I’m just gonna keep saying the ugly parts outloud here until I get all the ugly out. (Ugly crying on the side likely included.) I hope I won’t permanently alienate any of you by bloodletting here. (Mom, you’re legally bound to me and Kim you’ve sworn partnership for life so you’re both stuck.) 

This week I had my first follow up with the orthopedist since the diagnosis (compression side femoral neck stress fracture) and it went in some ways better than expected (feared) and in other ways worse. I may or may not have spent a good (bad?) chunk of the week leading up to my appointment stalking old blogs and message boards about FNSF trying to get a bead on what to expect as next steps, wanting to feel prepared for whatever news I might get. The unexpected sentence of eight weeks on crutches had stunned me and left me a sobby puddle and I wasn’t looking to repeat that meltdown.

The day of my follow up marked seven weeks and two days (but who’s counting) since the diagnosis and the internet had me scared I might be looking at another four to six weeks on crutches. But my message board friends also had me optimistic that at least I’d be allowed to start swimming and cycling and even ellipticaling. (You know this whole experience has fundamentally altered me as the latter is not something Liz of 5 months ago would have looked forward to.) Lots of online hip fracturers reported being allowed to do those things within four to six weeks of their diagnosis and here I was at 7.285714 weeks – surely some exercise was in my immediate future!

I limped in with all this internet “knowledge” rattling around my oft-concussed skull, optimistically dreading my appointment and here’s where I am now: I can start walking a bit on my own but I have two more weeks on the crutches for most of my getting around needs. And still no training until PT starts mid-February. No real swimming, no bike, no elliptical, no nada. 

I was relieved to get to try walking unaided, but so let down at the same time. I wanted a workout more than a stroll. The news from my doctor was the exact opposite of what I’d prepared myself to hear. After my appointment I recruited some coworkers and elatedly walked (awkwardly shuffled because I can’t actually remember how to walk) a block to lunch and back; then got back to my office and felt immediately depressed again that I still can’t even sit on a bike or kick a few hundred meters in the pool. (I honestly cannot believe how strongly this has made me feel about swimming.) It’s hard to weather more disappointment – even when tempered by good news. 

With the doctor’s tentative blessing I got briefly in the water (no kicking and did a total of 4 minutes of actual swimming!) to feel things out over the weekend and continued practicing “walking” a few minutes at a time. And now, after heeding her words to be very conservative and put minimal stress on the hip, it’s aching. And I’m back to mental spiraling.

It doesn’t hurt to put weight on it; and I didn’t feel anything in the pool. It’s not a bad pain (I don’t even know if I would call it pain or more an awareness of my hip) but I’ve had some evening achiness Saturday and Sunday as I just sit, dinner, Netflix, and put myself to sleep. I know some achiness is to be expected as muscles and bones that have gone untaxed for months are asked to pick up a little bit of slack, but I’m terrified that I’m backsliding and that this is just the beginning and I’ll actually never heal all the way. I’ve experienced every emotion on the spectrum three or four times over between Thursday and Sunday and I’m exhausted. 

As I (think? guess? I) am healing physically, I can’t escape the thought that, damn, mentally this thing gets worse and worse. I thought the first day would be the lowest of this journey’s lows, and I guess it probably was the most acutely terrible I’ve felt. After my diagnosis and tearful first day on crutches my mood did improve, marginally. I’ve noted that the waterworks mercifully ran dry by day two for instance. But I mentally plateaued by the halfway point and have regressed into gloom a little more each day since.

How I hate this “healing” process. So let me count the ways. 

This will be my last blog-in-list-form for a while, I promise. (I think.) (I know) I’ve quite exhausted the format and need to move on. (I also know that people love lists [you simpletons] so just think of this as the buzzfeed [buzzkill] of sports blogs.)

Today’s self-loathing list inventories the myriad ways in which things get worse before they get better. Assuming they ever do. (I warned you I was purging the ugly, right?) Hopefully my bones are indeed regrowing under my thin skin, (only still-thin thing about me) but I can’t actually see that physical progress. What I can observe is my mental/emotional state and things on that front(al lobe) have deteriorated consistently since that negligible serotonin spike after day one. 

Oof. Ok here goes. 

I’m getting slower while everyone else gets faster.

I’m falling further and further behind in my fitness and getting it back seems more and more impossible. Several encounters with stairwells and attempted one-legged push-ups have broadcast to me how very out of shape I am. And not like offseason out of shape, but actual get a stern word from your primary care physician out of shape. Sure there are different points in the race cycle where we’re more or less fit, but I generally always maintain a baseline, and it took years to develop that fitness floor. A race cycle may be a few months of dedicated workouts in support of a specific goal but it took years to get to a place where I could always swimbikerun x number of miles at x pace. And now two sedentary months (not to mention the two months prior to the crutches without running) seem to have wiped that slate clean.

