externally the first three months, it was easy to focus on the physical injuries that I was recovering from. But after those first three months, when I got off the casts and I appeared more of like a normal person, kind of like looked more like I had before the accident,
00:21:50
Speaker
That's where I think the grief and the loss of sense of self really started to wear on me. Because at that point I might have looked more normal, looked more like my old self, but I was this new person and I didn't know who that person was anymore without running. And I had no idea if I was actually even going to be able to do that again.
00:22:21
Speaker
Yeah, you have a great passage in the book about that when you first walked down Pearl Street.
00:22:26
Speaker
and how your perception from, or first walk out Pearl Street without the castes, I should say, without all the acrimon that goes along with the injury. And before people had given you a wide berth because obviously you're injured, needed care, and now all of a sudden there weren't bits internally. So it's interesting how our mental process lags behind our physical process in these cases. And I think that that's certainly been my experience as well. And I think that it's worth calling out because
00:22:56
Speaker
That's a near universal, let's say, trait or experience of these in people I've talked to. And so if you are listening and have gone through that, it's just index that thought. But I think this is really interesting subject of identity and self. Boy.
Emotions and Vulnerability in Recovery
00:23:28
Speaker
You kind of derailed the outline I had in my head of how our conversation was going because you got into this really interesting topic. Because
00:23:40
Speaker
It's maybe, so I'm going to start ad-libbing here. And because you're, I want to say thank you for your vulnerability in this discussion. If people could see you in your body language, they would even, as I can on the video call here, they would understand that even better. And probably they can hear your voice.
00:24:00
Speaker
I can certainly appreciate that. And that takes a lot of strength to offer these kinds of insights and experiences in such an honest and raw way. And so let's talk a little bit about vulnerability, because this is one of the most interesting parts of your book to me when you talked about the vulnerability that you experience as an injured person, as a
00:24:30
Speaker
as a convalescing athlete. What's the right term, actually? Maybe we should just say a recovering athlete. Right, exactly. So thank you. And this is really why I wanted to have this conversation with you, because I think, for me at least, listening to the past episodes on grief and loss and trauma, certainly my accident, it was a trauma.
00:24:56
Speaker
And a lot of runners, they don't necessarily experience that. But I don't think we have to have all experienced the same exact thing to experience these emotions that come with it. And I think even an injury or a short time away from something that you define as part of you or something even that you love, it can bring about these feelings of grief and loss and
00:25:18
Speaker
You know, I think we're all together in that. But, and I wanted to, that's also a part of the reason why I wrote this book is to create kind of a shared experience in a place where people can relate to it.
00:25:32
Speaker
But I mean, yeah, it's just this whole concept of an injured athlete, right? I feel like it's never something that, it's never a place that we want to be. Certainly it wasn't for me, but like I didn't even know where to begin because of all of these different emotions that were brought about from being this injured athlete. And I think it was important for me to be able to
00:26:00
Speaker
to experience that because it forced me to kind of revisit why I ran and why I run and why I do these things. And, you know, basically having that time and space to do it. Like I said, it didn't happen for me until three months after I was actually able to walk or start walking. But
00:26:31
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you have created this this conversation in this place for for bringing this up, which is a wonderful thing and we're talking about vulnerability and then how
00:26:44
Speaker
Let's zoom out just slightly to the community level and you're part of this community. I'm a part of this community. What do you want the community to know the next time you are injured or the next time someone's training partner is injured? How do you recommend? What's your advice? How do you approach that injured athlete? What do you say?
00:27:08
Speaker
Yeah. And so I think everyone is different. And I mean, you're a coach. You know, and you yourself, you've experienced this. I think you've mentioned this in other episodes too, is that how do, especially with trauma, if it's something that you've talked about in previous episodes about losing someone or
00:27:29
Speaker
in the mountains, but then how you process is you also want to go to the mountains. But for me, I also had that desire, but I literally couldn't because I wasn't strong enough. And I didn't know when I was going to be able to return to this modality that I loved, not just for the physical act of experiencing the world, but the emotional clarity that it brought me.
00:27:57
Speaker
And so that's a really hard experience and it's really tough. It was the first time that I was experiencing it, but it was the first time I think a lot of people in my immediate community had even experienced it. Certainly, my mother, my loved ones, but in my running community here in Boulder, people had experienced it in the climbing community, but in the running community, they hadn't experienced someone who had fallen that far and had these extreme injuries.
