CRASH!!!

Well, now I know why I don't train the day before a race. Ok, ok, I know that a crash can happen any time, but this was probably my worst bike crash. And, yes, it happened exactly one day before my first tri of the season. The bottom line is, I am an idiot.

Here's the great (but long) story: After riding with Andy while she did her 7m run, I was going to do a quick, easy BLT loop on the bike, just to spin out the legs and get everything all warmed up. As I exited our neighborhood and approached the semi-sharp right hand turn to get up onto AL White Parkway, I checked to see if any traffic was coming up behind me. I do this at every corner, but especially this one, because it is a tricky, uphill corner that always is very full of gravel from the winter. I saw there was a big truck pulling a camper coming up behind me, so I kept my speed up a bit more than normal, trying to stay ahead of him. Mistake #1. Because I knew he was back there, I didn't want to go wide around the corner and cut him off, lest I contribute to any cyclist vs. auto anger. So, even though I was slowing down, I headed straight into the gravel. Mistake #2. Not really sure what happened next, but it doesn't really matter, because WHAM suddenly the right side of my body met the road in a very dramatic looking and sounding flurry of gravel, dust and bike. I didn't even have time to unclip, although I did have time to think "hey, it would be a good idea if I took my hands off the bike right now and give the road a high five".

As I lay there making sure that nothing was broken (bike first, then bones), friendly Mr. Guy-in-Truck pulls up to the stop sign. He sits there for awhile, staring at me, probably wishing I'd get up and get out of the road so he can get off to claim his awesome camping spot. Doesn't get out, doesn't roll down the window to ask if I'm ok. Nope. Just sits there. Could he maybe have not seen me go down, I wonder? Perhaps, but if that were the case, then that was the longest stop at a stop sign in history. Fortunately, a gentleman and his daughter who were out on their tandem bike came over to help me up and make sure I was going to be ok. Right about the time I start spraying massive amounts of water on my now bloody hands, the truck and camper pull away....uh, bye, thanks for the help, buddy. I chatted with the friendly cyclist for a bit, he asks if I can make it home. I say, yes, thank goodness I live a half mile from here. He says he's glad I appear to be ok, and I thank him for checking on me and not making me feel too much like an idiot. Then I say something like "ugh, this is going to make this race I'm doing tomorrow pretty interesting". He says something like "yeah, buddy, have fun with that". Then we go our separate ways.

I made it home ok, and surprised Andy who doesn't expect to see me for a little while yet. Then she went into full-on crisis support mode when she saw the blood, and started grabbing towels and the hydrogen peroxide. I scrubbed and scrubbed at my various scrapes, knowing that getting them cleaned up was priority number one if there was any hope for me racing the next day. Amazingly, I was pretty calm throughout all this, a fact that Andy pointed out numerous times. Normally, with something like this, I'd be going crazy with frustration, embarassment, and anger. Turns out, I may have been in "a bit" of shock still at this point. Anyway, as more and more clothes came off, we discovered more and more road rash, which required more and more scrubbing. Yipee!! After about 20 minutes, I decided it was time to get the rest of me cleaned up, so I headed for the shower. It was, as expected, painful, but I managed to gut through it ok. The weird thing is, I was feeling so ok at this point, I was already thinking about getting the blog post written soon after I got out of the shower. In fact, I had Andy take some pictures, to "spice up" the blog.