In the eight years since I started really running and the seven since I started triathlon-ing I’ve consistently improved year after year. Every season that I get a little faster is the accumulation of every season that came before it. I’ve never taken months off. Is this going to set me back to a 2016, 2014, or even 2011 version of me? Approaching my recovery and getting back to some sort of training plan doesn’t feel like a matter of weeks or even months, it feels like I have years to make up, and that’s hard to wrap my mind around. 

And all the while, everyone around me is getting faster. I’m losing weeks or months or maybe years of hard work and the people I race with (and against) are logging the miles and the workouts that are making them better. Better than they were, better than I was, better than I’ll be. I said before I don’t know if I can do this sport if I’m not competitive at it, and from where I sit (and sit and sit and sit) I’m looking at a season (if I even get a season) at the back of the pack.

And there is nothing wrong with the back of the pack! But when you get to know yourself as one kind of competitor how do you get to know yourself another way? For better or worse our identities get wrapped up in how we perform. Will I recognize myself or like myself if I go from chasing Boston and Kona and Team USA to, well to not doing those things? 

I’m getting fatter and softer.

As I said on the ‘gram I’m not fishing here so please don’t respond that I look fine and oh you didn’t notice. That’s not the point. The point is that I notice. I’m the one who can’t zip my pants. (Colleagues, please don’t look too closely or you’ll realize I’m recycling the same two work bottoms that still kind of fit day after day.) I’m the one who knows what I look like naked and I can’t stand it.  

 I didn’t get into this sport for the aesthetics (please reference my Hudson mustache and weird brown sweat stains if you don’t believe me) but I have gotten used to my body looking and feeling a certain way and I’ve unabashedly enjoyed my body looking and feeling that way. (I’ve also tailored my wardrobe to fit that body’s dimensions, hence the work wardrobe woes.) Now I don’t fit into a lot of my clothes and I’ve got flesh hanging over the sides of my pants in unwelcome, uncomfortable ways. (I’m literally sitting and typing with my pants unzipped right now for comfort.)

If you’re skeptical that I could have put on that much weight in two months I’ll remind you that it has been four since I’ve run so I was already not my slimmest when the crutches happened. Then let me be clear: I have been sitting for almost eight weeks. I’ve worked from home when I can or where the weather has forced me (crutches plus snow is a bad combination) and I have gone days at a time transitioning from bed to couch and back to bed without ever seeing the outside or more than a hundred “steps”. All in the service of putting as little strain on my hip as possible, giving it every opportunity to recover. While I sat though, my appetite remained triathlete-voracious. I went from incinerating thousands of calories a day to maybe 1200, but no one told my belly to stop being hungry all the time and so I sat, and I ate, and I expanded. 

When I’ve expressed this particular frustration to friends many have been dismissive or made me feel like a vain shitty person. It’s not crazy that I care about this. It doesn’t make me a bad person; it makes me an average 21st century American woman. So I don’t know who I am as an athlete any more, and I don’t know who I am as a corporeal human being taking up (too much) space. 

The crutches hurt.

They rub my ribs, my left leg is tired, and my right glute is screaming tight. The worst has unexpectedly been the palms of my hands. If I have to crutch a lot for work (or to satisfy a sheer stubborn need to be out and about,) the next day I can barely stand to wrap my hands around the sticks. Insult to injury: I got pads to ease the pain under my arms, but because I have pediatric crutches (no joke, my set is tiny for people under 5′) they don’t fit perfectly so my choice is between chafed ribs or wobbly under-arms. (I’ve opted for the latter.)

I  get more, not less, bored.

Doing nothing is boring. The first week of doing nothing is boring, but kind of nice. The second week of doing nothing is more boring, but you assume you’ll find a way to manage and entertain yourself. The eighth week of doing nothing is a type boring that becomes a physical sensation. It’s how I imagine it would feel to be possessed, but without the fun head spinning poltergeisty side effects.  

The migraines. They came back.

It took a few weeks for them to reemerge – the first month I thought, ‘hey! I worried for no reason!’ But the last couple weeks I’ve started to get the familiar shooting pains traversing the right side of my back up through my skull and into my right eye socket. And the nausea and light sensitivity. And the vertigo. And days in a row of pain that just sits behind my eyebrows with apparently nowhere to be and no remedy. They’re not full force yet, but if this torpid existence doesn’t change soon I know they will be. I’ll be back to crying in a dark room 4-5 nights a week. The fix is so simple: to move, every day. To be active and exert myself physically. Such a simple toll, such a hefty price if I don’t pay it. THIS NEEDS TO END. 