00:28:25
Speaker
that I had had, right? You know, normally in running, it's like you twist an ankle or you have an overuse injury. But, you know, there's still connection in that feel of, you know, that loss when you're dealing with an injury and you can't do the sport that you love, you know, you have to kind of to improvise.
00:28:46
Speaker
to get back out there, but I was literally, I couldn't for months on end. And so to go back to your question about, what do you tell someone? It was really hard because I actually, I didn't even know what I needed. And I found from basically trial and error, what felt good and what didn't.
00:29:10
Speaker
And for one, the thing that I found out very early on that did not feel good was people trying to tell me that I should feel a certain way. People trying to tell me that, oh, but Hillary, you should feel grateful for being alive.
00:29:29
Speaker
You should feel grateful that you didn't have more serious injuries. You should feel this way. When I was struggling, I certainly felt grateful that I wasn't dead.
00:29:44
Speaker
I also felt really angry that the accident didn't kill me because at times I had wished it didn't. I know that that sounds horrible and I know especially, you know, coming from someone who, you know, I have experienced, you know, death of friends in the mountains, not from, you know, a climbing partner, but, you know, people that I know and I can see that effect that it has on people. So why would I even say those things?
00:30:08
Speaker
But it was just this extreme honesty that I was feeling. And I couldn't mask that. I couldn't shut up about it. I couldn't just push those feelings down because they would keep boiling up. And so for me, what I learned is that it's really important to be honest. First with yourself.
00:30:32
Speaker
that it's not all butterflies and rainbows and roses but there's like shit and there's just this really deep dark side to being injured and experiencing you know that grief and that loss that comes with it and for me it was making space and and recognizing
00:30:55
Speaker
that I needed to express those emotions that I had wished the accident would have killed me, that this just seemed so impossible that I didn't know which way was up and I didn't know a way forward. And at the same time, as I experienced those feelings, I also realized that I also did still feel grateful to be here and that I did have that belief in myself to keep going and to keep trying.
00:31:24
Speaker
and to believe that, okay, maybe one day I can run again and that might look different than before, but that's not gonna keep me from pursuing this thing that I love. And so that's what I would tell people is if you're injured, be honest, be honest with how you're feeling. And it's totally okay to not
00:31:52
Speaker
feel okay. And I think the more that we kind of let those ugly, real emotions in, I don't necessarily think it becomes easier, but I just think it lifts a weight off of your shoulders that you need to be something other than what you are experiencing.
00:32:13
Speaker
Yeah, I would actually challenge you a little bit on that. I do think it becomes easier because of, I mean, you almost contradicted yourself. I don't know if you, cause it is a way lifted and that means that is easier. That is incredibly powerful observation. I'm sure that the audience will take that to heart. Let's dial back a little bit and
00:32:40
Speaker
You know, your injuries and my injuries when I was in my accident 11 years ago, they were very serious injuries.
00:32:52
Speaker
What about those more common circumstances where it's a overuse injury, it's a stress fracture, it's a badly sprained ankle. I mean, that's the common stuff that kind of goes along with being an athlete. It's part of it. We're all going to have those things happen at some point. We're going to have to work through those. What do you tell those people? What lessons do you have for them?
00:33:17
Speaker
Yeah. So, I mean, surprise. I got injured again. And I had, you know, it wasn't this like crazy, you know, story. It's actually included in the book. I broke my ankle and everyone was saying, oh, Hillary, you've been here before. It's going to be so much easier. But in fact, that was even harder for me because, you know, I didn't have this excuse to kind of go back on as like, you know, I had fallen off a cliff. I literally just like slipped on the ice and broke my ankle.
