Run or Die Read Free Page A

veins. I reached the top of the slopes as excited as someone who had just won a medal in the Olympics. I started to sing, dance, and shout as if I were alone in the world. The skiers around me stared at me as if I had gone crazy. In fact, after so many months of making no effort at all, I really must have suffered a wholesale destruction of my neurons. After that first rush of adrenaline, I calmed down and asked myself a basic question: How the hell am I going to get down? I was so excited to discover that I could ski again that I hadn’t thought about how I would get down after I’d climbed the slope. I started my descent on the shoulders of a friend who volunteered his back to support my weight. Halfway down we realized that wasn’t the best solution, so I continued my descent using only one leg—mygood one, of course—with the frail one doubled under me so that it didn’t touch the ground.
    From then on I had only one aim in mind: to persuade my doctors and physiotherapists that I could start training. It was difficult initially. When I smiled broadly and told the doctor I had been skiing and that it had turned out very well, her reply was clear and no-nonsense:
    “I’ll put you back in a cast!”
    “No, no, please, I’ll be a good boy. I’ll do whatever I have to. Gym, swimming pool, physio … but no more casts, please!”
    When I saw that the medical route was completely blocked, I focused instead on my physiotherapist. He told me that when I could bend my leg 90 degrees, I could start on a stationary bike, and that in the meantime I should go to the swimming pool and walk underwater. From then on I did all I could to bend my leg. I sat on it to put pressure on it, used weights to make the joint more flexible, and made a few degrees of progress. I went once to the swimming pool, but walking around in a pool full of senior citizens wasn’t the most entertaining activity in the world.
    I concluded that I could reinterpret the physiotherapist’s words. He had suggested walking in water. A swimming pool is water, and water and snow are more or less the same thing, if only in a different state, right? Was I to blame if physics played these tricks? So I walked in snow, with skis on my feet, for three weeks until I reached the longed-for 90 degrees and could mount a stationary bike. The first session went very well, and the physiotherapist said I could go to the gym in Puigcerdà for sessions on a stationary bike.
    I went to the gym, got on the bike, and stuck at it for 15 minutes while watching video clips on the TV screen in front of the bike, and came to the conclusion that 90 degrees are 90 degrees whether on a stationary bike or on a road bike. I looked outside; itwas sunny and warm. I went home, grabbed my bike, and went for a real ride, one mountain pass after another. That is how I started to alternate trips out on my skis and on my bike. So, in essence, I did everything I was told to do: walk in water and ride a bike. It was simply better not to mention the context if I was ever asked. I had my first problem when the doctor saw the results table from the Catalan Cross-Country Skiing Championship.
    “It just happened to be near our house,” I replied, head bowed but unable to repress a smile. “I went over to check out the atmosphere, and as I’d done well the previous year, it turned out they had a number for me, and I can never say no and accepted. I started at a steady pace, not intending to finish the race, but it was easier to finish than to get to the top by car, because the roads are in such bad shape. However, I came down using only one leg. …”
    “Well, as there’s nothing I can do to stop you,” she said, “at least make sure you don’t fall until we remove the metal plate from your knee.”
    And with that carte blanche I began to train like a trouper and gradually not only got back to the level I had enjoyed before that wretched fall, but even improved on it.
    A day comes in life when