Digestion!

Return readers of this blog may not believe that I’m really quite regular! Even as I torture my tummy with daily doses of hot sauce and have indulged in home cooking and street meat from questionable purveyors on every corner of the earth. It turns out my easygoing digestive system (race mornings excluded) relies on lots of moving to keep things moving. I’m gonna break with oversharing tradition here and skip the details but despite efforts to eat well, including lots of fiber, I have been uncomfortable these last months. You would think my increasingly constricting waistbands could squeeze things along but apparently I’m just destined to discomfort around and through my middle section for the time being. 

That bitch irony.

This whole predicament has been marked by hillaaaaarious bouts of irony and the universe being a downright (but sooooo funny) bitch. Here’s a noncomprehensive list within a list of hysterical coincidences and catches 22 that have added a spicy dash of vindictive to this experience. 

First and foremost, 60 to zero: About a week before my diagnosis I had lunch with Coach Josh, during which we had a come-to-yeezus talk about my 2019. I explained that I wasn’t fucking around anymore. I’ve felt like I was training and performing at around 75% the past couple seasons and I was ready to get down to business and make serious progress on my Kona dreams. He agreed to the two full Ironmans I’d registered for (Lake Placid and Arizona) and was ready to push me hard. We agreed my goal was a top ten finish at one or both, and depending how things were looking in the spring, maybe even a podium. I was ready to fight, to make the sacrifices required. And a few days later I was sidelined for the foreseeable future, and maybe forever. 

In service of rededicating myself to my tri-goals right after my heart-to-heart with Josh I invested in a (pricey) pack of classes at Swimbox. My first few classes there had been really helpful and I was finally ready to, ahem, dive in and see real swim gains. I laid down some dollars to keep myself honest and committed through the winter doldrums, scheduled several months of classes, and basically immediately thereafter was told no nothing, not even swimming. 

The very day I was diagnosed I received an email with exciting participant information for the 2019 Boston Marathon, a race I knew was no longer in the cards the instant the doc said the words “stress fracture.” (Fortunately a few days after that I also got an email with instructions on how and when to cancel my hotel reservation to avoid fees.)

Two days later the new Speed Sherpa Betty Designs kits I’d been waiting so excitedly for finally arrived. Just in time to have no reason to wear them.

The following week I received great news from Wahoo that they would be replacing my defective smart trainer for free so that I could get after my winter workouts. They’ve pressed pause on that reorder since I have no use for an expensive piece of workout equipment right now. 

I’ve tried to cut down on things I know cause bone density problems, like my inhaler (breathing is overrated) and antacids (despite all the hot sauce and tummy troubles) and now caffeine! But caffeine is one of the few things that helps with the migraines. I cut diet coke cold turkey years ago to help prevent more stress fractures, but now to survive this stress fracture I’ve had to take it back up.   

My misanthropy grows.

I perversely feel less empathetic towards others. Not all others, I swear I haven’t lost perspective that many people have it far worse. But for those who don’t, and who complain, I can’t roll my eyes hard enough. People who moan about a few days sickness, or a week they have to take off running for a strained muscle, or even a few weeks off running or biking but they can still swim or lift; to all of it I think, ‘oh shut the fuck up!’ It recently took all the restraint I had left – not in high supply even when healthy – to not lay into a guy who complained on a triathlon FB group that the flu had kept him from training almost a week and oh he was so worried about the fitness he’d lost in those seven days away. Another martyr responded that he too had been sidelined sick for four days earlier and had then taken another few days really easy – only 45-60 minutes of training each – and he’d bounced right back! I think I guffawed out loud at that. Not laughed – guffawed. These jags were losing it from a couple days away. Hell they probably lost weight having the flu! LUCKY!  

Maybe this is giving me a healthy dose of added perspective to carry back into tri-life if ever I get back to it. A few months ago I might have stressed about a couple days or a week away too. (Eh maybe not.) Staring down the barrel of a yearlong recovery, stressing about a day or a week here and there now seems like an absurd luxury. 

If I can impart anything useful at all to my readers, please take this as permission to CALM DOWN. Take a step back from whatever has you rounding third to crazytown and be grateful for the fleeting nature of your malady. Conversely, next time you need inspiration to heed your 5am wakeup or to drag yourself to the pool when it’s cold or dark out, remember your own temporary frustration and remember me somewhere probably still just sitting, expanding. 

I hate sounding so negative and mean towards others pursuing the sport we all love. Friends, I am still cheering you on, I swear. I see people I care about making progress, having great races, running their first marathons, making big gains, and I am genuinely happy for them. I’m angry about my situation and loss, but I don’t begrudge others their successes or wish this on anyone else.