00:33:46
Speaker
So, okay, that sounds like there's judgment there, but maybe a little bit, but you know, still. But what I would say is that, first of all, I would say that I think humans were all connected by
Community Support and Shared Struggles
00:34:03
Speaker
struggle and by this feeling you know like maybe we we don't empathy I think is impossible by definition because I can't know exactly what you're feeling because I haven't experienced exactly what you're experiencing but sympathy is possible and how I can sympathize with you is if you were counting experience of when you were injured and I relate to that and say oh my gosh I felt the exact same way and that's how
00:34:32
Speaker
anyone who's been injured. You don't have to have fallen off, you know, a cliff to experience the loss that comes when you're separated from doing something that you love or, you know, this expression that we use to kind of work through things emotionally or physically. We're all connected by that and everyone's quote unquote suffering is
00:34:57
Speaker
you know, comes from their unique experiences, but that suffering we all share, we can all sympathize in that. And so, you know, I was dealing with the same, that same loss of sense of self from someone who has an overuse injury or someone who's out, you know, with a stress fracture and can't, you know, can't run or can't do their, you know, their race or their big goal race they had planned. Like we're all, we're all I think connected in that. And I think that that's actually,
00:35:27
Speaker
uniquely unifying. Especially in 2019, 2020, when so many of our events and races and goals are pushed back an indefinite amount of time. Right. And so for me, it's like finding, finding ways. Okay. Well, if, you know, my, my self-worth was, you know, caught up in being an elite runner. And so.
00:35:56
Speaker
that was uncomfortable, especially if I had to let go of that piece of myself. And so this can be applied to someone who likes to do races, and that's how they track progress. They see their friends, and to have that not be there anymore can feel like this loss, or they don't know who they are anymore. They don't know what the motivation is behind all of these things that they're doing.
00:36:20
Speaker
So for me, the whole journey was to really dive into that. And that's some of the hardest work that I've ever had to do and continuing to do it because I do think it's an ongoing process.
00:36:43
Speaker
Let's segue to something I think is very related to this, which is related to running. I wanted to ask you about patience and how you
00:36:56
Speaker
how you, what's your relationship with patients, especially when you're injured, but also when you're running, when you're running an ultra, I think it's a little bit psychologically similar. I have never run an ultra, so I can't say, but my feeling is it's similar to climbing a big mountain where you just break it down into these super small pieces. But I want to hear you talk about both of those things actually. Let's start with the running. Like what is running? What is running?
Patience and Resilience in Recovery
00:37:24
Speaker
give you around the patience that you brought into this experience of being injured and recovering. So to preface all of this, patience is not one of my virtues.
00:37:41
Speaker
I love the tone of your voice there, yes. Like at all. I would, no, I am not a patient person. If there is one, if like, I pride myself in like figuring out like, okay, if this is, here's the bottleneck. Like, how do I, you know, get around these things to make it go faster? I don't know. Is that helpful?
00:38:04
Speaker
So, okay, so here's what I say. It's how can I, I must have some kind of patience if I'm an ultra runner, because, you know, these, these races sometimes are on the order of days, you know? So for sure you can relate because I know big mountain projects and goals, like they require an immense amount of time. So that is an ultra. So even though patience is not one of my virtues, running allows me
00:38:34
Speaker
a different kind of patience. And how I view it is that, I mean with running, you're always making progress. So what I do is I don't feel impatient when I'm running because I break it down literally sometimes to one step at a time.
00:38:50
Speaker
Like when things even aren't going very well or I'm reaching a tough part or a tough climb, I literally focus on my footsteps. And so because I feel like I'm making forward progress literally with every step, then I can be patient because I get to move all day.
00:39:11
Speaker
And as long as I'm making some sort of forward progress, sometimes certainly I think of like, oh my gosh, I have this much left in the race if I'm hitting a low point. But just focusing on that, literally breaking it down to like a minute at a time or an hour at a time or a climb at a time, that's how I practice patience. And that's how I was able to use running and realize like, OK, I actually can be pretty patient.
00:39:38
Speaker
and especially how i race i'm not someone that goes out from the gun because it's an ultra like i i you know i start within you know what feels comfortable to me and then i i like to you know move up later in the field and like surprise people because i've done a good job at being patient and knowing myself and you know um
00:40:00
Speaker
moving at a pace that's fast for me and knowing that I can pick up, keep this pace all day. And so that's how running, I realized I definitely had patience through running and actually that's something I really excel at actually in these long distance races. But
00:40:23
Speaker
applying that to recovery, I literally had to take it as that. Early on in the recovery, especially when the days were super tough, that I would literally break it down into super digestible chunks.