Next stop was the bathroom to get things bandaged up and get on with the day. Hmmmm....not so much. After pouring some hydrogen peroxide directly on my hands and leg, we started getting the bandages on. That's about the time when I said "Uh, Andy, I think I need to sit down". Next thing I know, I'm sitting on the toilet seat and my head is spinning and feeling very weird. Yep, passed out. Niiiiicccceee!!! Poor Andy then went into freak out mode, after slapping me back to the real world, and advised me to put my head between my legs. I followed orders, and then the sweating began. Whoa. Not feeling too hot now. Maybe I'll wait on that blog thing. I made it to a lying down position on the bathroom floor, and ever so slowly began to feel better. Meanwhile, Andy called Kirk for a consult, and true to form, he sped over to assess the situation. Immediately after seeing me on the floor, he mentioned that he wasn't sure how it was possible, but that I looked whiter than normal. Thanks, buddy. Then he asked how the bike was. I told him I thought is was ok, so we proceeded to more mundane things like maybe getting some sugar/calories in my system. A glass of Gatorade, one of lemonade, a handful of pretzels, and a PowerBar Triple Threat bar later, I was able to sit up slowly. Kirk did an amazing job of calming both me and Andy down, and not making me feel like an idiot (although I did...its hard not to when you are laying on the bathroom floor). Once we were all convinced that I was going to live and didn't need to go to urgent care or anything, we discussed plans for the race the next day. I of course really wanted to race, but knew that it might not happen. At the end of the night, we decided to make the call in the morning. I did a wetsuit test, just to see if I could get it on and off without too much trouble. It went well, which buoyed my spirits a bit, but I knew that alot would depend on how I felt when I woke up the next morning.

I find it amazing how fast your brain moves when you are in crisis mode, and more so when you are in pain/passed out. I am also very thankful that I had a good support team who rallied to my aid when I needed it. Andy was amazingly calm (or at least she appeared to be) and her concern for me was very sweet. She was probably pretty beat after her hard 7 mile run, but she totally put all of that aside to take care of me. And Kirk again stepped up as only a good friend who's "been there" could, and helped take care of both me and Andy.

As I went to bed, I was feeling pretty good, but also pretty dumb too. It was probably a much more dramatic few hours than it needed to be, and it really shouldn't have even happened anyway. Well, I guess you live and learn. Tomorrow should certainly be interesting......that story is next up! :)

Although there were many more pictures, this is the best "suitable for public display" one. Those should work really well in the swim tomorrow, eh? :D

Catching up...."weekend" training

How wonderful would it be if our weekends actually ran from Thursday through Tuesday?

Even if that's just wishful thinking, for some reason, my Thurs-Tues stretch sort of felt like a long weekend of workouts.

Thursday was one of those damn tough workout days that I am confident I will be going back to mentally during races to give me a little bit of inner motivation. At least my psyche was helped by the fact that the weather was gorgeous, sunny and in the 80s with very little wind. After work, a few of the EWU Tri Club guys showed me thru the bike course for the upcoming EWU IronEagle sprint race, and we knocked out 10m at a nice 21.4mph average. I then headed out solo onto the Troika bike course bound for home. I was interested in seeing if I could keep my average from dropping too much over the next 44 miles, but decided to focus on my effort level rather than obsessing over the numbers. When I arrived home, a quick check of my bike computer showed that my overall average for 54.5 miles was still 20.2...woo hoo! My legs felt surprisingly fresh as I went out for a 10k brick run, and again, I decided against looking at my watch and just tried to run an even effort. When all was said and done, "somehow" (shout out to Tiffany :) I averaged sub-8s on my run. I won't lie and say it was easy, but I managed to get through it ok. It was when I stopped that I started to fall apart. For the rest of the night, I was totally wasted. It was all I could do to eat a bean and turkey burrito, and then find my way to bed. It was an exhausting day, but looking back, it was definitely a confidence booster.

After a glorious off day Friday, on Saturday I woke up early and met (crazy) Joe for a long run. We tried to get out early, because the forecast for the day was highs near 90. Now that's what I'm talking about!! Lets get a few more weeks of heat! Andy was nice enough to get up early and head out on her bike with us, to be our mobile aid station. We ran the reverse of the BLT loop, thinking that since its easier that way on the bike, it must make for an "easier" run. Uh, not so much. I worked a bit on some downhill running techniques that Joe and Steve have been showing me, but I still felt like I was painfully slow on the descents. My legs really started to feel it with about 4 miles to go, and by the time we hit the last 3, the heat was on and I was toast. It was a major-league struggle to not walk during that last 5k, but fortunately Joe (he, of the sub-48 Bloomsday) took pity on me and didn't dust me too badly. I suspect that he was waiting for me, but it was nice motivation not to slack off and finish the run. Afterward, I knew that an ice bath would seriouly help my recovery and aid my legs in getting through my planned ride the next day. They are never fun, but I am a big believer in ice baths. This one was no different....brrrrrr and no fun at all!