Just as I won’t begrudge my friends their wins, I hope you (mom, Kim, anyone else who read this far) will stay patient with me while I continue to navigate this slow, punishing road back. As I get to inch towards some degree of physical normalcy again, I’m already struck that the mental game hasn’t gotten any easier. Two painful unstable steps forward  seem to precede one to four leaps back every time. 

Obviously I’m daydreaming about 6 minute miles and century rides and the kind of long brutal training days that leave you just a puddle on the couch blindly searching for calories to shove back in. (I paint a pretty, enticing picture of the sport, no?) I have been fantasizing about the kinds of weekends I hope I’ll get back to this summer, where I’m in the saddle by 6, ride till my legs are just about fully cooked, only to dismount and take off running, so that many hours and miles later I drag myself home zombified (undead smell included) just in time to eat and sleep and do it all over again Sunday. (Huh, swimming hasn’t factored into those fantasies…but I actually miss that too.)

I’m yearning for all of the above, and for jittery race mornings, and triumphant finish lines, and hell yes podiums; but having my mobility totally upended by crutches has scaled back my fantasies to some very run of the mill activities. And since I’m in the recent habit of list-making here, I thought I’d enumerate some of those formerly unremarkable, beautiful things I can’t wait to do again:

Walk my dogs

Usually Scott and I divide dog duties pretty evenly but with hudreds of pounds of furbaby to care for – both of whom were my idea – I’m of very little help in the canine department right now. Scott is handling morning, afternoon, and late night walks and park time all by himself and it’s so much work. I hate that he has to do it on his own and while he brushes it off I know it’s asking a lot and even impacting his hours at work. I let the dogs out in the front yard to bathroom some but it’s a small city yard and they need walks and park time every day to be happy healthy hounds and I’m of no use there.

That’s a lot of stress on Scott, but it’s also making me crazy because I love spending time with my dogs – that’s why I convinced Scott we needed them! Sometimes being the one who handles morning walks is stressful, and they always drag out their evening pee to much aggravation, but I hate that I can’t take care of my puppups. I have some friends who have been helping us out by taking them to the park, and I tag along with them and sometimes with Scott, but I end up needing as much help as Birkin and Daenerys so it’s no picnic for anyone involved. (I am however so grateful to Ralph, Chandler, and Andrew for their help. [And thankful to Birkin and Daenerys for being lovable enough to attract all these helpers!])

Walk to work again (listening to my books)

I live in downtown DC because I am a city girl (snob) who hates cars and loves the District. Between traffic and the Metro’s shortcomings, it’s practically as fast to walk to work as to drive, bus, or train, and so, I walk. Whether to my office – about a 40 minute stroll – or Capitol Hill – 25 minutes to the Senate and 40 to the House – I walk. And I use that time to be alone with my Audible books and podcasts and this very pretty city. I love that time to myself in the morning and evening. My job is all about networking and always being “on” (and that’s true too of my side hustle teaching) so walking everywhere allows me to decompress – to either get my head right for the day, or shake the day out of my head. And I get through so many books walk-commuting!

Now I’m taking Lyft to and from work. It’s expensive, it’s environmentally wasteful, and it gives me anxiety. I don’t want to be in a car with a stranger that many times a day. (Mostly men, a number of whom have been creepy and one was downright threatening meriting a formal complaint.) It’s harder to listen to my books over the noise of whatever talk radio drivel or top 40 banger the driver has blasting and these rides in no way afford the recharge/discharge alone time I so treasure. Every time I hit “request Lyft” on my app I feel immensely nostalgic for my previous commute – even for all the times I’ve had to do it in DC humidity, or rain, or wind or snow. I’d take just about any weather walking over the back of someone’s car trying to ignore the dulcet, misogynist tones of Steve Harvey and Howard Stern.

MY JOB

I live in the city because I love this city and I do my job because I love my job. I’m an attorney and lobbyist (making me everyone’s favorite person) and my work on average consists of 2-3 days a week on the Hill meeting with Members of Congress and their staff on different health policy issues. My days on Capitol Hill often call for hours of walking between offices, frequently hoofing it back and forth between the House and Senate (about a half mile each way) and then followed by receptions and fundraisers in the evenings. There are days I’m on my feet for upwards of 12 hours and easily cover five or six miles.

You better believe that is not happening on the crutches.

I’ve tried to make do best as I can with calls instead of sit-downs where possible – but my work requires relationship-building and that happens face-to-face, not over the phone. A few times I’ve crutched to one of the Congressional cafeterias and posted up for an afternoon and asked staffers to come to me. This isn’t a great solution though because staffers’ schedules are tight so they don’t want to leave their offices, and a lot of the issues I work on require more privacy than a busy lunchroom affords.

