Owls, baseball, and injuries

So we found out, from a local expert, that the owl in the last post is a Barred Owl. Way cool, check out the link for the sound of is call and more info than you really want to know. In other news Jonathan’s Little League team, the Timber Rattlers, made it to the playoffs. Last night was their first and only playoff competition. The Game was a fast paced three up and three down game with very few strikeouts. I’d like to say it was a pitching duel but the machine was launching balls equally to both teams. It was truly a defensive battle with two double plays in the first alone. By the fifth, just over an hour in, the game was tied 3-3. We batted first in the 6th, the final inning, scoring 3 additional runs and cinching the game. We thought. The Diamond Jax exploded with hits, good hits, defended well, but just good old baseball. It was well played and a victory well earned. It was so hard to remember we were watching a game played by 8 and 9 year old boys. Both teams were turning plays, chasing down balls, working together and hitting very well. This game was more exciting than any professional baseball game I have ever attended. GREAT JOB BOYS!! NOW LET’S GO GET ICE CREAM!! It is hard to change direction but here goes, I have a knee issue and am not running for the month of June. I have something called Osgood Schlatter disease on my right knee. It is an actual disease; I would think it more to be a syndrome or just a simple injury. But, hey it is called a disease. My family Doc along with my PT (aka Cheryl, my wife) have ganged up and labeled me a “non-compliant” patient because it has been irritating me for a few months and I have continued to run. So now I’m on a no running, ice, vitamin IB and ultrasound regime for the next 30 or so days. I pray this will help. Speaking of athletic injuries…here is a story from college. Pole Vaulting The pit opened shortly after the officials arrived. Warm ups started slow, everyone sizing up the competition. We looked, even though we for the most part knew each other, for any signs of weakness any signs the others might be off their game, Vaulters are a strange breed, often times viewed as oddball freaks and adrenaline junkies throwing themselves into the sky for attention. At least that is what the distance guys said about us. The scene of a pole vault warm up is confusing in its most organized condition. Up to 32 vaulters bring with them 5 to 20 15 foot long fiberglass poles. At best a mess. Imagine 200 poles strewn about as if dropped on a lawn from a helicopter, 200 hollow fiberglass and carbon fiber poles lying about while athletes wearing spiked-soled shoes avoid them with careless precision. Fourteen-days separate these vaulters from the championship meet, a few will make it most will not. Statistically I’m in but with two weeks to go I need a few good jumps at really high bars to finalize my preparation. The average college vaulter has 10 to 12 quality jumps in them, if you go beyond that anything can happen; success, injury, who knows. I plan on taking 8 to 10 jumps opening at a high bar and being fresh for a possible personal record. Warm ups are a patterned behavior. We all have our quirks and needs, our warm up routines are very personal and scripted down to the breaths we take. I begin by surveying my poles and gear bag, measuring out my steps and marking my starting point with a spiked golf ball. My steps are my consistency. If everything goes well and my pattern is followed my steps will be on, my takeoff foot will strike directly under my upper had on the pole. I take two easy laps around the track to get the blood flowing and drink in the atmosphere of the meet (the smells, sounds, colors) it all helps to put me in the zone. I do a few sprints into the pit starting on my mark and driving to the foam pit finishing with a diving forward roll onto the pads. This is the pattern of warm up I follow at most all meets when the conditionals allow. A few good run throughs and I am confident my steps are on. I attempt a full plant and nail it. Feeling confident, I take the runway for a final run to really get the blood flowing and cement my confidence. Vaulting is a very dangerous sport. Many things can go wrong the transference of energy from a running athlete to a fiberglass pole and then back to the airborne athlete. Slight variations early on have the potential to become life threatening once you leave the ground. Confidence is a must. A reverent fear of the potential helps to keep us in check. My final run through was intended to solidify my confidence for this meet. I would blast through the steps, plant the pole, hit my mark and allowing my grip to loosen sliding my hands down the pole as I ran onto the mat. The steps were perfect, the plant was straight, and I was pleased. In the next fractions of a second I loosened my grip, allowed my hands to slide down the pole, and bounded onto the mat. My hand slid down the pole with a high pitched screeching of flesh on a dry smooth surface, similar to a basketball players sliding across the floor diving for a lose ball. The pain was immediate and fierce; I had just melted the prints off my fingers and palm. In a frustrated and angered blink of an eye I turned my head to look blamingly at the pole allowing my footfalls to become unmonitored. It