The Higher We Climb, the Better We Fall
Lessons on pain, grit, and patience from a woman who broke her bones and dreams, then ran 100 miles
The ascent to greatness is climb up a jagged mountain. Over the years, setbacks, failures, and frustrations weigh on you like a thousand tiny deaths as you grab the next rock for support. This time, the rock is loose. You brace yourself for a fall.
Ironwoman and ultrarunner Susan Kirsch Canevello tumbled down the stairs alone in her house in the dead of the night. Having put down 100+ mile runs across mountains, boulders, and mud, she was no stranger to pain. However, endurance racing spreads the impact over 12–60 hours. Her fall down the stairs was over in a horrifying instant.
The pain, however, was not. A hard floor was the only thing to save Susan as her head and body slammed faster and faster down the steps. When her body came to a stop, she reached about to appraise her situation — broken arm, broken clavicle, cracked spine. When she’d grasped her forearm, she realized it was broken down the middle, and when she clasped her hand, it was backwards. “The complete trauma of the fall was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before.”
Staring at the ceiling, contemplating her mangled body, Susan was in the same place that we all go when we lose something that matters deeply to us. The difference between an Ironwoman and everyone else is what happens when you get there. A common saying at trail races —
“It doesn’t matter how you feel, you keep going until the med crew kicks you off the course.”
However, there was no med crew around to tell Susan to stop going.
The daily hours Susan and people like her spend perfecting their sport has her so well acquainted with suffering that pain is more information than sensation. It’s for better and for worse. The same stuff that allows incredible feats of endurance also causes folks with bleeding heads and failing organs to try to run straight past medical crew, insisting, “‘Tis but a scratch!” Susan, however, knew she needed some help, so she snapped her arm together as best she could, and she dragged herself next door. Her neighbor called an ambulance.
Susan immediately told her surgeon, “I’m registered for the Madison Ironman, so I need to be able to bike, run, and swim by September.” The Ironman is a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bicycle ride, and 26.2-mile run all in one day. He played nice and said everything would be fine, but her neurosurgeon later told her that with her fractured spine, it was a miracle that she’d even be able to walk.
Studies show that a runner removed from the trails suffers similar withdrawals as an addicted person removed from heroin. Mountain air and scenery are, for many, the best therapy available, and finding the limits of one’s abilities, the edge, they say, is how we condition ourselves to handle the struggles of life. Some say it’s how they see God.
When we lose the best within ourselves, what remains is the engulfing crush of the Black Hole. Within the Black Hole, the world is encompassed in a lens of negativity that casts doubt on past accomplishments and renders all goals as hopeless, pointless affairs. This despair was Susan’s five-day hospital stay — surgery after surgery, bedridden, and unable to even carry herself to the bathroom.
How to Escape the Black Hole:
“If you feel you are in a black hole, don’t give up. There’s a way out.” -Stephen Hawking
1 — Reassess: The bones near Susan’s neck had trouble reconnecting, so her physical therapist restricted her from upper body workouts. This didn’t bode well for someone wanting to cycle, run, and swim obscene distances. Despite all her insistence and best wishes, hope faded for the Ironman Triathlon.
Again, we all come here when we suffer a loss that shuts the door on our goals. Climbing towards greatness can shatter bones as well as dreams. The difference between an Ironwoman and everyone else… what you do when you get there.
She knew and admitted her body would not be able to handle another triathlon so soon after her surgery. She looked carefully at her situation and instead set her sights on October’s Hennepin Hundred Ultramarathon (Sterling, IL).
Anyone would forgive someone who cracks her spine and hangs up her sport for good. Susan, with her body crushed and bedridden in a hospital, decided to enter a 100-mile foot race less than 5 months away.
Reassess does not mean to make excuses or back down. It’s the time to find and climb to the top of another tower.
2 — Recover: Three weeks out of being in the hospital, Susan’s broken bones still prohibited her from any exercise above the waist. Not a problem: she used recumbent bikes and various weights to build back strength. Eventually, she was able to incorporate walking into her workouts.
One of the most critical factors to her recovery: Patience. It can take between 204-220k steps to complete a 100-mile run. Start too aggressively by the first 10,000, and the remaining 190–210k are ruined. She inched towards the Hennepin Hundred with “baby steps,” making sure not to exceed what her body could handle.
Grit is getting all the attention right now; its story is sexier. However, patience is the glue that holds everything together. Grit is the fire we have in our bellies to conquer at all costs, patience is the stuff that keeps that fire from becoming an explosion. But as recovery improves —
3 — Sally Forth with Grit and Resolve, Waving A Middle Finger At Whatever Stands In Your Way:
“To hell with circumstances. I create opportunities.” — Bruce Lee
Susan was well out of the Black Hole before the actual race. When she found she could almost keep up with her amigos on a training run, she knew she had what it took to get what really counts out of all this: that sweet ass Hennepin Hundred Buckle.
How Susan summed it up:
“So Chris, the journey from the unexpected to the really unexpected finish of Hennepin Hundred 4 and 1/2 months after is the real high. The whole thing was like an ultra. You have lows, then highs, struggles and joys, but the sum of the parts is accomplishment and strength, and that my friend is priceless!”
“You Will Know Pain.”
I say to people who’ve never failed a goal or runners who’ve never been injured the same as I’d say 23 year old drinker who’s never had a hangover: You will know pain.
Pain is where the living go to be buried, its graves packed with people who quit before they had a chance to shine. Pain was a constant throughout Susan’s story. At any point, it would have been logical for her to stop. She pressed on, climbing the twisted rocks and traversing tiny deaths on the way to greatness. She already knew pain and saw this as just another challenge to be overcome, another race. She had climbed so high that she could handle the fall.
The girl who fell down the stairs
“There is an art to flying, or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” — Douglas Adams
We dodge pain of all sorts. We dodge challenging work to check Facebook, challenging workouts because we’re “not feeling it”, and our own ambitions because they’re too daunting as a whole.
We can start learning from Susan immediately. Take on the highest challenges that you can, and next time you catch yourself dodging the pain, try to remember the girl who fell down the stairs, completely broke her body, and then flew. Make a pact with your pain and cherish it. It will be with you always. Susan Forth With Grit and Resolve, Waving A Middle Finger At Whatever Stands In Your Way!
Additional Reading:
2017: Your year to run faster, longer, stronger, and injury-free by Kristi Walthall
