Coming back from injury

Hi Team Birkie readers!

Friend and fellow USCSA competitor Antonio Mannino (Athletic Training grad student) helping my ankle stay in one piece during races last year

For those who don’t know me, my name is Conner Roberts and I am a first-year member of Team Birkie. I recently graduated from Clarkson University, and although my collegiate skiing was mostly successful, the last 2 years were a constant battle with injuries, including back injuries, a knee injury, and multiple torn ligaments in my right ankle that required surgery this past March.

Post Surgery

For some background, the ankle injuries started in September of 2021 when I tore my ATFL while trail running, then tore my CFL a year later. I trained and raced on both torn ligaments for 2 years before surgery because of the recovery time, and finding the correct surgeon capable of doing the surgery in a way that would allow me to continue with running and skiing in the future. Although it was manageable thanks to a lot of time and effort put in by our team’s athletic trainer at Clarkson, it created some significant difficulties as you might imagine, including it popping out of place a few times during races.

Getting back into training after a major lower body surgery and spending almost 3 months on crutches and sitting on the couch was definitely a challenge, both mentally and physically. I lost a large amount of the muscle from the knee down in my right leg and foot, and spent a couple weeks working on just being able to walk normally again.

During this time, I did a number of hours on a ski-erg with my leg resting on a stool, which was as boring as you can imagine, but anything was better than nothing. I was able to start some easy biking again a few weeks after getting out of the boot, and ended up spending a lot of quality time with my bike over the next few months. I was able to get on rollerskis for the first time around 4 months after surgery in July, but it was a slow transition dealing with a lot of continuing pain and lack of strength. I continued phasing into it while subsidizing a lot of training hours on the bike until about mid-October, when I was able to start running consistently again.

I was back to fully unrestricted training by the start of November, but it took until the beginning of December before I felt like I was back to having consistent and high-quality training without much limitation. Luckily just in time for race season!

Making progress at precision performance physical therapy

The first few races this year were a bit rough to say the least, but it’s been progressively getting better throughout the season. Although my fitness is far from where I would like it to be, races are starting to feel good again, and I feel like I am starting to race well and utilize what fitness I do have more effectively. This has at least made it more fun to race again, even if results aren’t what I would hope for.

The plan for now is to continue to try and build fitness back up, and hopefully put up some better results at Lake Placid at Supertour finals next month. In addition to training, I’ll also be continuing working with our team’s PT Dr. Cara Battles at Precision Performance Physical Therapy, who has been a huge part of my progress towards getting back to being able to race this year.

 Thanks for reading and hope to see you on the trails!

First race of the year at the Cable Supertour

Anchoring the USA 4x7.5k relay at World University Games in Prage