only took two steps to find the hole. Most pole vaulting pits are constructed of five large foam blocks: two in the front and three in the back. All the blocks are designed to be strapped together with straps and buckles to prevent them from separating and then covered with a one to two inch thick mat that is clipped to the blocks to aid in preventing the pit from separating and creating gaps like to one my left foot was descending into. I felt the change in “feeling” of the pit and realized there was a hole. Diverting my attention from the burning of my hand, I turned to look at my left foot as it disappeared into the chasm created by the blocks of foam not being strapped together properly. I was not able to un-weight the foot as my forward motion and rotation was quickly positioning my entire body over my left foot. Then I hit bottom. The six sharp spikes on the bottom of my shoe became hung up in the mesh of the mat cover and my left ankle rotated and gave way under the enormous force of my downward angling motion. I have heard it said a runner on a flat surface can generate 3 times their body weight on a foot fall. I can’t imagine how much force was transferred from my 150 pound frame, running at a full sprint, to the connective tissues of my ankle. It didn’t hold. The ankle rolled severely as the bottom of my foot was held tight to the mesh cover by the spikes. There wasn’t a complete separation but the sensation I felt and the sound I heard made me think I had shattered bones, and popped my foot clean off. I flexed my left knee tried to absorb some of the fall and did a forward roll aiding in extracting my foot from the death pit it sank into. I flopped off the mat to the soft, cold, muddy field turf and let out a howl of pain and disgust mix with a few words of frustration. I quickly removed my left shoe and like opening the flood gate of a dam my ankle quickly swelled to the size of a melon. The sports trainers, responding to my obvious pain, were on me quickly with ice and a wrap. They carried me to the training tent and called for an ambulance to transport me to the local hospital for pictures. The x-rays would reveal I had a severely sprained ankle; a soft tissue injury that would take months to fully repair. Had it been a break I would have been looking at only a few weeks of recovery. Funny how that works. I wished I had broken the thing. I had two weeks until the Championship Meet. I was ranked in the top five in my league and I really did not want to miss the culmination of the season. The following Monday I worked my way through classes and into the training room for my first round of treatment. I had twelve days to recover. Linda, the head trainer, took me through the recovery plan and then let me know what I was responsible for. I would be in there five times a day for three days for 20 minute ice baths, followed by two days of E-Stim and ultrasound and more ice baths. Until this point I was instructed to remain on crutches. The next five days were five daily sessions of contrast baths and some of the most excruciating massages I have ever experienced. I would come in the morning delivering coffee, go through a ½ hour contrast bath session then lay on my belly with my knee bent as a trainer would deeply massage my foot, ankle and calf to increase blood circulation in and around the wounded area. It sucked. The pain was tremendous as the trainer forced the swelling and bruising in the tissues to flow out. I would put a towel in my mouth to muffle the noises and give me something to bite on. This I did five times a day for five days. Day ten; I was allowed to run on the injured ankle today, finally. I did a whole ½ mile with an ankle taped into a neutral position. I felt as if I were running in a cast. This was my first time with a taped ankle and I hoped it would be my last. Day eleven, after going into the training room for a short ice bath and a tape job I headed out to the track and promptly removed the tape. I grabbed a pole and did six easy runs on the track to see how the ankle felt; good but a tad loose, duh! Tomorrow was the meet and my folks would be there to cheer me on. I did not want to drop out due to this injury. I returned to the training room and received a sound verbal thrashing for removing the tape. I requested another round of ice and ultrasound for good measure. The next day I again allowed the trainers to tape the ankle only to remove it during warm ups much to their dismay. Everything was going great, warm-ups were uneventful and the competition was underway at the lower heights. As the bar was rising vaulters were dropping out and at my opening height there were only 8 of us left. I cleared my opener with a ton of air between me and the bar. We continued up and as the jumping continued our group dwindled to only those who would make the podium. I was one of them and I was ecstatic. I placed third in a Championship meet I should have not made it to. My folks were able to see it and the trainers, although annoyed at my removing the tape, were very proud of me and their work. All the pain, treatments, hard work and training paid off in that little yellow ribbon; simple but forever valuable to me. The ribbon, framed next to the competition number I wore at the meet, hangs in my closet as a testament to overcoming adversity. Tony