{"id":36084,"date":"2018-07-12T11:04:10","date_gmt":"2018-07-12T18:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rei.com\/blog\/?p=36084"},"modified":"2020-05-22T12:58:13","modified_gmt":"2020-05-22T19:58:13","slug":"one-womans-story-on-becoming-an-adaptive-athlete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rei.com\/blog\/cycle\/one-womans-story-on-becoming-an-adaptive-athlete","title":{"rendered":"One Woman’s Story on Becoming an Adaptive Athlete"},"content":{"rendered":"

It wasn\u2019t Lindsey Runkel\u2019s first fall. There had been the fractured hand riding singletrack around Arizona. Then there was the broken collarbone at Phoenix\u2019s South Mountain and the excruciating 5-mile hike out, bike in tow.<\/span><\/p>\n

But this one felt different. More specifically, it felt like\u2014nothing. After tumbling through the landing of a 15-foot drop at New Hampshire\u2019s Highland Mountain Bike Park, the 23-year-old wiped the dust off her goggles and started to take off her helmet. Surprisingly, she wasn\u2019t in pain. But when she looked down at her legs that she had sworn were laid out to one side, they were popped out straight. Before her brain could catch up, Runkel\u2019s bike partners started screaming. As if on command, her teeth began chattering uncontrollably. <\/span>No. Don\u2019t tell me I\u2019m paralyzed.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

The next hours faded in and out. Helicopters, morphine, emergency surgery. When Runkel finally came to in Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, there was a long scar on her back where doctors had fused her spine back together. Runkel says one medical resident told her she would never walk again. <\/span><\/p>\n

With Runkel still woozy from pain meds, it was that comment that cut through the haze.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was an immediate, \u2018I\u2019m going to [bike] again,\u2019\u201d she remembers. \u201cIt suddenly became more of a \u2018when and how.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

One year after her 2014 crash, Runkel made good on that promise. Loading into a low-riding, three-wheel adaptive mountain bike known as an \u201cadaptive trike,\u201d she made her return to dirt at Thunder Mountain Bike Park in Massachusetts. Since then, she has dedicated herself to pushing the limits of adaptive mountain biking\u2014riding\/launching downhill jumps, and even making a pair of trips to Whistler\u2019s Crankworx (she didn\u2019t compete, but did film a short video from her first trip). And, while the road to recovery has forced Runkel to adapt to life as a paraplegic, she says she has found a sense of normalcy in the sport that changed it all forever.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI get to leave my wheelchair at the bottom,\u201d says Runkel. \u201c[When I\u2019m biking] I hop on the chairlift\u00a0and ride down over and over again. It\u2019s a freeing feeling. I am completely independent.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Photo Credit: Peter Jamison<\/p><\/div>\n

Runkel has never been one to sit still. A multisport athlete in high school in Connecticut, she discovered road biking while in college in Arizona and, thanks to a stint at a local bike shop, quickly fell in love with its off-road alternative. After returning to New England, she joined the adrenaline-infused downhill bike community at Highland, the Northeast\u2019s mecca of downhill.<\/span><\/p>\n

But just as the young biker was starting to earn her stripes in the East Coast downhill world, everything changed. She had been scoping the 15-foot drop at Highland for a while, and had completed a series of smaller drops earlier in the day. Fatigued, she wanted one go at the drop, but without enough speed, she dug her front tire in on the landing and was sent flying. \u00a0Runkel fractured her T5 and T6 vertebrae in the fall, initiating a cosmic shift from bike seat to hospital bed, where she discovered that she had been paralyzed from the waist down.<\/span><\/p>\n

Right after surgery, she says, the itch to get back on a bike started again.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I got hurt, my first thought wasn\u2019t if I was going to walk again,\u201d says the now 27-year-old. \u201cIt was how was I going to do <\/span>my<\/span><\/i> things again, how was I going to be active?\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, that wasn\u2019t an easy sell in her new environment. Despite a vast offering of adaptive sports and activities, Runkel found that action sports, at least on the surface, remained taboo in the adaptive world. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThese are high-risk sports, and so for people to get back into something like that after a spinal injury, most people don\u2019t think it\u2019s worth it,\u201d says Runkel.<\/span><\/p>\n

Still, Runkel remained optimistic, due in large part to the biking friends who took turns visiting her nearly every day during eight weeks of intensive recovery at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston. Eventually she persuaded her trainers to get her on a hand cycle. While adapting to casting her back support and relearning how to shower and use the bathroom, she spent her free time researching adaptive mountain bikes. <\/span><\/p>\n

It was around that time that Runkel linked up with <\/span>High Fives Foundation<\/span><\/a>, a Tahoe-based nonprofit that specializes in providing services to action sports athletes with traumatic spinal and brain injuries. Through the help of a series of High Fives grants, Runkel was able to purchase her first adaptive mountain bike, an $11,000, low-riding three-wheel bike known as the Sport-On X3. Specially equipped for people who are paralyzed from the waist down, the bike featured a hand crank and assist motor, so Runkel could pedal with her arms instead of her legs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Her first day back on a bike came less than a year after the accident. After connecting with fellow adaptive rider Tyler Ryan through a mutual friend, Runkel met up with Ryan for the first time at Thunder Mountain Bike Park. In addition to never having ridden an adaptive bike and having just met Ryan, she was almost frozen by the intense lingering fear of dropping back into the sport that had nearly killed her.<\/span><\/p>\n

