What does everyone do while they recover from an injury? How do you keep yourself from going freaking insane while you can’t exercise? I am at wit’s end!!!
ARGHHHHH!!!
Sex. You aren’t injured in that way are you? 
Left shoulder and right knee are screwed up. Sex is ok, but then what? I can’t get too freaky. and what if my girlfriend walks in on us? Just kidding. ;-)~
I have worked the “luvvin” angle with my girl for three weeks now. She’s like, “Get a hobby or something!”
HELP!!!
I hope lots of people post to this thread. I could use some ideas, too.
Meanwhile, here are two things I’ve done over the months I’ve been hurt that actually made me feel better:
(1) Search the posts here using your particular injury as a search term. Or search just using “injury.” The posts I especially liked were the ones where people listed all the body parts they had ever hurt. What made me feel better was that everybody eventually did get back to training and racing. Injury (usually) isn’t forever, although it seems like it is when it’s you who’s hurt.
(2) If you are not out of commission in all three sports, increase your training time in the sport(s) you can still do, so you approximate your usual training schedule. The silver lining here is that if you are training only on your bike, for example, in no time you will find that you’re dropping everybody.
Here are two things I’ve done that have not helped emotionally, but have at least made constructive use of what used to be training time:
(3) Reintroduce yourself to your family, and call some non-athlete friends that you never have time to see (if you still have any non-athlete friends).
(4) Clean your house. Go through the stack of “important papers” that you keep throwing into a pile to deal with later, only later never comes.
One of the things I did that was a major mistake was to volunteer at a race. I thought that being able to participate at all would help me feel connected and I would feel good about “giving back.” Wrong. Handing out water to friends who were racing made me feel especially wretched.
Susan
I’ve had a pretty rough year illness- and injury-wise. It started with a chest infection at the end of last year brought on by one race too many. That lasted about 6 months before I felt I could start training again. Once I started training again, it was about 10 days before I fell down the stairs and dislocated my shoulder. 10 days later again and I fell down the same set of stairs and dislocated the same shoulder! Once that was better enough to get back on the bike (when I could put weight on it again), it was about a week before I hit a pot-hole in the road and took most of the skin off my left leg. I’ve now ahd about a month of decent quality training with IM UK coming up in three weeks time.
Anyway, I feel like I am qualified to answer your question. I have at times found it extremely frustrating not being able to train, but there have been some benefits. Firstly - when I have come back to fitness after illness or injury, I feel really re-energised - really looking forward to getting back into it. Second - it has given me loads of time to spend on some things that training would normally preclude or at least cut back - I’ve done quite abit of walking in the hills, given time to other hobbies and most of all spent time with my too-often-neglected-due-to-being-onthebike/inthepool/outrunning wife.
So - it is frustrating, but at the end of the day you just have to wait for healing to run it’s course - just look for positives where you can.
Here are some things I have done in the past two weeks:
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sorted out all of my financial records for the past 8 months.
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completed three jigsaw puzzles.
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Attempted reconciliations with friends with whom I am having problems.
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Spent more time with girlfriend
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Cleaned the house. It’s dirty again, so I can do this today.
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Watched more movies than I care to see in a year (See the movie “Yes Men”)
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Started to look for a new bike. There will be a future thread regarding this.
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Became uncontrollably addicted to posting on Slowtwitch.
It’s not like I’m not doing anything. I can’t train right now. I have a broken Collar bone on the left side and a gash on the right knee that took numerous stitches to close (still not healed). No swimming/biking/running at all. Most of these things take small amounts of time. The jigsaw puzzles take 3-4 hours, Movies are about 1 1/2 hour. I don’t like to veg in front of the TV, but I can’t fill up the time any other way. Maybe I’ll start knitting.
Here’s one…cooking.
Cooking and preparing meals can take hours if you try some of those complicated meals you would never have time to think of making when you are training.
get a camera and start a hobby of photography. you could learn to paint, do pottery, learn a musical instrument, or something else creative and gratifying.
or start up a small live porn site. that would keep you entertained for hours on end.
Injury just sucks, and that’s all there is to it. I have been recovering from surgery on my left shoulder and from a bad sprain in my right ankle, so I know how miserable it is not to be able to train at all.
The good thing about a broken collarbone, at least in my experience (I had one of those last August), is that it gets well really fast. It seemed like every few days, I regained more function. And 5 weeks after I broke it, I raced a 5K–slower than my usual time, of course, but not by much. I had the advantage of not having another injury at that time, though.
Susan
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I actually have a family member in the industry. The problem with this idea is that you’re not generally dealing with the most emotionally stable people. Unstable = bad work habits.
I think I’m going to get back into cooking. I’ve always wanted to learn how to make a good sauce. Totally underrated in the culinary arts. Hmmmm.