OCR King Compound

So, there's this girl...

Isn't that how it always starts?

I met this coolgirl Beatriz this past fall. She does obstacle course races, and she told me about this place out in Hiram that's basically an outdoor training gym with pretty much all of the obstacles that you'd encounter during a race, on site.

It actually sounded really fun, and I'd been in a bit of a fitness rut for a while, so I gave it a try.

Turns out it is a lot of fun! But it's also one of those things that you've got to be a certain amount of good at it for it to be fun. The first few times I went there, I just got beat all to hell, but it was a good beating. Lots of sore muscles. So much of it is upper body, and there's a huge amount of technique. It's analogous to technical climbing - picking the right line and having good form saves lots of energy. Same kind of thing. It's also a lot of upper body. So much upper body... I bought a pull-up bar, and started doing a quick, upper body routine in the morning, 4 days a week. A few months later, I could do pretty much anything there.

There's an organized workout on Sunday mornings, usually at 10. You show up, and the folks that run the place - Cody and Christine King, are usually there. They're really cool, and they have this extremely cute little kid named Slade. Cody writes up a whiteboard full of stuff to do, like this:

...or this:

And you do it in order, trying to get through as much of it as you can. I've only ever gotten through the entire thing once, though, that second one above.

There are some regulars that are pretty much always there. I got to know them, and I was getting to be to be one of the new regulars. It was great. Beatriz wasn't even going there any more, but I'd found something new and fun, and made some new friends, so I just kept doing it. Woo!

One of the obstacles is The Low Rig, which is 2 rings, followed by a maybe 6 foot long pipe that spins, followed by an anchor, followed by a bucket handle, followed by a rope. It's waist high, rather than over your head, thus the "Low" part of The Low Rig. So, you have to keep your elbows completely flexed, and pull your knees in the whole time, or you'll drag the ground and fail. At least, that was how it was originally. The rings and stuff are attached to an overhead track, which is part of this big wooden structure built over a bit of a ravine on the property. The Low Rig used to be on the upper end of the ravine, and the whole thing was maybe 3 feet off of the ground. You really had to keep your knees bent. Cody redesigned the entire thing a few months ago though, and moved it to the other end. Now it's maybe 5 feet off of the ground, which makes the knee bend a bit less critical, but also allowed him to add the rope to the end of it, which is super difficult.

The technique that I use is to just use the first ring to balance, reach out and grab the second, swing out on it with my knees and elbows bent, hook both legs over the pipe and kind-of hang from it, transfer my hands to the pipe such that my head is now facing the direction I need to go, shimmy down it, grab the anchor with both hands, bend my elbows, release my knees from the pipe, transfer to the bucket handle, transfer to the rope, do a couple of brute-force hand-over-hands up the rope until I can J-hook it, then J-hook climb it up to the bell. I got to the rope 5 or 6 times before I was ever able to climb it, but a few weeks ago, I had the various techniques down, and I got it!

Man, I was happy.

The next week, the workout was especially tough (sadly I didn't get a photo of the board). I'd seen a 4-leafed clover in the yard as soon as I got out of my truck though, so I felt pretty confident.

High off my previous success, I even felt good when I got to The Low Rig. I'm not sure if I transferred the wrong hand to the pipe first, or just slipped, but whatever I did, the pipe spun, my legs just rolled right off of it, and I fell about 4 feet onto my head and left shoulder.

On the bike, I have this thing I call the "100% rule". If I look at something, and I'm like "oh yeah, I can definitely ride that safely" then I ride it. If I'm like "I'm darn sure I can ride that safely" then that's not 100%, and I don't ride it. The only exception was during a race. I would take some risks while racing. Any crashes I've had in the past 20 years have been cases where I was just wrong. I believed I could ride it safely, and I was wrong.

The trouble with any new thing, is that you don't really have enough experience to judge whether or not you can do it safely. You can be wrong more easily. That was the case here. I'd done that rig a dozen times, maybe more, and felt confident in doing it. I'd slipped off of it a bunch of different ways before, and felt confident that even if I slipped, I could land safely. I had not slipped off of it in that exact way though, and it just didn't occur to me as being possible until it was happening.

