It's been a while since I've last blogged, so I figured I am due for another entry (even though probably no one actually reads this. lol.) If you recall, last time I blogged, I talked about embracing winter. While I really embraced the winter season, sadly I cannot say I really embraced summer this year. I started the summer off, embracing it in full swing, with tons of action which included a family vacation to Arizona in late spring, a road trip to Kentucky in June for my friends' wedding which also included lots of rock climbing at Muir Valley, and giving zip line tours at Kerfoot Canopy Tours. I had a ton of fun giving zip line tours at Kerfoot, but unfortunately that didn't last too long. By beginning of July, my shoulders had become increasingly more sore each day after work. I didn't think much of it first and tried to suck it up and get through the week, because we were short-staffed the week of the Forth of July. Well, I ended up not even making it through the entire week, because it got to the point where it hurt to lift an empty pop can driving to work the last day I worked there. It ended up getting really bad during the day and got to the point where I had to use my left hand to brake on the last tour that day and was in a lot of pain driving home from work. I told the managers on staff after work and called the owner that night, and I am very thankful for how understanding both owners were who both told me to take some time off from work and recover. I was freaking out at first thinking I may have torn something, but luckily it turned out I just had impingement, bursitis, and tendonitis in both shoulders. While this condition really sucks, I am thankful it wasn't torn. I originally thought I would just need to take a week or so off and come back working less hours, but it turned out that it was so bad that I was unable to return to work at all during the summer and had to sit at home doing nothing all day letting it recover. I tried to get work done on the computer, but even that was painful as was running or doing any kind of physical activity. I hate sitting around doing nothing, so I kept myself sane by reorganizing cabinets/drawers, going on short walks, acting as a pinch runner for softball/cheering my team on, and running in the pool and doing leg-only exercises at Life Time Fitness. The owners at Kerfoot were also kind enough to hire me to work promotions for their zip line at the Classic Car Roll-ins in Henderson, MN which was a lot of fun. While this turned out to be one of the most boring summers of my life (I didn't even go to the cabin or a beach at all this summer...how un-summer-like is that?! lol), it gave me some time to reflect and learn a few things and opened the door for a new opportunity to coach college cross country and track out in Illinois.
One thing I learned was the importance of advocating for myself. Looking back on this experience, I now realize that I probably should have applied what I learned from running and injuries to work. If something starts to get sore when I'm training for track, I usually take a day off or cross train to rest it and ice it. I've learned that if you try to push through pains it normally comes back to bite you and you end up losing more days from an injury than the one day you would have lost from resting a soreness. I obviously did not follow my own knowledge with this injury at work and had to re-learn this lesson the hard way. I didn't say anything about the shoulder soreness initially, because it wasn't that bad, and I didn't want to disappoint the management by saying I needed a day off for "sore" shoulders when we were already short-staffed during a busy week. Now in hindsight, I probably should have advocated for myself sooner, because missing a day or two to let the sore shoulders recover would've been way better and less of an inconvenience than losing a staff member for the rest of the season (when only employees trained by the company that came in from North Carolina to train us can give tours.)
