• Report.Of obesity to compete against Kilian Jornet in four years: the story of Cristofer Clemente

«By a bad step I flew through the air and began to spin. I saw the sky at my feet, it was the other way around. I hit the stones once, and again, and again, and again. I felt that I was breaking all my bones, that I was tearing all my skin. I focused on breathing and calming myself down; I accepted that everything was over ».

On August 4, 2017, Hillary Allen , one of the best mountain runners in the world, a specialist in complicated terrain - Hillarygoat (Hillarycabra), they call her - stepped on a loose stone on top of the Hamperroken, in Norway, during the Tromso Skyrace race, fell 20 meters to the void and bounced another 40 meters up the slope. He lost consciousness. He fractured bones of the pelvis, ribs, the two ulnae, the two radii, a wrist and an ankle. He thought he was dying; as the first athlete who helped her, Manu Par , thought it; as the organizer of the test thought, Kilian Jornet ; as the doctors who treated him thought. But in the medicalized helicopter he woke up.

And two years later, last summer, she returned to the same race, to the same top, only to prove to herself that she could do it. Between both episodes, he lived a very hard process of physical and, above all, psychological rehabilitation of which he still has sequels and that he now recounts, in a cathartic exercise, in the book Out and Back (Blue Star Press), which will be published this summer and It will have a Spanish version.

«Writing helped me a lot, I would say it saved me. During my recovery I thought that I would never run again, I lost my identity, I fell into depression ... But when I wrote nobody judged me, I could expose my feelings no matter how unpleasant they were. It somehow healed me. So I wrote a lot and there began the project of opening a blog and then the book, ”says Allen, who became an example.

Before the accident she was a teacher in Neuroscience at the University of Colorado who played tennis as a child, started running after finishing high school - she completed a marathon in 2:51 - she discovered the mountain, won the United States Skyrunning championship in 2014 and, from there, he accumulated victories and podiums in very long tests around the world such as the Canarian Transvulcania.

After the accident is an example of how to overcome a stumbling block, this is a real stumbling block, that is, the metaphor of a dismissal, a divorce, in short, of a disappointment. She confirmed this last fall when her brand, The North Face, made her the protagonist of an advertisement and invited her to a TED talk before hundreds of listeners. She learned last summer on top of Hamperroken, in Norway, accompanied by the same Manu Par who helped her on her worst day.

«I wanted to run the Tromso Skyrace again and a few days before, when I arrived in Norway, I asked Manu to accompany me to the exact place of my accident. I needed to know all the details of what happened, to understand it. But when I arrived I felt something strange: my body wanted to leave there. My stomach turned, I panicked, I was just thinking of returning to town. I was one click away from buying the plane tickets and going home that same day, but I stayed, ran the race with some friends and enjoyed it. They made me laugh a lot, I also cried ... I will always remember it ».

Allen admits that there are days when he is placed in front of the mirror, he reviews all the scars and wonders if that was real or not. Allen admits that sometimes everything still hurts and he can barely get out of bed. Allen admits that during some workouts in the mountain he panics, he stops and surrenders simply to return home safe and sound. Allen admits that he wakes up many days with the feeling of falling down the mountain. Allen admits that he now doubts more about his career options such as the TDS of the Mont-Blanc Ultra Trail, a 145-kilometer race in which he finished second last year. But, at the same time, Allen admits that perhaps the accident made him a little freer and even a little happier.

«I know myself much, much more than before. Of course, the fall brought me negative, very negative consequences, but in the end the whole process has brought me even more positive things. Now I feel a different person, now I am prepared to deal with any problem, now I know what all those phrases that I used to say to say mean. Fight for what you love, never give up ... Now I say them with my mouth full, I've lived them to the bone, ”Allen concludes.

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