00:40:38
Speaker
Like, for instance, one of them would be, okay, you know, getting out of bed in the morning to my table or, you know, getting out of my apartment and scooting down the street to the coffee shop, like that felt good. And so if I could string together minutes or hours, they would eventually lead to days and then weeks and, you know, to go from there because it was really interesting perspective because normally I would, you know,
00:41:06
Speaker
plan my year in training blocks of like, okay, here's a race or here's a big objective. How, and then, you know, like go back in time and build training blocks to lead up to that. And this was the first time where I couldn't do that. So I had to kind of problem solve and practice patience in a way so that I literally wouldn't lose my mind. Very, very interesting. Yeah.
00:41:38
Speaker
Patience is such an interesting thing. It's an interesting journey. And I can understand that. And that came across in the writing, too, that you were both impatient, in a sense, and incredibly patient.
00:41:59
Speaker
And that process of getting through your days and weeks and months and so forth, I think is a really important lesson for people going through injury is that it is just like getting out of bed and getting to the coffee shop and getting breakfast or getting to the PT. Like you talk about your friend who was, I forgot her name now, is a mountain bike racer.
00:42:26
Speaker
and how you would kind of be each other's support and getting each other to physical therapy. And, you know, that stuff is, you know, it sounds sort of quaint, like, oh, it's this cute story. I have this PT buddy. But that is so important. It's so hard to do. And honestly, so this is through practicing that patience, because I think it is something
00:42:55
Speaker
you know, that you practice and eventually, you know, I can get better at it. Um, but through practicing that, I learned so much about myself through practicing that patience and showing up for myself each day. I learned, I kind of got myself identity back because instead of focusing on, okay, I'm Hillary Allen, the endurance runner. Well, I don't know if I'm going to do that again. I don't know if I want to do that again. I don't know if I can.
00:43:24
Speaker
But seeing myself showing up for myself every day, even if I felt like crap, even if I felt sad or unmotivated, even if I felt good, that to me showed me that
00:43:39
Speaker
I was more than just a runner. That was more than just an athlete that I had, I possessed these other attributes that were, you know, a different kind of strength that were, I was almost learning about myself in real time. And, and I was able to see my own true colors that yes, okay, I could be impatient and experience the world that way. And also I could be
00:44:02
Speaker
I was recognizing myself that I had this incredible resilience or that I had this incredible tenacity to not give up on something that I loved so much. And then the other piece to this is the whole community aspect, is that I felt that I was building this community that not only would they show up for me, but they were allowing me to grow.
00:44:29
Speaker
which this is something else that I would tell people that are injured is like, you can't expect yourself to be the same person on the other side of this. And that's not a judgment. That's not a negative thing. In fact, I mean, that's kind of awesome. You get to go through something and you get to grow and learn and become something different. And
00:44:54
Speaker
You have to allow that in yourself, but also the community around you has to allow that as well. Allow this change and allow this growth as you're experiencing, you know, injuries and recovery and kind of what that will bring you in the end. We needed, we're missing words for this is what's right. It's beautiful how you say that. And I totally hear you and I can totally relate and it's so terrifying and it's so wonderful.
00:45:24
Speaker
Yeah. And there's like, we need to tear a wonderful word or something because that's the best explanation. I think I've heard for that where it is. This is, this is what endurance sport is all about, right? It's all about, first of all, process, but second of all, not being afraid of who you're going to become on the other side of that process. And, and,
00:45:51
Speaker
having a community that's not afraid of who you're going to become on the other side of that process and actually supporting you through that and welcoming that new Hillary.
Writing as a Therapeutic Tool
00:46:00
Speaker
And I think that that's something that is so cool about mountain sports that we go through that as individuals and as a community over and over again. And it kind of becomes second nature to us. But I honestly don't think that
00:46:20
Speaker
that's very common in other sports. And I think the more competitive they are, the less common it is. But I think these individual endurance sports are small groups. I mean, it's just incredible how it changes you. Really interesting. One of the things I meant to bring up earlier
00:46:44
Speaker
And because you brought it up really early in your book and you brought it up really, well, multiple times in your book, but again, kind of at the end is, well, two things that are sort of related. One, I wanted to ask you about the power of writing. And second of all, I wanted to ask you specifically about that as it relates to belief and the power of belief and how you personally leverage the power of belief or both those tools actually.
