Weekend Recap: Rest and Recovery

This weekend was a bit lower key than most, thanks to an unfortunate incident last Monday. Although I spent most of last weekend skiing (and taking some risks with tougher trails), it was while stepping off a curb at Palm Beach Airport that I rolled my foot with all my weight on it. I was able to walk it off that night, but it continued to hurt up until I went to bed, and when I woke up in the morning, I couldn’t walk on it at all 🙁

I skipped Orangetheory (ha, not much of a choice there) and instead went to Urgent Care. X-rays didn’t reveal any major breaks, but based on where the pain was, the doctor said it still could be a fracture of the fifth metatarsal that wasn’t showing up on the x-ray. I left on crutches, with instructions to stay off my foot for a few days and see if it was a sprain that would resolve on its own. If it still hurt in a few days, I also left carrying a prescription for an MRI, to see if it was a metatarsal fracture.

I stayed completely on the crutches through Friday, with a little bit of walking around my hotel room each morning while I was getting ready for the day. It was a good test, and after Tuesday, a successful one – my foot stopped hurting! But knowing that I had a conference this week that included a “networking ski day”, I wanted to play it safe. So that was how I found myself at Banff Mountain Film Fest on Friday night, still on crutches.

I’ve written before about my experiences attending Banff when it comes to Denver. It’s always incredible and inspiring, and this year didn’t break that pattern! We got to enjoy films about rock climbing, skiing, free diving, bird migrations, canoeing down the Amazon, and Arctic guiding. Quite a varied mix, and as usual, even the topic that I didn’t think would interest me proved to be captivating. Banff screens different films all four nights of the tour, and I enjoyed myself so much on Friday night that I looked into tickets for the other two nights… but they were sold out. If you ever have the opportunity to attend Banff, I highly recommend it!

Saturday involved another fun activity: my good friend Elizabeth’s bridal shower! Her sister planned a really fun party for her friends and family, and I had a great time catching up with my friends, playing games, and getting to celebrate Elizabeth’s upcoming wedding in April 🙂

Sunday, though, was a bit quiet in comparison. Although it was an incredibly beautiful day, I spent most of it inside studying for a customer experience certification exam I was taking this week, and also catching up on some work. I did get out onto my deck for a bit of the work (working on a deck on the deck!), but I wished I could have been out skiing or hiking like so many of my friends!

On the bright side, I was off client work for the week to attend a conference, which meant that Monday I was able to go up to Breckenridge and try out some skiing. The conference had a ski day in Park City on Friday, and I wanted to test out my foot beforehand to see if I should even bother with that activity or just head home early. Well, it ended up being a gorgeous bluebird day, and while I had only planned on doing a run or two as a test, I ended up skiing almost 18,000 feet by the time I left the mountain at noon to get back to work!

I was so glad I had the flexibility to move things around and take a few hours to ski, since I had worked all day Sunday and also kept working Monday night to make up for it. Work has been extremely stressful recently, and that kind of a break definitely helped keep my sanity in check.

On the dark side, work got a lot more stressful over the course of this week, and I’m now going into the weekend knowing I need to do some hard thinking about what will make it better. A vacation? Yes – but I’m not sure that will solve it. I’ve reserved all day Sunday for getting caught up on email, figuring out a prioritized to-do list, and then figuring out ways to get the help I need to get it all done.  Hopefully more bright days are ahead!