One day i'll get to post something positive on here,
Saturday week ago I was on a team training camp, and had managed to get onto the windtrainer for the first time in a month, this comeback was very short lived though.
Abit about the training camp first...I was travelling with local rider Nick Sutton who is a member of the U23 Pure Black Racing team, first stop auckland for an interview to get my visa for the USA sorted then back down to Karapiro to meet with the whole team minus the 5 who were racing the tour of wellington. The place we were staying was crawling with wilflife so while the boys were out riding i entertained myself with afew farm/bush walks. The purpose of the camp was team building so there was a wide range of activities to bring us together and help us get to know abit more about our team mates. I felt this went super well and after a short time everyone was nice and comfy all crammed into one room. Highlights for me were raft building, archery and the team quiz.
There were some serious sessions aswell with Paul Kane from Grant Thornton taking some of his time to advise us on accounting issues and Greg Cross one of our team managers giving us a good run down on media, networking, the internet and sponsors.
Then onto saturday night after our team was won the weeks challenge i decided to walk down to the lake edge where a couple of guys were via some slippery muddy sloped steps, maybe not such a great idea...but sitting round isn't really me! I slipped at some point and sat back onto my heel which at that stage had only been bending to about 90 degrees at the knee...I heard a loud crack and after straightening out the leg I could clearly feel a huge gap between 2 pieces of my knee cap, oops...after crawling on hands and knees back to the house an ambo was quickly called and off to Waikato hospital I went! the x-ray confirmed what I already knew and surgery was to come the next morning.
I had some amazing team support through this and the older members of our team really showed their maturity which was great for the young guys to see, I kept my cool and hopefully the guys could see how easily these things can happen and hopefully my reaction will help them at some stage if they have to deal with tough times.
They let me out of hospital pretty quick and while my knee/ leg is still looking like a small balloon is reasonably pain free. Ill probably need to get the wires taken out at some stage but before then ill have some more surgery on my jaw...more on that next time maybe. Rehab for this is kind of a guess at this stage but it won't be quick...So, no USA this year which has left me thinking about doing some study so i don't turn to mush, still tryna work out what ill do exactley...
I guess there is a fair bit of positive stuff in amongst that so im trying to focus on that and make good use of this time that i've now got.
Photo shows my knee cap in 2 pieces.