00:47:15
Speaker
Yeah, so I actually meant to mention this earlier too, so this is great. But I'll start with writing. For me, writing was just so incredibly cathartic. I had used writing as a way
00:47:34
Speaker
even before the accident as a means of expression. It was always this private place that I could write down my thoughts. And there was no judgment because no one was going to read what I was writing, first of all, because my handwriting is horrible, and second of all, because it was mine. And so this is kind of that honesty piece that I was talking about, is letting myself be honest and raw. And before I was even able to express myself to other people in my community,
00:48:03
Speaker
of you know where I was out emotionally, I was able to write it down and put words to it. Sometimes they weren't very intelligent. They were just kind of a blur and mess of feelings.
00:48:18
Speaker
and getting them out onto paper, there was just this freedom that I didn't have to dwell on them. I didn't have to percolate on them like a little coffee maker. I didn't have to deal with them anymore. They were out there.
00:48:39
Speaker
that means of writing was just incredibly cathartic for me. And it was just the first way I could express my honesty and where I was at. And so then that took a different form. Then as I was expressing my own honesty through my recovery process personally, then I was encouraged to do that outwardly to people and then in my community and then kind of the bigger community through writing different blogs
00:49:08
Speaker
and sharing my experience with others and then from there I felt like it bred this other this bigger community that could relate to me in you know grief and through shared experiences and you know what they were dealing through and with and you know how it could make them
00:49:24
Speaker
how it could, it made their experience with injury maybe easier or more relatable. Then ultimately that's kind of what led to the book is I kind of documented my physical but also mental recovery process. And it's something I still use on a daily basis and even, and today. Specifically we're talking about journaling.
00:49:48
Speaker
Yeah, so journaling, I think, so from my neuroscience background, I think that there's definitely power in the handwritten word. I mean, there's been studies that have shown that if you write something down, you're more likely to do it just by the act of writing it down, even if you don't go back and read it again. And so for me, it's like physical writing of things like even in a journal, but yeah, that's my favorite means of writing it, then it can kind of take different forms.
00:50:20
Speaker
And what about belief? Yeah. So this is actually one of my favorite parts of the book. And honestly, so again, through this writing process, I would write down different affirmations. So one of my routines was like to get me out of the door and like, you know, into the sunlight and into the world. I would scoot down my street to my favorite coffee shop and I'd
00:50:47
Speaker
I'd have a little basket on my scooter, so I put my journal in the basket. And as I was drinking my coffee, I would write down some kind of checking in, like how I was feeling. Some days it was dark. But I started this thing about writing down certain affirmations for myself, and this became a daily practice within the first weeks of my recovery. And
00:51:13
Speaker
Actually, so a friend of mine, Alan Lim, he's a co-founder of Scratch Labs here in Boulder. He encouraged me, he kind of challenged me. He's like, show me some of your, you know, affirmations. Show me some of these things that you're writing down. And this one was one that I was working on. It seemed kind of silly. I was almost a little bit embarrassed because at this point I couldn't even walk. And it was, believe that your best athletic days are ahead of you.
00:51:41
Speaker
And this belief, like this is something that got me through some incredibly low moments. And it's kind of what I was describing earlier with this, you know, practice of patience and learning that if I showed up for myself every day, I was learning who I really was. And one thing I've learned is that I had this and still have this deep seated belief in myself that I can do these things.
00:52:11
Speaker
Even though they're challenging, even though they might seem impossible, I have this deep seated belief. And every day I would write down this mantra of, you know, believe your best athletic days are ahead of you. And that doesn't mean that I believed it every day. I, uh, definitely there were days where I wrote it down. I was like, what the heck? Like this just seems so far off. Like this just seems silly, but I would do it. I would do it anyways. I'd kind of read it out loud and.
00:52:40
Speaker
then I was like, okay, here we go, do what you can that day. And that belief, it was just kind of this little seed, I feel like that was in me somewhere. And the more that I watered it by writing these things down, somewhere along the way it sprouted and it grew. And yeah. So this is super fascinating.
00:53:11
Speaker
Um, what I want to ask, and I'm not quite sure how to, how to ask it. So I'm just going to scatter shot this one probably. Where does that initially come from? Where does the, the faith, for lack of a better word, that, that even could be true. Like I, cause I think a lot of people struggle with that. They, they, they, okay. You can.
