Laughter and tears are both responses to
frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less
cleaning up to do afterward.
Kurt Vonnegut
My eyes opened to darkness. To the left of me I could hear deep
breathing and light snoring. Jaime
and Riley were sleeping well. I on
the other hand was not. Once
again, I was the third wheel and the odd man out. I had wrestled with the questions that were going to come to
fruition in a couple of hours.
While my teammates were at the top of their game and had formed a close
bond I had struggled to keep my head above water. Self-doubt was doing it’s best to drown me hours before my
‘A’ race.
I had thought I had gotten over the
injury hump with the Deschutes Dash.
It was a good race and I had done well. However, family commitments had cut into some valuable
learning time with my Jaime and Riley and worse still, just over a week before
the race I had laid the bike down hard on a ride coming down off of
Bachelor. The bike had come out of
the incident with barely a scratch but my left hip had taken the brunt of the
fall. In the week following the
event a massive hematoma, the size of a large softball had appeared on my
hip. No amount of icing or
ointment could reduce the swelling.
The week before the event I had attempted
to run. The swelling made for a
tight and painful run. Rather than
risk further injury I simply stopped running the week prior to the race. I concentrated on trying to rest and
reduce the swelling in my hip. A
long drive to Seattle didn’t necessarily help things but it didn’t seem to make
things worse. There was a lot of
unknown happening as the race was quickly approaching.
The night before the race Jaime, Riley,
and I all met up at a hotel near the race. As the evening unfolded I felt and became more solitary as I
tried to wrestle with the questions that were running through my head. To quit in my mind was not an option,
but at the same time I was not sure how my body was going to respond to a half-ironman. I had gone into Boise relaxed and
confident. Lake Stevens was a
different story. Try as I might I
could not relax. The night before
the race I did not sleep well. I
woke up long before the alarm and I struggled to make sense of what I was going
to do.
We readied everything and drove out to
Lake Stevens. We took the bus from
the high school down to the cove where the race would start. There was not much talking on board the
bus and it was not packed as rides to Leadman and Boise had been. I was lost in my thoughts and I knew
the clock was ticking down. I
found my bike in the transition area and started laying things out. The two gentlemen next to me were new
to half-ironman. I tried to put
them at ease. Because my heat was
one of the last going off I had plenty of time to think about what was going to
happen. The promise of a sunny day
was delayed. Overcast skies and
fog held tight to the lake.
Riley and Jaime were long gone with
their early race heats and I knew more than likely they would finish pretty
close to one another and finish long before myself. I was alone and bided my time staring into the lake as wave
upon wave of athletes made their way onto the deck to begin their race. As my wave got closer to the dock the
fog became thicker and began to obscure the buoys out on the lake. It seemed to mimic the uncertainty and
sense of loneliness that I was feeling.
I was frustrated and upset.
I took a deep breath, called upon the spirits of friends and family,
closed my eyes and tried to visualize the race ahead. Somewhere in the lonely darkness a moment of clarity took
hold.
I realized that I was not going to set
the world on fire. I was not going
to make a name for my coach as a prize pupil, and I knew I was more than likely
not going to have a PR from the race.
I could either laugh or I could cry. I chose the former.
I jumped into the water, relaxed, and
waited for the horn to sound. For
the first time I was not nervous about the open water swim. I told myself I would use that time
during the swim to work on my catch, my pull, and to work on my
streamline. The horn went off and
I surprised myself in my level of comfort. The fog made sighting the buoys difficult but I realized
that there was a line used for sculling races that would lead me out and
back. I relaxed, worked on my
stroke, and found myself in the thick of my age group swim.
I came out of the water with a sense of
purpose. If this was not going to
be a PR race well then I might as well have a bit of fun. As I began the course a younger guy
passed me and asked me how things were going and I said that they were going to
be just fine. The first twenty
miles were pretty benign. It was a
beautiful course and made even more so with the light wisps of fog. I passed a lot of riders. I would give them a verbal high five
when I went by. My hip was tight
but not painful. To take my mind
off it I started playing a little game.