And evening receptions are out of the question as the only thing more uncomfortable than crutching long distances, is standing on one leg for an extended period of time. Sure it’s been nice to have my evenings back but the FOMO is real and I fear the opportunities I’m losing to get to know the Freshman class of lawmakers. Plus DC is still an old boys’ club so I never stop feeling the pressure to go the extra mile. (Not usually a problem by me!)

This predicament has been particularly cruel as the new Congress gets sworn in. Swearing in, or open house day as we call it, is a lot of fun – especially when the most women and most diverse Congress in our country’s history are being inducted. If my normal day is miles on my feet office-to-office and capped with evening events, open house day is that on steroids; double or triple the miles covered and fetes attended. And it’s awesome. (And the last one was less than awesome.) And I could not do it the way I’d looked forward to doing when my party won back the House.  (And the last two years have been hard.) Of all the times to not be able to do the job I love  this feels particularly vindictive.

Walk  around my neighborhood 

I don’t have to say much here, I said most of it above. My city girl love of walking extends to strolls around the neighborhood. Ok my neighborhood is a little shooty, but it’s also historical rowhome-y and beautiful. (And if you can make it just a few blocks west it gets much less bangbang-y.) I love walking in DC; it’s pretty, it’s healthy, it’s environmentally and fiscally economical.  I love that I can walk most of the places I want to go. Granted I define “can walk” more liberally than most of my friends – if I have the time I’ll walk up to an hour to wherever it is I need to go just to be outside in my city. Now my “walkable” radius has been reduced to about three or four blocks from my house. (Not nearly enough blocks to get out of shooty range!)

TEACH

I’m still teaching my Thursday morning bootcamp (or “bootcrutch” as one of my students named it) but I gave up all my spin classes, and I have to ask my bootcamp regulars  for a lot of help during class as I can’t demo moves or even set up my own bench or space. In my normal, non-injured life routine I get pretty worn down teaching 4-5 classes a week, waking up early to train other people, and I often find myself dreading the 5am alarm and wishing for more mornings off. Now I can’t wait till Thursdays when I have a reason to get up and out before the sun comes up. It’s absolutely been my favorite morning of the week through this recovery. It’s like an hour-long return to my old life before limping back home to this sedentary, lonely existence.

Open doors

Doors are my nemesis. Especially heavy doors, that open away from me. They fill me with anxiety. Sometimes I literally cannot open them and I embarrass myself trying and those are the moments I really feel helpless and like an angry broken animal. (And for the record, women have been much more courteous about opening them. I’ve had several groups of men just stare at me from the opposite sides of doors to restaurants and offices that I clearly could not manage. Chivalry’s not dead, it’s just female.)

Enjoy a snowday

We got actual snow in DC! Not one of our usual over-hyped underwhelming dustings. No, we  got ten inches of fluffy powder, and a proper snow day with school and office closures all around. (In addition to the less-than-great shutdown. #snurlough) People were so excited, posting fun videos from their snowy runs, playtime with happy snowdogs, snowball fights on the Mall, the Capitol in full winter mode, while I was at home sitting and eating my feelings, growing increasingly bored and round. (Hey I may at least resemble a snowman at the end of all this!)

Eventually I had to get out of the house so I insisted on joining Scott at the dog park, but the streets were bad so I also insisted we walk. (Crutch.) It’s only three blocks and I wanted at least that much activity. It was slow-going though and in no time my arms were screaming, because it turns out crutching through a foot of snow is tantamount to shoveling it. The powder weighs down the crutches every step and within a block – a very slow block holding up a very patient man and two less patient hounds – I regretted my hubris. But by then it was too late to turn back and I don’t know when to admit defeat anyway so I stubbornly persisted.

In the end I was happy I got outside and got to see Birkin and Daenerys loving the snow with a big group of their four-legged friends, but I won’t call crutching through it and feeling like my arms were going to fall off the same as “enjoying” a snowday. And as difficult as that was, it was leaps and bounds better than the next few days when the powder melted to slush and then froze over rendering leaving my house actually impossible.

Sleep

I know I said in my attempt to itemize every possible silverish lining that I was finally sleeping and oh how wonderful it was, but that’s over now.  I think I was just catching up on a long-accumulated sleep deficit for the first couple weeks, but now that I’m back in the black I’m also back to hours of insomnia. I don’t get enough sleep during my regular unimpaired life – about 5 hours a night at least during the week – but all of the training means when I do lay my head down I’m tired and I find sleep. The past two weeks my head hits the pillow and…nothing. I stare at the ceiling for hours. If (when) I wake up (several times) in the middle of the night, where I used to fall back asleep quickly, I’m back to wide awake contemplation of the ceiling. Several times I’ve given up and ended up just reading for an hour or two at 3am. (At least I’m making an early dent in my 2019 book list. [Everyone should read Where the Dead Sit Talking!])

