Backstory
Firstly a bit of background. I spent the 2023 snow season in Wānaka (Read more about it here)so that I could train at Treble Cone and Cardrona as I am competing on the Freeride World Tour Qualifier series. This training entails alot of jumping off cliffs and attempting to land back on my snowboard (feet first!). Most of the time this does actually go quite well and I end up on my feet and ride away. However on the fateful day of the 22nd of August I was practicing doing a backflip off what the locals call “the diving board” at Treble cone.
Now I was trying to land and ride away but instead I tore my anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). This meant two things. ACL reconstruction surgery in November as well as no snowboarding for ~9 months.
Back to today
This brings us to the here and now. I am back in Wānaka slowly starting to get back onto my snowboard. I am 5 days in and have noticed a newer idea floating around my head.
I feel that I have heard the phrase “Atleast there is tomorrow” said alot. A statement which in my eyes catches two sentiments;
- life carries on and,
- if you must you can probably try again
As I get back on my snowboard I need to test my knee, regain confidence in its ability. I want to slowly push it, slowly fold open the envelope. It really does make me feel silly, like a real fool just “riding around”. Normally this feeling of lack of effort will become quite powerful. Yet these recent days I have noticed something peculiar. That when I call it a day (without doing anything spectacular) I almost feel happy and content that atleast I can still ride again tomorrow.
This comes from learning over the past year that some snowboarding is better than no snowboarding. I am not snowboarding just to enjoy the feeling of a turn or sweet carve, I am snowboarding to push myself and see what cool things I can do. Yet the turns and sweet carves are still magical and special in their own right. If I push myself too much, take too great of a risk I may miss out the basic magic of snowboarding as well as getting to truly see what cool things I can do on a board.
All of this is a long winded way of saying that I must make a decision on how much risk I want to take while snowboarding. I can push myself as far as I can go and have a higher risk of serious injury or play things safe, slowly push the envelope while keeping my body safe. To decide how much risk I am willing to take is hard. Yet maybe now after my first big injury I am happy to be a little bit on a safer side.
That said I am waiting on the green light from my physio and some fresh snow so I can reclaim that cliff!