Saturday afternoon, Andy and I cleaned the house in anticipation of our friend Lisa's arrival, who was visiting us for a few days from Germany. We hadn't seen Lisa since she left Spokane last July, and it promised to be a crazy fun weekend of catching up. Saturday night, we hosted a fun BBQ dinner with Lisa, her sister and Zach and Jen. Way fun!!

Sunday morning, I again got up early and picked up Kirk and Joe just after 8am, and we headed out to CDA to do a long bike workout on the course. My plan was to do about 80-90m, and get in the Higgens Point section in for the first time this year. After a nice warmup, Kirk left Joe and I in the dust (as planned) as we hit the northern/hilly part of the course. I was feeling surprisingly good through the first 40 miles, especially considering my hard run yesterday. We stopped at a gas station in Hayden so Joe could get some more water, then we spun around and headed out to hit the northern part of the loop again. Literally within the span of 5 miles, POOF!! My legs went totally dead. Later, Joe commented how he saw it all happen and how surprising it was to watch. I don't ever recall a feeling like that, having it all come apart so fast. It was very strange. After I slowed the pace way down, I decided I really needed to tackle the 2 big hills for a second time, so I gutted it out for a few more miles. At the next opportunity, however, we cut the loop short and headed back to CDA. The last 10 miles, we were heading into a fairly good headwind, so I pretty much just pedaled really easy and cruised it on in. The weird thing about the last part of the ride was this: in the past, in this situation, I would have become very frustrated and angry at the state of things. But today, I just sort of let it go, and decided, hey, it just isn't going to happen today. Incredibly, the headwind didn't even get to me! Now, while I won't call this a breakthrough, it was a good opportunity for me to practice staying positive (or, rather, not get negative) on the bike. Because, who knows, I may have very similar conditions on race day. So what would have been a frustrating day, actually turned into a good day. So what if I didn't get my 90 miles in? Actually, when I mapped it out, I realized that I had made it 70, which made me feel even better! We ended up finishing before Kirk, and he graciously postponed his planned run so we could hit the road and get home. But not before we made a stop at Paul Bunyan's for milkshakes. I got a large....or, more like a GALLON!!! It was damn good though :)

Sunday evening, I headed up to Deer Lake w/ the Tri Fusion Kids Race crew to plan and scout the course. It was a super-fun time, and we made a ton of great progress toward pulling off what I truly believe will be an awesome event. The highlight for me was when we took over one corner of the World Famous Clayton Burger and spread out all of our papers to talk and plan more while we ate. We definitely got some funny looks from the "locals", because we were all totally engrossed in "talking tri". I am fairly certain that it sounded like we were speaking a totally different language. We were definitely "in the zone" :)

Monday was supposed to be an off day, but Steve has somehow figured out that it is pretty easy for him to talk me into a run no matter what my schedule says. What is more, this time he crafted this sneaky little 6m, kick-me-in-the-ass workout. Now, of course I had every opportunity to back out and just do a 10k recovery run, but, come on...would I ever do that?!? :) No way!! So, I suffered through Steve's hard-ass tempo run, and only got beat by about 1 mile. Not bad, considering what I had done the past few days. Seriously, though, it was a freaking awesome workout, and I'm really glad that I didn't bow to the inner voice begging me to wuss out. Later in the evening, we rewarded ourselves by consuming massive amounts of Coldstone, all in record time.

Tuesday I finally allowed my body some recovery, as I decided just to do an easy swim. I did a descending mile with the EWU Tri guys, and as predicted, my time wasn't anything to shout about. But I was (again) totally ok with it, all things considered.

I am really looking forward to this weekend, as it is my first race of the season, OnionMan Olympic down in Walla Walla. I'm curious to see how my body responds to the higher volume of training I've been doing, and I think it will be interesting to see if I still remember how to put on a wetsuit. I think the last time I had it on (and, curiously, the last time I swam in open water) was last August....uh oh :) Either way, it should be a fun time.