My routine life

It’s really simple: I like my life. I like my job. (My day job and my teaching jobs.) I like my city. I like to train. Hell, I love all of the above. And I love how I make it all fit together day in and day out.

My routine is totally exhausting, with too little sleep and too many obligations. There are plenty of mornings I that I don’t want to get up before dawn to teach, and many days that I don’t want to have backtobacktobacktoback meetings in various far away corners of Congress. I’m frequently tempted to skip evening training sessions, or to run screaming from nightly work events* in favor of sweats and Netflix and a sensible bed time.

But I love the little life I’ve built, my career, my sport, my city, and I haven’t been able to live even one single part of that life these past six weeks. The luster of having my evenings back, obligation-free, wore off almost immediately. Maybe in a few months I’ll be longing for that free time again, but right now I can’t wait to feel worn down and depleted. I can’t wait to do so many normal, small, simple, taken-for granted things again.

 

I’m sort of afraid to go back and reread my mental spiraling from a few weeks ago. From what I recall of the emotional and wine-heightened blur in which it was written and published I was not in a good place. That night I was a ball of white hot (wet) rage, crying every few minutes and thisclose to selling every piece of tri gear I own on Craigslist. Fortunately I don’t think there’s much of a market for child-sized tribikes and spandex and so Koopa Troop and Warrio and my wardrobe were spared.

I’m not going try and hold myself out as a measured adult in control of her emotions here, you know me too well for that and it’d be a lie, but I am faring marginally better. I don’t think I’ve cried since that soggy Wednesday night. (I mean I don’t think I’ve cried about this; I’ve cried plenty about other things like every Subaru commercial I’ve seen this holiday season and every time I’ve played the newest Hamildrop. [Keep reading for more on my musical theatre past…and future?])

I’ve also become moderately proficient on my temporary prostheses. Actually after 8 days at my parents very much non-ADA-compliant home in the very much non-ADA-compliant country of Mexico I’ve gotten pretty good. I’ve traversed sand, and dirt, gravel, and cobblestone, my parents’ second story kitchen and pool, and faced all of that several margaritas in.

Drunken levity aside, a week into the crutches I received some unwelcome additional clarity from my orthopedist about my recovery and in short this is going to be a very long, slow road back and she is not enthusiastic about an Ironman in July. She doesn’t know the race (IM Lake Placid) is the very last Sunday in July and didn’t rule it out so I haven’t pulled the plug yet but I had been trying to haul my wallowing ass out of the depths of self-pity and that cynical message was tantamount to her swatting me several rungs back down the mental health ladder. The small light at the end of the tunnel that had been expanding narrowed again to a barely visible pinprick of light. But like I said, I didn’t cry this time; the small part of (small) me that retained some measure of hope for 2019 must be calcifying. Hopefully my bones follow suit.

She expanded on the no-swimming-no-nothing orders in response to my request to swim sooner than 6 weeks out if I stick with a pull buoy and avoid pushing off the wall explaining that some doctors would allow that but she’s seen people with this sort of fracture end up with chronic, life-long pain and improper healing so she tends to be more conservative. Hearing that I first entertained thoughts of second and third more permissive (reckless?) opinions but I quickly abandoned that fantasy. I need to accept this situation rather than seek out someone who will tell me what I want to hear. I’m just going to do what she says. I do think she’s being overly-cautious given that the hip was already improving and there is no pain when I swim. (Or cycle or anything but run for that matter.)

See I’m trying to be a grown up and accept and not fight lest I ruin myself for good. My doctor did put it well saying, “time off now pays it forward for later.” She sees a later in my future, so long as I don’t asshole it up now. So I’m following her orders and I’m trying to stop being a whiny baby about it.

To that end I’ve been compiling a list of positive things that have happened or anything that has cheered me even a tiny bit since this diagnosis. When someone says something that gives me even the smallest boost in spirits, that grows the far away end-of-the-tunnel light just a little more, I’m trying to take note of it. So in no particular order, another, less snarky, non-comprehensive list of things that made me feel less shitty in the last three weeks:

• Damn do I have a huge community of support. This is number one and the only item in a particular order. Members of the three different tri teams on which I race, fellow trainers and clients at the several gyms and studios at which I teach, work colleagues who know how crazy I am in my non-working hours, friends from now and from every part of my life, strangers online who have found my blog and feed, have all reached out to send well-wishes and share their stories. I feel bad for myself but I do not feel alone.