00:53:33
Speaker
write the words down. You tell them to write these words down, they write the words down, but it's just a sort of meaningless exercise. It doesn't actually, because they kind of don't, they doubt too much. So you have to have internally a certain amount of faith that it's true, or it can be true, that you can manifest that reality. For that to have a real effect. Where does that come from?
00:54:03
Speaker
Yeah, because it's something that I struggled with. I was like, how could this make a difference? And I'm a very logical person. I'm a very scientific person. So I'd always go back to science. And so some of these things, I mean, and it didn't make sense to me. It still doesn't. Like I would read these papers where, you know, there's been studies that have shown if you talk in a negative tone to rats or mice, their behavior changes.
00:54:31
Speaker
They become almost like depressed. They're less social. They don't exercise as much, which is like not typical mouse or rat behavior. The same thing happens with plants. If you talk negatively to them, their growth is actually halted or diminished.
00:54:54
Speaker
That is what I was in. And like some, some of me, I'm just like, how do you, I mean, I see how they quantify this, but how in the world can this make a difference? Like I don't understand. And then the other thing that I would say is like going inside of my mind on a really hard day, like the things that I would say to myself, like seeing how worthless I was and how, you know, I was never going to get back there.
00:55:18
Speaker
And then being like, whoa, hold on, Hillary, would you say this to yourself if you were just this young little injured girl? Would you say this out loud to someone else or a small child or a puppy that's dealing with injury? It's like, no, you wouldn't. You would not do that. And so that's where I started to believe that this kind of positive self-talk, it has
00:55:42
Speaker
meaning it has an effect. And then also I would, yeah, like a huge amount of power. And then I would think about a race. Like if I was in a race, if you tell yourself you can't do something, then yeah, like then what the heck? Like just retire right now. Like you might as, you know, but if you tell yourself that you can do this,
00:56:10
Speaker
Like even if you don't win the race, you'll probably have a better experience and like still try your, like your hardest to, you know, do the best that you can. And so it was all these little pieces of evidence that I was like, all right, well then let's try it. It almost came from this thing of like, you have nothing to lose. And then also I can be my own N of one experiment. And, uh, and I think it's just, it's so worthwhile and.
00:56:36
Speaker
you know, like picturing kind of the devil and the angel on my shoulder. It's like, well, which one do you want to feed today? It's like, it's easy to be mean to yourself, but really, how is that going to help? And the more I practiced it, the kind of bigger that belief got and almost felt like, you know, positive momentum.
00:56:57
Speaker
And that doesn't mean that it eliminated negative thoughts or negative feelings or fears. Those were definitely still there, but I had a choice about which kind of narrative I wanted to pay attention to. That's a great way to put it.
00:57:14
Speaker
I think one of the most influential books I've read in my life, and I've probably literally read it thousands of times, is a children's book that my parents used to read to me, that I now read to my kids, and it's the little engine that could. Oh my God, yes, that's amazing. Yes. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can. Like the power and the rhythm of a train. And you have no idea how many
00:57:42
Speaker
of summits that got me to. Yes, and see that is exactly like the rhythm and the cadence of that. Like I think I can, I think I can. It's like your footsteps, right? That's also just a way you can like, you know, you can practice that. Oh man, I love it. That's a great book. It is a great book. There's an abridged version now that's maybe even better than the original.
00:58:07
Speaker
I want to go back to your professional training a little bit and leverage some of that and leverage some insights that you may have that others wouldn't and I certainly wouldn't.
Pain, Neuroplasticity, and Recovery
00:58:20
Speaker
I want to talk about the psychology of pain. What is pain in the neuroscience of pain? This is one of the things
00:58:33
Speaker
that I think is most difficult about these long-term recoveries is the quantity of pain that you experience. I mean, it lasts for months and it just kind of never leaves you alone. What does that do to your brain? Yeah, so...
00:59:01
Speaker
Pain is interesting. Pain to me is there to tell you something. It's a signal that can tell you if there's a problem. And so early on in my recovery, I actually didn't really take many painkillers because I wanted to know how my body was feeling. But then after
00:59:27
Speaker
After I started to walk and get more active and especially put weight on that foot, the one with the ruptured ligament, I was in a great amount of pain. It was kind of the dull thing that, you know, it was
00:59:42
Speaker
It was there all the time. And I read about this a little bit, but it's really interesting because in neuroscience, we don't even really understand the concept of pain and what it can do. I mean, this is also with trauma too. It can almost become a psychological pain. And that trauma can also manifest into physical pain.