I was once again was reminded of this theme as the summer went on and it turned to fall and my shoulders were making some progress, but really not getting that much better. I had been going to physical therapy and had been doing exercises they assigned me to do, because they thought I had a weakness in my shoulders causing the pain. When it turned to fall and I had used up my diagnosed PT sessions they told me to keep doing the exercises on my own. Well, needless to say, it did not get better and actually got worse after I stopped PT. I often felt like it got worse from doing the PT exercises. It was clear that I needed more then just ice and self exercises to get rid of this problem, so I did some research on alternative therapies for shoulder impingement. I found some research that had found active release therapy to help impingement. I had a lot of success with this treatment for a different previous injury, so I decided to advocate for myself and seek the help the treatment I thought I could benefit from since I felt my injury was largely related to a tightness issue. I found a sport chiropractor who does active release therapy, called to confirm it would be covered by workers comp, and have been going to him for the past couple of months and am happy to report that my shoulders have made much improvement since I started seeing him. It turns out that I was right about the problem being a tightness and it in fact was actually caused by overdeveloped lats from climbing that are super tight along with the joint capsule. The exercises the PT gave me were actually making the problem worse by strengthening muscles that were already too strong and problematic. This is the second injury I've had where I wasted a couple of months doing ineffective PT treatment only to have active release therapy help almost immediately...I'm starting to lose faith in physical therapists for this reason. =/
Another positive I took away from this experience is that I learned more about what kind of job settings are a good fit for me and which are not. While I had a lot of fun giving zip line tours, I learned that I do not really enjoy jobs that are extremely physically demanding and require me to stand all day. The zip line was 40 minutes away from my house, and I worked 10 hour days on my feet with little breaks. I would come home absolutely exhausted and would have little time nor energy to do the things I love such as running or climbing. I started to become rather unhappy, because I wasn't able to train the way I wanted to to run competitively, and it was hard to make sure I got off early enough to make it to softball games on time or had to request Mondays off to make it to a game. My shoulders often were too sore to climb like I wanted to as well. I am a very active person, so I am naturally drawn to really active jobs, because I can't imagine working a job where I have to sit all day at a desk. From this job and others though, I have discovered I need a mix of being active and sitting and engaging my brain at work. Since the purpose of taking a year to try all these different part time jobs was to figure out what I did and did not want to do for a career, I would say this job helped accomplish that goal.
I like to believe that there is a reason for everything that happens, and when God shuts a door, he opens a window. After all, in Jeremiah 29:11 it says, "For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." While I got a door shut on me with the shoulder injury (which by the way is still not fully recovered yet), I truly believe a window was opened as well. By August I had come to terms with the fact that I would not be returning as a zip line guide, so I started looking for other jobs I could do once my shoulders recovered (which I was told would likely be by beginning of September.) All my time off this summer gave me time to reflect on what I really wanted to do and what it came down to was that I really just want to coach. That is one job I have had that I have absolutely loved in multiple settings and one I seemed to have some success at as well.
I have always thought about coaching college track/cc and have wanted to for a while, but didn't want to leave Minnesota, so I hadn't pursued it yet, because I did not even get interviews for the couple of college coaching jobs I applied for in Minnesota (mostly b/c I don't have a masters degree and lack experience.) Well, I started looking at coaching openings online and found an opening for a grad assistant position coaching cross country at Concordia University near Chicago, IL. This position would pay for grad school and offer cheap housing plus a stipend and would allow me to try out college coaching for two years. Concordia is a Lutheran school and Chicago isn't that hard to get to from Minnesota, so on a limb, I decided to apply. Well turns out I ended up getting a call a week or so later and a week after that was at Concordia visiting the school and was offered the position. I was kind of nervous about leaving my home state since everyone and everything I know is here, but decided to take a risk and go for it, so I took the job. I thought it would be a good experience to live away from home in another state for a while and try out college coaching to see if that's really what I want to do. To coach college you typically need to have a master's degree, so this is an opportunity to get one that will set me up for future coaching jobs, or with the MBA I am pursuing I can really do anything if I decide not to continue coaching after I'm done with this position.
Well after a few months at Concordia, I can truly say this shoulder injury was a blessing in disguise, because I am loving coaching and had I not had the shoulder injury I would still be working part-time seasonal jobs at home with no real direction to a future career that I can live off of. While this injury is frustrating, because I still can't do all the sports I love, I have relied on my faith to get my through this, just as it guided me through struggles with track, and I keep remembering Jeremiah 29:11. I have been working hard to stretch my shoulders each day and be in-tune to how they feel as I have been slowly trying to get back into shape and return to working. While I would be lying if I said I loved everything about being away at Concordia in Illinois (I'm such a Minnesota girl), it has been a good learning experience and overall very positive. All the people there are really nice, and I love working with the athletes and staff on my team. I appreciate the opportunity to integrate faith into our practices and share my story, as our athletic department mission includes competing for Christ. The campus at Concordia is very diverse in a number of ways (other than religion) which I believe has added unique perspectives to my classes and experience there so far. All of us GA's that live in the dorms at Concordia are all from different parts of the US with a couple from other countries. It was been fun to experience and compare some of the cultural differences between different states and countries, particularly because most of my undergraduate teammates and classmates were all from MN or WI.