• This low point in my health may get other people to commit more to their own health: A number of friends and strangers alike have messaged me that they’ve decided to see their doctors about niggling pains, vitamin d testing, and to address things they’ve put off addressing.
• Even more people have reached out and thanked me for being so honest and raw [read: ugly] in my last post. Whether injured now or previously they identified with all of the doldrums and less charitable sentiments, and unless they’re just lying to me no one seems to be holding my unpretty selfishness against me long-term.
• I’ve been able to speak to a few people who have been through this very injury. They agree, it’s a pretty miserable one, but they (mostly [eventually]) recovered fully and they came back.
• Speaking of people with hip stress fractures -though his was in a different spot – Jan Frodeno! He was forced to withdraw from Kona after winning 70.3 Worlds in an epic race in South Africa. I’ve been seriously creeping on his feed lately. He’s back to training, and perhaps he is still tilting at the the mental windmills from it but he’s putting his best face forward and I will try to emulate, after all this is more his whole life than it is mine and he has slightly more to lose.
• People are sending me so many puppy pics. (People get me. [Or I’m simple?]) My first peg-leg Saturday I even organized the whole day around going to meet a friend’s 5 week old Bull Terrier puppy. I’ve always had a thing for bullies and I’d never held a dog that young. It was pretty magical.

• Revisiting new passions! I’m taking a musical theatre class starting in January. I’m terrified. I have the same butterflies when I think about it that send me running barefoot into the nearest portapotty on race mornings. (I’ll try to get that under control though as I don’t remember actors being equally easygoing as triathletes about anxiety-related BMs.)
• Another one of those passions is that I’m writing more! Two blogs within a few weeks of each other?! (My mom and Kim must be so proud! [The rest of you may be horrified.])
• I’m sleeping, and holy moly have you all tried this? It’s great!
• People saying one day down helps put the time in perspective. (Whereas proclamations that ‘I’ll come back stronger’ just make me want to cry and punch something.) After getting the crutches on a Wednesday afternoon, blogging like a maniac Wednesday evening, I received several texts Thursday morning declaring “one day down!” So simple, so mollifying. (Then I did the math and died a little inside when I considered there were 55 more to go, but one day at a time works.)
• I have reason to skip early mornings and late nights during this darkest, coldest part of the year – when I get back to it the days will be getting longer and lighter. Someone said this a few days into my crutches-sentence and it was like the clouds parted.
• My bone density is okay. My Vitamin D is not, and there are further complications there that I’ll expound on another time, but I’m within a normal density range for my age. That. Is. HUGE.

• Great suggestions like using Calm or Headspace app. I have Calm, I used it once, and I will try to use it more, especially to get more of this sleep thing I’d been missing out on!
• I’m seeing my friends (and husband!) more. I’ve been doing dinner and drinks and at regular hours not smelling like my usual post-gym/pool half-assed application of old spice.

• And yet, I don’t have to shower every day! In these first few weeks it’s been an every other day affair including while in Mexico. I just told myself I was doing my part for the limited water table in Baja. (Shhhhh. Just let me have this one.)
• Laundry is much easier and much less disgusting. Less, uh, damp.
• I took a real vacation. Scott and I just got back from 8 days visiting my parents in Mexico and I took the opportunity to do absolutely nothing. Usually when we’re there I run on the beach, yoga with my mom, take a day trip to a little city where we snorkel with the whale sharks. Any time I vacation anywhere I try to make it active. But for the first time in I can’t even say how many years I took actual time off. I sat by my parents’ pool the whole damn week and read and snoozed and indulged in mid-day adult beverages.

• My dad was inspired to tell me a pretty crazy story from his own childhood. That man has lived a thousand lives in his 66 years and every time I get a tidbit from his adolescence it’s a treat and a trip. This time around it was the nonchalant revelation that he spent almost two years on crutches as a child. TWO YEARS! After having his leg crushed by a bag of grain 50 gallon drum of kerosene at the age of 8. He endured horrific-sounding surgery following which the chicken mesh holding his glued-together femur in place had to be periodically tightened via screws in his leg. The 1960s weren’t so long ago but medically it’s been a billion years. I never knew this story and thanks to my overwrought angst he felt compelled to share.

• A reminder to never take anything for granted? Did I get complacent and assume my body would hold up no matter what? I don’t think I did, but after two stress fracture-free seasons (a feat I credit in large part to Josh’s guidance) maybe I was getting too comfortable in my own bones. I don’t believe in fate or karma though so I’m not really buying that, but I know that if and when I’m allowed to return to training I will savor every minute of health.