01:00:09
Speaker
And so for me, I experienced both things. Like I, you know, I, my ligament was, you know, still healing. There was a lot of swelling, so it was uncomfortable. So with swelling, it kind of creates pressure and there's pain. Um, but even after the ligament was definitely healed, you know, like six months down the line, I was still walking and running with a limp.
01:00:29
Speaker
and not running yet, but I was still walking with a limp. And so I was like, this is concerning to me. And so I started to kind of work through this. And kind of what I learned had happened is that my brain almost was like protecting myself. It was like causing this favoring of one side.
01:00:51
Speaker
Pain can be, it can definitely be protective in a way. It's super interesting because an athlete's ability to manage pain, like physical pain, they've done this through different studies of like a common test is like dipping your hands in ice water and seeing how long you can withhold that like amount of time before you like pull out because it's just too painful. I mean, it's shown that over time as an athlete becomes more fit,
01:01:18
Speaker
their ability to withstand discomfort or pain, their tolerance for pain actually increases. So think about that from an interval point of view. Like if you're working hard on an uphill interval and you're kind of just starting out, maybe you can't go as fast or as long as you can later in the season. So actually what's happening is yes, you're getting more fit, but also your body has been able to kind of withstand more pain also.
01:01:45
Speaker
Um, and so, you know, after I was getting it into more shape and able to like, you know, withstand more pain from a fitness point of view, I was still experiencing this pain in my, in my foot. And what was happening is almost like this, this just the psychological trauma that my body, like my, my brain and body had experienced something.
01:02:07
Speaker
And it was still there and it was telling me that like I needed to favor this side. So I literally had to learn, um, like I literally had to show my brain that my foot was okay. And this was almost like manual manipulation of some like the nerve endings, like at the site on my, on my foot and working really on proper gait mechanics to kind of
01:02:31
Speaker
Almost this is like neuroplasticity, like kind of rework, rework your brain and like teach it that it's actually, that it's okay, that it's no longer, um, quote unquote injured or in pain.
01:02:45
Speaker
But I've read so many interesting studies and books on pain, and there's so much about it that we don't understand. But what I have experienced is, yes, pain is there in discomfort, and an athlete's ability to withstand that is definitely a thing. But there is also a thing of psychological pain that can manifest into a physical part in your body.
01:03:09
Speaker
And I think a lot of athletes experience this when they're coming back from injury, like a lot of trail runners, if they've experienced a bad ankle sprain, they're almost more timid when they're going downhill again. And it's not necessarily because it hurts anymore. It's just, there's this other kind of block there. Yeah, absolutely. It's so interesting. You know, as a, as a,
01:03:37
Speaker
person that coaches people like I'm terrified of pain like when my athletes report any kind of pain like I'm immediately like on the phone with them like what's going on? But as an athlete, when I experienced pain, it's like, man,
01:03:58
Speaker
I'm going to ignore this for a while. It's really easy to just disassociate from that. I think I've seen it so many times climbing and I've seen it so many times. Scott has this great story about an athlete that he coached who
01:04:13
Speaker
You know, like when they, quote unquote, tested her in the lab, they told her, you should just go home. You're never gonna be an endurance athlete. But this girl's woman was and is incredibly tough and has this incredible pain tolerance. And she could just go to places that other people can't go in terms of digging deep. And she's been on World Cup podiums.
01:04:40
Speaker
And, but she, but if you look at her sort of stats, like what our VO two max is and what are those kinds of things like that, you would think that she would just be like a, like a regional athlete, you know, nothing special, but yet she's consistently been one of the best in the world. And it's because of that, like this toughness thing is a real thing. And I think of it, like you think mention the, uh, like ice, put your hand in ice cubes. I mean, that just sounds like normal Alpine climbing to me.
01:05:13
Speaker
Yeah, for me too, with like, you know, running in spring snow. It's like, I can't feel my feet. Well, we're just going to keep going for a couple more hours. I'm back when I get in the shower.
Lessons from the Mountains
01:05:23
Speaker
Oh gosh, yeah, this thing called the screaming barfies. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Hilary, I mean, this is a really open question on purpose, but I wanted to ask what the mountains have taught you.