Being away has also made me appreciate some of the things we have back home that I always thought was the norm everywhere. I did not realize before coming to Illinois, how lucky we are to have the large number of quality parks and trails everywhere in Minnesota to go along with our 12,000 lakes. I also have come to further appreciate the quality athletic programs I had the privilege to be a part of in high school and college. With this comes appreciation for the quality of talent in the MIAC and WIAC schools we often competed against locally. While I hate to admit it, the longer I am gone from college track, the more I realize how Coach Wilson was right about nearly everything. I guess with age comes wisdom ;-). I think sometimes we all need to take a step back in life in order to appreciate what we have and also see what else is out there. I believe this step back is necessary before we can continue to move forward in life. I think I've taken step forward this fall after my step back this summer, and I am excited to see what lies ahead as my journey continues!
One thing I learned was the importance of advocating for myself. Looking back on this experience, I now realize that I probably should have applied what I learned from running and injuries to work. If something starts to get sore when I'm training for track, I usually take a day off or cross train to rest it and ice it. I've learned that if you try to push through pains it normally comes back to bite you and you end up losing more days from an injury than the one day you would have lost from resting a soreness. I obviously did not follow my own knowledge with this injury at work and had to re-learn this lesson the hard way. I didn't say anything about the shoulder soreness initially, because it wasn't that bad, and I didn't want to disappoint the management by saying I needed a day off for "sore" shoulders when we were already short-staffed during a busy week. Now in hindsight, I probably should have advocated for myself sooner, because missing a day or two to let the sore shoulders recover would've been way better and less of an inconvenience than losing a staff member for the rest of the season (when only employees trained by the company that came in from North Carolina to train us can give tours.)
I was once again was reminded of this theme as the summer went on and it turned to fall and my shoulders were making some progress, but really not getting that much better. I had been going to physical therapy and had been doing exercises they assigned me to do, because they thought I had a weakness in my shoulders causing the pain. When it turned to fall and I had used up my diagnosed PT sessions they told me to keep doing the exercises on my own. Well, needless to say, it did not get better and actually got worse after I stopped PT. I often felt like it got worse from doing the PT exercises. It was clear that I needed more then just ice and self exercises to get rid of this problem, so I did some research on alternative therapies for shoulder impingement. I found some research that had found active release therapy to help impingement. I had a lot of success with this treatment for a different previous injury, so I decided to advocate for myself and seek the help the treatment I thought I could benefit from since I felt my injury was largely related to a tightness issue. I found a sport chiropractor who does active release therapy, called to confirm it would be covered by workers comp, and have been going to him for the past couple of months and am happy to report that my shoulders have made much improvement since I started seeing him. It turns out that I was right about the problem being a tightness and it in fact was actually caused by overdeveloped lats from climbing that are super tight along with the joint capsule. The exercises the PT gave me were actually making the problem worse by strengthening muscles that were already too strong and problematic. This is the second injury I've had where I wasted a couple of months doing ineffective PT treatment only to have active release therapy help almost immediately...I'm starting to lose faith in physical therapists for this reason. =/
Another positive I took away from this experience is that I learned more about what kind of job settings are a good fit for me and which are not. While I had a lot of fun giving zip line tours, I learned that I do not really enjoy jobs that are extremely physically demanding and require me to stand all day. The zip line was 40 minutes away from my house, and I worked 10 hour days on my feet with little breaks. I would come home absolutely exhausted and would have little time nor energy to do the things I love such as running or climbing. I started to become rather unhappy, because I wasn't able to train the way I wanted to to run competitively, and it was hard to make sure I got off early enough to make it to softball games on time or had to request Mondays off to make it to a game. My shoulders often were too sore to climb like I wanted to as well. I am a very active person, so I am naturally drawn to really active jobs, because I can't imagine working a job where I have to sit all day at a desk. From this job and others though, I have discovered I need a mix of being active and sitting and engaging my brain at work. Since the purpose of taking a year to try all these different part time jobs was to figure out what I did and did not want to do for a career, I would say this job helped accomplish that goal.
