I didn't give myself enough breaks during the training year to recover. I didn't understand the power of periodization.
Certainly after the tragedy in Neil's life, we were holding out hope for his recovery. It wasn't too promising at the time and obviously you get to the point of thinking that that is it.
But when Neil called, I have to say that my heart soared. And the reason was, because it said so much about his recovery... that he was coming back to the world of the living.
I love yoga. There's a lot of stretching involved, which helps with my flexibility and injury prevention. Vinyasa is my favorite as a recovery tool and for me to continue having my legs feel good.
When I play on grass, my body doesn't ache. It can get sore, but it doesn't pulse, and my legs don't ache. When I play on turf, my legs can pulse and ache for up to 24 hours, and it could take 3-5 days to recover, whereas grass, after 24 hours, I'm ready to play again.
It's not that hard to imagine the natural world recovering it's health in our absence: it's more difficult, and more necessary, to imagine it recovering its health in our presence.
The memories are vague of the accident. I remember coming out of the pitlane with cruise control, letting it go and then losing control of the car. I remember my hands frantically operating the steering wheel trying to recover control of the car, then this big, big noise and nothing more.
It would be completely wrong and arrogant of me to say that this is what I am, an inspiration to others. During the course of my recovery, I bumped into people with amazing stories, far more amazing than mine.
We didn't do anything wrong, but among the lessons learned, given the magnitude of the problems we now face in Afghanistan, a major U.S. force on the ground would convince the world we were in for the long-haul recovery of a country devastated by 21 years of warfare.
When I was getting injured so much, I spoke to my family and my manager and said, 'I need my body to recover.' The first thing I thought was that I needed to stay upright. When I went back to Brazil to play, after a few months, my body was perfect.
