IN AUGUST 2017, HILLARY ALLEN WAS THE NUMBER ONE RANKED SKYRUNNER IN THE WORLD
Advice from Hillary Allen on recovering from serious injury
and she was taking on the 57km Tromsø Skyrace in Norway. Three hours in, as she made her way over a particularly tricky ridge, a rock gave way under her foot. It was a moment that almost ended her life, but instead it gave her a new one.
Hillary’s new book, Out And Back: A Runner’s Story Of Survival
Against All Odds, reveals everything that happened to her after that life-changing moment. It’s harrowing to read her account of the fall. ‘I hit the ground again and again and again,’ she writes. ‘With each impact, I felt bones breaking, skin ripping.’ She ended up falling 150ft down the side of the mountain. The runner coming up the ridge behind her saw her fall and rushed over to help. Two years later, Manu Par says that the sound of her falling continues to haunt him. Even just witnessing her fall left him struggling for years to regain his own confidence while out running in the mountains.
For Hillary, the path back was far from straightforward. But along the way, she learned many valuable lessons. At first, in the moments after the fall and even as she was falling, she was sure she was done for. ‘I heard my own voice,’ she writes, ‘floating somewhere above my head, declaring calmly, “Hillary, this is it. You’re dying.”’
As people rushed to help her, including renowned mountain runner and race director Kilian Jornet and photographer Ian Corless, they found (in Hillary’s words) ‘a bundle of bones that didn’t look like arms, and my wrists were all turned the wrong way’.
It turned out she’d broken a total of 14 bones, including in her back in multiple places, multiple ribs and both wrists. She also had a serious ‘foot-changing’ fracture in one of her feet, which led a doctor to tell her it was looking unlikely she’d ever compete in a race again.
Corless said that in the days after the accident, he was just hoping she’d be able to walk and live a normal life. The idea of her racing again wasn’t a consideration.
The photographer describes seeing her appear on the ridge and joking with her, calling her ‘smiler’ as he prepared to take her picture. ‘As she disappeared from my shot, I asked her to climb over the peak ahead of me… then there was a sound – rocks moving, a scream – and then I watched her bounce down the mountain, finally coming to a stop. Motionless. I thought she was dead.’
In the days following the fall, as she lay in the hospital in
Norway, Hillary says her spirit was broken. What she struggled to come to terms with most, she says, is that she’d gone from a super-fit mountain runner to someone completely dependent on others even to sit up in bed. She says the sense of uselessness led to her slipping into a depression. ‘I was definitely giving up,’ she says.
It was a nurse who stopped her from slipping away completely, with a few frank, well-timed words. ‘This isn’t the end for you, Hillary,’ the nurse said. ‘Now is the time to fight… you’re not done yet.’
STARTING AT ZERO
THE FIRST STEP was to overturn the sense of self-loathing she felt in the months following the accident. ‘As a professional athlete, I’d built a career on being capable, strong and competent in my own body,’ she writes in her book. But now, she felt weak and was in need of constant assistance – and she hated it.
Hillary says this mental readjustment to who she was after the fall was the biggest challenge she faced – even more than the physical challenge of getting back on her feet and running again. She says that when athletes get injured and are no longer able to train and compete, it can lead to a profound loss of self. ‘I felt like I’d lost myself, my purpose in everyday life and my direction and reason to keep going every day,’ she says.
This thinking was a slippery slope and the only way out was to completely forget about running and to stop seeing herself – defining herself – as a runner. ‘I had to take a step back from running because seeing it in my daily life made me depressed and hopeless that I’d ever get there again. So I had to completely let go of that and accept I might not race again. That letting go allowed me to meet myself where I was and start back at zero.’
The physical recovery also had to start back at zero. Two and a half months after the fall, after undergoing numerous operations, she was told she could try walking again. The doctor took away the •
‘I watched her bounce down the mountain. I thought she was dead’
mobility scooter she’d been using to get around and asked her to try a few steps across his office. Muscle atrophy had left her once strong legs skinny and weak, and even those few steps in the doctor’s office left her with a sore calf and intense pain in her foot like she was stepping on needles. This was all normal, the doctor reassured her, explaining that the nerves in her foot were just extra sensitive after not being in contact with the ground for so long.
It was weeks before she was able to walk steadily without wobbling. Yet, for all the physical difficulties, it was still the mental perception of who she was that continued to be the biggest challenge.
A subtle change of perspective helped Hillary learn to accept the assistance she needed without it leading to continuous doubts and questions about her self-worth. ‘I started to realise there wasn’t weakness in needing or accepting help. In fact, there was a beauty to it.’ She says that her need for help to complete the simplest tasks led her to form close relationships that wouldn’t have existed otherwise and showed her that she was part of a community.
SHIFTING PERSPECTIVE
HILLARY SAYS THAT a big breakthrough in her recovery came when she learned acceptance – to accept her situation and to accept herself as she was. Being an elite athlete had meant always pushing to improve, which inherently implied a refusal to accept things as they were. But she found that this mindset didn’t help with her recovery.
She says she’d always affiliated the word ‘acceptance’ with settling for second best and had wanted nothing to do with it. To be successful, she’d always told herself that she wasn’t good enough; that she always needed to be better.
But after Hillary began working with psychotherapist Timothy Tate, she could see that this approach wasn’t only hindering her recovery from injury, but was actually detrimental to success in life more generally. Far from holding her back from pushing to be successful – as she imagined it would – Tate told her that self-acceptance would relieve the pressure she put on herself and allow her to fulfil her full potential. He said that accepting herself wouldn’t stop her from trying her best because that’s just how she was. ‘It’s ingrained in your DNA,’ he told her.
Once she made this shift in mindset and started accepting things as they were, Hillary says that she saw huge improvements in her life. ‘Problem-solving became easier,’ she says. ‘And I began to trust myself again. I started to rely on and take care of myself, no matter what problem was thrown my way.’
Think small
‘Set baby goals to get you through each moment. Everything you can do – whether it’s boring physical therapy exercises, stretching or taking time to meditate or visualise your future recovery – is progress. I thought about the small things and
I’d tell myself to do what you can today, to set yourself up for success tomorrow. The more I did that, the
closer I came to recovery.’
Talk the talk
‘The other thing that’s most important is self-belief and positive self-talk. It’s the most powerful tool and something I’d do to bring my
mind to a more positive place.’
Find the write path
‘I also used journalling and the written word to process both my negative and positive thoughts. It helped me to get out of the negative thoughts and to eventually turn
them into positive ones.’