I like to believe that there is a reason for everything that happens, and when God shuts a door, he opens a window. After all, in Jeremiah 29:11 it says, "For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." While I got a door shut on me with the shoulder injury (which by the way is still not fully recovered yet), I truly believe a window was opened as well. By August I had come to terms with the fact that I would not be returning as a zip line guide, so I started looking for other jobs I could do once my shoulders recovered (which I was told would likely be by beginning of September.) All my time off this summer gave me time to reflect on what I really wanted to do and what it came down to was that I really just want to coach. That is one job I have had that I have absolutely loved in multiple settings and one I seemed to have some success at as well.
I have always thought about coaching college track/cc and have wanted to for a while, but didn't want to leave Minnesota, so I hadn't pursued it yet, because I did not even get interviews for the couple of college coaching jobs I applied for in Minnesota (mostly b/c I don't have a masters degree and lack experience.) Well, I started looking at coaching openings online and found an opening for a grad assistant position coaching cross country at Concordia University near Chicago, IL. This position would pay for grad school and offer cheap housing plus a stipend and would allow me to try out college coaching for two years. Concordia is a Lutheran school and Chicago isn't that hard to get to from Minnesota, so on a limb, I decided to apply. Well turns out I ended up getting a call a week or so later and a week after that was at Concordia visiting the school and was offered the position. I was kind of nervous about leaving my home state since everyone and everything I know is here, but decided to take a risk and go for it, so I took the job. I thought it would be a good experience to live away from home in another state for a while and try out college coaching to see if that's really what I want to do. To coach college you typically need to have a master's degree, so this is an opportunity to get one that will set me up for future coaching jobs, or with the MBA I am pursuing I can really do anything if I decide not to continue coaching after I'm done with this position.
Well after a few months at Concordia, I can truly say this shoulder injury was a blessing in disguise, because I am loving coaching and had I not had the shoulder injury I would still be working part-time seasonal jobs at home with no real direction to a future career that I can live off of. While this injury is frustrating, because I still can't do all the sports I love, I have relied on my faith to get my through this, just as it guided me through struggles with track, and I keep remembering Jeremiah 29:11. I have been working hard to stretch my shoulders each day and be in-tune to how they feel as I have been slowly trying to get back into shape and return to working. While I would be lying if I said I loved everything about being away at Concordia in Illinois (I'm such a Minnesota girl), it has been a good learning experience and overall very positive. All the people there are really nice, and I love working with the athletes and staff on my team. I appreciate the opportunity to integrate faith into our practices and share my story, as our athletic department mission includes competing for Christ. The campus at Concordia is very diverse in a number of ways (other than religion) which I believe has added unique perspectives to my classes and experience there so far. All of us GA's that live in the dorms at Concordia are all from different parts of the US with a couple from other countries. It was been fun to experience and compare some of the cultural differences between different states and countries, particularly because most of my undergraduate teammates and classmates were all from MN or WI.
Being away has also made me appreciate some of the things we have back home that I always thought was the norm everywhere. I did not realize before coming to Illinois, how lucky we are to have the large number of quality parks and trails everywhere in Minnesota to go along with our 12,000 lakes. I also have come to further appreciate the quality athletic programs I had the privilege to be a part of in high school and college. With this comes appreciation for the quality of talent in the MIAC and WIAC schools we often competed against locally. While I hate to admit it, the longer I am gone from college track, the more I realize how Coach Wilson was right about nearly everything. I guess with age comes wisdom ;-). I think sometimes we all need to take a step back in life in order to appreciate what we have and also see what else is out there. I believe this step back is necessary before we can continue to move forward in life. I think I've taken step forward this fall after my step back this summer, and I am excited to see what lies ahead as my journey continues!