Deep Edges | Yuzuru Hanyu

18.

One thing you can always count on with figure skaters is how used to pain they are.

Most of their days are filled with falling on their ass and they have been doing just that for years and years. It's easy for pain to become usual and recurrent, such a normal situation that it's easy to ignore the little warning signs that come with it.

The little pain in her landing knee gradually but certainly became worse and worse.

Even if in the beginning she only felt it when she landed, it came a time when doing the most basic of movements brought it to the surface.

It was all fine when it was on a tolerable level but it took less than 2 weeks until she felt the pain when she was just walking.

The one thing about Izumi was that she was very talented at hiding these little things.

The other thing was that Tsuzuki-sensei was really good at sensing when something was wrong.

It took her coach exactly 4 days after her pain got significantly worse to notice that something was wrong.

They had a very long conversation about the dangers of hiding injuries and even if she didn't want it for a single second, he had succeeded in convincing her to go to a doctor.

The result? She gradually found out that she had developed a stress fracture on her knee.

As much as her coach had wanted to tell her that he had been right, the sheer knowledge that this whole situation meant that she would for sure miss the World Championships made him shut up about it.

He could see it all over again, all of her doubts coming to the surface, and the confidence that she had somewhat regained at the NHK slowly disappeared.

Trying to calm her down was completely useless but the thing was that she would be looking at 6 to 8 weeks of recovery, meaning that it would be useless to have any kind of conversation about it.

It was only after her treatment plan was explained in detail that the doctor asked her a few more questions about her eating habits and menstrual cycle.

Izumi had to admit that talking about those things in front of the old man wasn't at all comfortable but given the circumstances, it would be very hard to avoid.

It turned out that losing her period wasn't as normal as one would think. In fact, and despite it being common in the female athlete population, it was usually an indication of higher caloric need.

When you add overexercise to undereating on a woman, the result could be catastrophic.

Doctors called it the triad and it seemed like it was very likely that her fracture was caused by the loss of bone density that can happen in these situations. 

As drastic as her fracture was, the doctor was far more worried about treating the initial cause than anything else. All he wanted to do was avoid another situation like this, where she managed to get a severe injury with something that could've been easily avoidable with a better diet plan.

Izumi left that office with far more appointments booked than she expected. From ObiGyn to a Nutritionist, it seemed like the days of slacking on her health would be completely over.

It's safe to say that any injured athlete is a pissed athlete but when it came to Izumi, she was truly terrible at staying in place and obeying orders from the doctors and her coach.

They soon started to make her eat far more than she was used to and forced her to stay off her injured leg at all given times.

Izumi just wanted to be on the ice and feel the glide underneath her feet.

Now, not only she was completely confined to her home but she had to deal with the fact that her mother was there as well.

Yes, because the woman had to travel all the way from Kyoto to make sure her daughter was nice and healthy soon.

She loved her mother but after years of living by herself, having that figure around her at all times was something that was quickly driving her insane. Izumi did her best to just ignore it all, losing herself for hours on end just listening to music and imagining herself on the ice.

Mental training, Tsuzuki-sensei called it and followed with an explanation of how Yuzuru had used it before his 2nd Olympics when he was injured as well. Everything somehow always connected to that man.

Izumi had to be honest, she didn't find much benefit in it when she wasn't allowed to compete at Worlds. The season was pretty much over for her and all that was left to do was recover and hope for the best when the new season started.

One thing you could be certain of, Izumi had learned her lesson.

If the painful process of being off the ice taught her anything, it was that ignoring symptoms is never a good idea, especially when they stay consistent over and over again.

All she wanted was to go back, pain or not, and start training again. Even if no major competitions worked out for her in that season, the main goal was still the Olympics in 2 years and she planned on making every second of that preparation count.

The events and circumstances of the crazy 2 months of recovery made her come back on the ice with a new and renewed motivation and on that very first day back, Tsuzuki-sensei gave her some very unexpected news.

"I just wanted to let you know...Yuzuru will be coming to train with us for about a month and a half."