The few days of travel it took to get to our destination in China, which I would normally not consider days off, but after the full-steam ahead approach I had to take to make it back for this World Cup, it felt like a nice rest on my knees and brain.

Thinking my knees would have recovered from what my teammate diagnosed as "surprised knee syndrome," I forgot that it might still be a bit painful to jump. That was until I landed my first jump with an angry "owww!"

Throughout the training, each jump I took seemed to make the pain exponentially worse. After five jumps I was done because I had reached my goal of getting comfortable on the site and hoped to spare my knees a bit for the next day.

Think again.

The first jump hurt as if I started right where I left off the day before. Stopping at the bottom where we talk to our coaches on walkie-talkies, my coach asked me if I was ok. Instinctively, and without the blink of an eye, I replied "yes."

After getting my feedback, I went to ski away and noticed my legs were shaking and it felt like my knees were about to buckle. I turned toward the lift, the pain keeping me from moving my legs, and glided down the flat path.

Balancing on my legs, I was hoping the pain would go away by the time I had to do my next jump. As I started going up the pommel lift, with the realization that I could barely stand, never mind take another jump, tears started running down my cheeks. I decided to get off half way to go visit our medical staff, who were watching from the judge's stand.

I asked our chiropractor, "Is there anything we can do right now so that I can continue to train?" After being examined by the doctor and chiropractor the conclusion was that if my muscles were not reacting well enough for me to walk, I could injure myself a lot worse on the landing.

Fine with me, nothing I can do. I was done for the day. I got on painkillers right away and spent the whole next day with the ice machine. Icing each leg for 15 minutes every hour.

Since I wasn't about to let all this work of making a comeback go to waste, I left the hotel for the first World Cup of the season determined and fully believing I could still do well. Doing a trick I hadn't done yet this year, I competed well but my landing was not good enough and I ended up 15th.  The top 12 make the finals. Boo me.

One more chance

I had one more day to prove myself. The next day, still in a terrible amount of pain from my knees, I went out and competed that same trick again. This time I hit my face on my knee when I landed. It didn't hurt too bad, but I realized blood was dripping down. At this point it didn't bother me at all.

I went to see my coach and he was like "Oh no, you're bleeding. Well I'm not sure if this is good news or bad but you made the finals and have to jump again".  I guess despite hitting my face on my knees, my jump was good enough to make finals.

Back in to the judge's stand. Laying down for the two hours, I had to wait during the men's semifinals, so I iced my knees and my face.

I bent over to start running through the movements of doing a jump, visualizing what I was about to do, and I got a stabbing feeling in my ribs. What now? The doctor checked me out and said it was a muscle injury, which means I'm ok to keep jumping.

With a huge throbbing nose, a headache, a knife in my ribs and knees that want to give out every time they hit the ground, I headed up to compete a different jump in the finals - a jump I hadn't done in 10 months.

Just like I visualized it all summer, it was great. Combined with the score of my first jump I ended up in sixth place.

Not bad considering...

I left China with two black eyes and barely walking, but I proved to everyone that I could do what most thought was impossible. Relieved it was all over, I opted to skip out on visiting the Great Wall with my teammate, and instead, I rested in the hotel icing my knees.

I continued to do that over the break looking forward to my good times and getting even better when the World Cup tour resumed, and then on to peaking at the Olympics where I still plan on winning a medal.