01:05:42
Speaker
Yeah, so the first thing I think it's a core value of mine that I just truly value and it's how I live my life. It's with integrity and the mountains have taught me that.
01:05:59
Speaker
because integrity to me is doing something and being yourself no matter who's looking or who's watching. So it's the best way of a true expression of who you are. And the mountains are that way because they're beautiful and vast and extraordinary.
01:06:25
Speaker
And they're extremely dangerous and fickle and scary. And they don't apologize for those two sides of them. They just are. And they're going to be that way no matter what your plans are for the day. But they're going to be that way because that makes them beautiful. And yeah.
01:06:51
Speaker
That's wonderful. I agree with that. I love that about mountains too. I want to use this one concept of resilience that you heard me talk about with Sky or Denny a few weeks in some other podcasts. But to me, this concept sums up and sort of pulls together so many of the things we've talked about, whether it's pain,
01:07:21
Speaker
Patience, the power of positive affirmations, you know, community. I mean, what else did we talk about? I'm losing track. All of those things can be wrapped up into this one, one concept.
01:07:43
Speaker
analogy that Skye taught me was the mountain lake, the tarn, and what fills your lake and what drains your lake in the most simple explanation. And what we've been talking about, I think, is so many things that people can use and that I can use that you've taught me about how to fill my lake. And this goes back, connects back to
01:08:11
Speaker
mental health itself, because I think that the sign of great mental health is actually resilience, it is adaptability. The opposite is the inability to adapt and overcome, you know, and this is this kind of how do you see resilience? Like how do you how do you imagine it? Do you have a do you have a visual
01:08:42
Speaker
Yeah. So this, this concept actually, so like I said, integrity is kind of how I live my life. And second to that is definitely resilience. And I feel like, you know, in many ways I could let this accident define me. Many of us can who've had traumas or experienced these things, but
01:09:05
Speaker
Certainly it's going to be a part of me for forever, as well as anyone else who's experienced something like this. But instead of, instead of just ending there, it's more this concept of resilience and learning from these experiences and letting them, using them as an invitation to become different. Whether that's using them as a means to uncover all of these strengths that I didn't know I had.
01:09:32
Speaker
Like before the accident, I would describe myself as a strong person, but that was resting on the physical only. And throughout this whole entire process, I was able to recognize the strength in vulnerability and truly showing up at the weakest time of my life, both physically and emotionally. And there's strength and courage in that.
01:09:58
Speaker
This vision I have for resilience is more of why I wrote the book. I view my story as a testament to human resilience. And I want to use my stories as a way to encourage others to experience that as well. Because I think humans are the most resilient creatures on the planet. And if we are able to use setbacks and challenges as a means to discover and
01:10:27
Speaker
change will not only become better for it will be different, absolutely, but will be stronger from them will be will experience growth. And that's not only on the individual level, but on a community level. And
01:10:47
Speaker
I think that's the only way forward. There's no way to come back to this, you know, runner or person that I was before. I'm different. I have, I went out there and I got all these experiences and now I'm taking them, you know, back to where I am now and I'm taking them with me. And that concept is just resilience, you know, in action. And I just hope that, you know, through
01:11:17
Speaker
athletes who are injured or, you know, anyone who is dealing with grief and loss, whether it's from an injury or from, you know, loss of a loved one in the, in
Closing Remarks and Gratitude
01:11:28
Speaker
the community, that this concept of resilience is what's going to get us there. And it's, it's not taboo. In fact, it's the pain is almost necessary, um, in order to, you know, become stronger and become different. And,
01:11:45
Speaker
to experience happiness again. That's amazing. Hilary, I want to first say that this has been really enjoyed our conversation today. And I hope others do too, and they will. But thank you so much for just showing up with all the power and intelligence and vulnerability that you showed.
01:12:14
Speaker
I'm humbled and honored that you shared that with us today. So thank you for that. It was really, really incredible. And everyone should go check out Hillary's book, Hillary Allen, Out and Back. And we'll be rooting for you for your next chapters, whatever they may bring. Hillary, thank you so much for your time today and your feelings.
01:12:39
Speaker
Thank you so much for, yeah, for encouraging it. And I was so happy to be here and to have these conversations with you. I hope there's more. Thank you. Thanks for joining us today. For more information about what we do, please go to our website uphillathlete.com.