But after loading into her adaptive bike for the first time, those fears washed away, and Runkel found the transition freakishly natural. Even though she was propped up in a kneeling position, her upper body was still over the handlebars, active throughout the downhill sections. For a moment, it was like she was back on two wheels.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cImagine having something stripped away from you, and then being able to do it again,\u201d says Runkel. \u201cIt\u2019s one of those rad things that I thought I\u2019d never be able to do, but now it\u2019s one of the reasons I stay positive and can deal with everyday life in a chair.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

When bike season rolls around, Runkel spends nearly every free moment riding her home mountain, Highland. After learning to drive a specially equipped pickup truck, Runkel commutes the nearly four hours from her parents\u2019 Connecticut home to Highland every weekend, where she meets her friends to \u201cride like nobody\u2019s paralyzed.\u201d Highland,\u00a0in turn, has worked with Runkel to make some of its trails more adaptive-friendly, including widening some sections of trail and removing narrow bridges to accommodate an adaptive bike\u2019s wider wheelbase. While other bike parks like those at Whistler and Crested Butte usually include wide flow tracks and detachable lifts to accommodate a wide range of adaptive athletes, Runkel says Highland has helped her feel at home throughout her recovery.<\/span><\/p>\n

Highland “sees that I\u2019m coming back, so they do a lot to help me,\u201d says Runkel. \u201cThe park is great, but it\u2019s the people that keep me here.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Even though her riding community has stayed constant, Runkel admits her personal approach to the sport has changed. She still flies into berms and navigates rollovers and uneven terrain, but she says she is more self-aware and has learned to curb her competitive nature. Kneeling in the bucket seat, Runkel\u2019s physical exertion is akin to doing pushups all day long. Instead of riding through the fatigue, she says she is much more comfortable calling it a day than in the past. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe it\u2019s an age thing,\u201d she jokes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Through her foray into adaptive mountain biking, Runkel has also expanded her adaptive sport repertoire. In addition to mono-skiing and surfing, she is also part of a national championship sled hockey team based out of Wallingford, Connecticut. She even began competing in Spartan Races, helped by a team of friends to navigate the grueling, long-distance obstacle course. <\/span><\/p>\n

After one event, she was approached by a woman and her daughter in a wheelchair. The woman was in tears. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cShe couldn\u2019t believe I had just done [the Spartan Race] and that\u2019s when I realized I could be inspiring too,\u201d she says. \u201cYou can really change somebody\u2019s mind just be showing them that there is still so much out there” for adaptive athletes.<\/span><\/p>\n

When asked about her plans for the upcoming year, she takes a second, and laughs. A friend challenged her to an Ironman in 2019. She, in character, has already accepted.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no better feeling than realizing your potential even though you thought it might be limited,\u201d explains Runkel. \u201cI have an opportunity to do it, so why not try? Even if it sucks and I fail, I haven\u2019t failed myself in trying. Not trying is failure, so why not push it?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It wasn\u2019t Lindsey Runkel\u2019s first fall. There had been the fractured hand riding singletrack around Arizona. Then there was the broken collarbone at Phoenix\u2019s South Mountain and the excruciating 5-mile hike out, bike in tow. But this one felt different. More specifically, it felt like\u2014nothing. After tumbling through the landing of a 15-foot drop at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":36187,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,685],"tags":[1381,1127,726,727],"internal-tag":[1680],"class_list":["post-36084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cycle","category-news","tag-adaptive-athlete","tag-cycling","tag-force-of-nature","tag-latest-posts","internal-tag-pre-redirect-cycling"],"parsely":{"version":"1.1.0","canonical_url":"https:\/\/rei.com\/blog\/cycle\/one-womans-story-on-becoming-an-adaptive-athlete","smart_links":{"inbound":0,"outbound":0},"traffic_boost_suggestions_count":0,"meta":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","headline":"One Woman’s Story on Becoming an Adaptive Athlete","url":"http:\/\/www.rei.com\/blog\/cycle\/one-womans-story-on-becoming-an-adaptive-athlete","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"http:\/\/www.rei.com\/blog\/cycle\/one-womans-story-on-becoming-an-adaptive-athlete"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.rei.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2018\/07\/IMG_0189.jpg?resize=150%2C150","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https:\/\/www.rei.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2018\/07\/IMG_0189.jpg?fit=2000%2C1333"},"articleSection":"Cycle","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Michelle Flandreau"}],"creator":["Michelle Flandreau"],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Uncommon Path \u2013 An REI Co-op Publication","logo":""},"keywords":["adaptive athlete","cycling","force of nature","latest posts"],"dateCreated":"2018-07-12T18:04:10Z","datePublished":"2018-07-12T18:04:10Z","dateModified":"2020-05-22T19:58:13Z"},"rendered":"