If I passed a woman in her 40’s or 50’s I’d make a remark about how the
marker had gotten their age wrong on their leg. Some of the riders would remain stoic but the majority of
the ladies would bust out laughing and we’d quickly wish each other a great
race. On a particularly tough hill
at mile 38 I passed many people pushing their bikes up the steep incline and
trying to dig down deep to keep going.
Motivation was at a low point and I sensed it was time to let it all
hang out. I yelled out, “Hey
everyone, it’s time to find your inner Diana Ross!” I then started singing Ain’t
No Mountain High Enough at the top of my lungs. I picked up my cadence and pushed up the hill. Once I reached the top and picked my way
through the tired riders I tried to lift spirits by yelling out, “We came, we
saw, we kicked it’s ass.” That
elicited a couple of chuckles from the riders around me and my spirits were
lifted for the remainder of the bike ride.
I came into the transition area and
readied for my run. I knew that
this would be the telling moment in the race. The first mile went by without much fanfare. There was a short and steady hill but
things seemed ok. I came into the
first run aid station feeling good and confident and I had a good pace
going. Another mile went by and
things were good. If I passed
someone I would urge them on and let them know that they were doing a great
job. If someone passed me I would
do likewise and give them a verbal fist bump. The third mile featured a short, but steep hill and that’s
where my hip began to make its presence known. My left hip began to tighten up and each step began to hurt
just a little bit more. The trail
turned and ran along the lake.
During this point the run went up a long and extended hill. As I struggled to make my way up the
hill I caught sight of Riley gingerly coming down the hill. He was running at a great pace but I
could see he was in pain. I yelled
out encouragement to him and kept plugging up the hill. A couple of minutes later I met Jaime
coming down the hill. I urged him
on as well, crested the hill, turned around, and began the run back to
town. I ran past the halfway
point, told myself that I was going to finish, gritted my teeth, and resolved
to gut things out. My urgings to
others became less frequent and I began to concentrate on simply
finishing. The sun was high, the
air warm and thick, and with each aid station I would grab a cup of ice, pop
one cube in my mouth, and pour the rest down my backside. As I came to the big hill for the
second time I realized that I was no longer in race mode but on survival
mode. My hip was throbbing, as
were my feet. I hit the turnaround,
felt a slight surge of energy and made my way back to town. I rounded the corner, heard the
announcer call my name, and crossed the finish line. My wife and kids were cheering me on from one side of the
finish line and Jaime and Riley were cheering me on from the other side. I felt a sense of relief and began to
walk around to keep myself from throwing up.
In a fitting end to the race my wife and
son had brought at my request a cooler full of ice cubes. I took the cooler, filled it with water
from Lake Stevens, and promptly took the ALS ice water challenge. I dedicated the challenge to Loren
Dils, a friend and former tennis coach at the University of New Mexico. The water felt good and I reflected on
how lucky I was in being able to complete my race. The ravages of ALS had taken a healthy and athletic body
such as Loren’s and reduced it to the status of an invalid. Any issues I had during the race paled
in comparison with what Lauren had gone and was continuing to go through on a
daily basis. I was thankful that I
was able to celebrate my accomplishment with my family and my teammates.
It wasn’t the race I had hoped to
complete. Other than a good swim,
no PR’s occurred. In the whole
scheme of things that was ok. Sue,
a woman I met at Jaime’s triathlon camp in Tucson said it best. “Sometimes it's just about throwing PR's aside and finishing a
race out of commitment to the sport, or teammates or yourself.” While it was not my best race, it was a
gut check. It was a race where the
mind won out over the body. It
gave me confidence to face other races and told me that I could dig down deep
and laugh at the frustrations of injuries, interrupted training time, and a
race that didn’t meet up to initial expectations.
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