Also, the last time I'd slipped off of it, it was like a 2 foot fall into leaves. That was my concept of the danger. Now it was a 4 foot fall onto clay. It hadn't occurred to me to reasses the danger after the change.

At any rate, it knocked the wind out of me at first. I tried to shake it off, but after about 10 minutes... yeah, there was no shaking it off, and it felt really familiar, I was pretty sure I'd broken some ribs. I tried driving myself to the KP Urgent Care in Kennesaw, got about a block, and realized that wasn't going to happen. I needed the nearest ER, and there was no way I'd make it there driving. Cody drove me to the Paulding Wellstar in my truck, and I think Chrissy's folks picked him up after they admitted me.

After a couple of x-rays and excruciating CTs (seriously, I almost passed out from having to lie on my back for those CTs)... Yep, 3 broken ribs, and a 20% pneumothorax on the left side.

They put in a chest tube to fix the pneumothorax...

...and the relief was indescribable. Turns out a partially collapsed lung really, really hurts. It was like 90% of the ouch.

They kept me from Sunday to Tuesday, making sure everything worked as expected.

Though I felt a lot better, it's still no picnic being busted up like that - you might as well weigh 500 pounds. Shifting around in bed is like trying to shift a boulder around. The little table next to the bed might as well also weigh 500 pounds. Shifting it around is like trying to shift around a boulder at arms length. The hospital was great though. It's funny... Over the years, I've actually stayed overnight in a dozen or more hospitals, by myself, or with family, for various reasons, and that one was, honestly, the best I've been in. I got really good care.

I could even Uber Eats food to my room after hours...

...which was great because with broken ribs, you barely sleep, and it sucks being up all night, busted, and hungry.

My buddy Mark Grace even came by and hung out with me for a few hours, got my keys, went back to my house, brought me back my charger, laptop, and laptop power supply! It made a huge difference to have them, but it also made a huge difference to have someone from real life be there in person. It was only a few days, but it felt like a week. Chrissy checked up on me a lot, and I also texted and talked to family and friends, but man, seeing a real person, in person... That gets two thumbs up.

After everything looked good, they pulled the chest tube out.

...and weirdly, just set it on the floor next to my bed for the rest of the day, all bloody and dripping. :D

I got to take a shower too, which was amazing. I was still gross from working out two days earlier, and super dirty from wallowing around on the ground like a quadruped after falling.

Before they discharged me, they gave me this breathing thing:

You suck on that tube, gently, keeping that plastic circle on the right in between the arrows, while the plunger on the left rises all the way to the top. It's easy to suck in hard and just pull it all the way up. Doing it slowly is tricky.

Tuesday afternoon, I was able to drive myself home.

Sadly though, I've broken a lot of ribs, and the first few days are usually not the worst. Over the next week, the lack of sleep grinds on you. Then your entire rib cage gets stiff and difficult to flex. Three to six weeks to heal, then three to six more to recover fitness. I had a long road ahead of me, but at least it was a familar one.

I actually saw Beatriz the next day and she felt bad because she introduced me to all of this. I felt bad for her, for feeling bad: "I wouldn't worry about it." The way I think about this kind of thing... Yeah, technically she had a hand in it for turning me on to the sport, but it was a really small hand. Cody technically had a hand in it for building the rig, but it was also a pretty small hand. Whoever developed this style of obstacle such that there would be an analog of it at a training facility technically had a hand in it, but it was a super small hand. Arguably, everyone who's ever done anything that I interpreted as encouraging to do these kinds of activities had a hand in it, but again, super, super small hand. The hand I had in it was the biggest by far. I knew what I was getting into. That I might someday break a rib doing it was a rsik that I was well aware of. It's what I eventually end up doing when I get well enough into these kinds of sports. I had a clear choice, and I accepted the risk, rather than quitting the sport.

Going forward, I'll be a lot more aware of the specific risk on that obstacle, and of what I need to do to avoid it. Next time I try The Low Rig, I'm going to get somebody to spot me, or maybe some mats, or something!