Still, if I’m being honest, and I usually am, I still have a sense of lingering foreboding, or finality. That I won’t get my legs back. Or my confidence, or the will to keep trying. I’m trying to shake this sinking feeling that I’m going to do everything “right” and it’s still going to be this protracted struggle from which I’ll never truly heal. Maybe I’m just chronically disposed to hairpin trigger flights of despair. (I do convince myself every time I get a soar throat that I’ll never sing again and so far my neighbors’ wishes haven’t come true on that. [Although my musical theatre teacher and classmates may argue when I meet them in a few weeks that if I ever had anything in the vocal department, it’s long-gone.])

But singing of that, I’m trying to unstick myself from confused considerations that maybe I’m just emotionally done with triathlon, with this whole unexpected jock phase of my life. Maybe I’ll find my voice, literally, and I can be done with this sports stuff and just be a weird theatre kid again.

I don’t know how to process those thoughts; undeniably a part of me is excited and relieved by them. (Maybe it’s the heavily-and-frequently-concussed part of me.) But sitting with and typing those thoughts here brings me back to the verge of tears too. I just want someone to tell me the right answer. How can I want to be totally done with it all and want so desperately not to be done at the same time?

I suspect this is part of some blahblahblah natural emotional Kübler-Rossian progression. Three weeks ago I wanted to set fire to or sell thousands of dollars worth of bicycles and spandex. Today only half of me wants that.

And I am looking forward. I haven’t dropped out of Lake Placid and knowing I can’t do Boston, and probably can’t do Ironman Virginia 70.3 (the race formerly known as Rev3 Williamsburg) I’m scoping other early-summer options. Plus I’m spending money like a real optimist purchasing a new saddle and shoes on Speed Sherpa’s team day at Conte’s Bike Shop a few weeks ago. I apparently do still plan to 140.6 this year.

Even plans to go through with the fulls I’m registered for don’t feel fully hopeful. The threatre-kid on my shoulder is saying, ‘sure sure, you give it one last go to get it out of your system for good and then I’ll meet you in the green room.’ But then the jock on my other shoulder is giving the theatre kid a wedgie and whispering that this setback is just the very thing to propel me to my Kona-qualification. Nobody is in any agreement in here and I’m tired. (More sleep please!)

I don’t know which of my archetypes will win. I don’t know which I want to win. I don’t know if one needs to win. I just want to keep putting one crutch in front of the other and get through the next five weeks with the small bit of sanity I previously possessed somewhat in tact.

In October adductor and hip pain sidelined me for the Marine Corps Marathon for the THIRD time. (I’m just never signing up for that race again.) Now I finally have a diagnosis: a stress fracture in the compression side of my femoral neck, or in non-MD terms, in my hip.

So it’s non-weight bearing crutches for me for the next 8 weeks. And in case you’re wondering why I look so pretty, this is my face bleary and puffy from crying in the orthopedist’s office. I bet they just love their new patient. (They probably thought by going into sports medicine that they wouldn’t have to deal with as many cryfests in their offices but I sure showed them!) Have to say I’m not sure if I wore a Boston Marathon shirt more to torture them (to guilt-trip my medical team for the diagnosis?) or myself, but it sure seems sadistic looking at it now. And sitting here still wearing it. With a second Boston Marathon sweatshirt over top. (What? My house is cold.)

Doctor’s orders are no training of any kind for at least 6 weeks. Then maybe we can reintroduce swimming back onto the bones. As the hubs joked, it’s kinda cruel that this is what it took to make me want to swim.

Honestly the whole thing feels cruel today. And hopeless. This is the third stress fracture I’ve had in six years of racing. Plus  there was that whole bike crash debacle which is the medical gift that keeps on giving. (As in medical bills. And neurological symptoms.) It feels like a rare year when I’m not on the disabled list. (It feels that way because statistically it is that way.) So right now I just feel like the math is telling me that I’m not meant to be a runner or triathlete.

I’ve never felt this hopeless before. I’ve been disappointed yes but not like this. I’ve definitely never cried (all day) over a stress fracture or injury. (I did cry some during the bike crash ordeal but my brain was broken.) I didn’t even cry when, at the ripe age of 28, I was told I needed heart surgery to repair a birth defect. That was arguably much more serious. (Though with a much shorter, less invasive recovery!) I’ve never cried over a diagnosis or felt so lost.

Sure these crutches are many times worse than the airboots to which I’ve been previously sentenced. And I’m stuck on them longer than I was ever in das boot. But I think it is now the cumulative effect of being benched year after agonizing year that has me spiraling this time and seriously questioning whether I have any future in this sport.

When I heard from my doctor this morning I told Josh that I didn’t want to do this anymore. That I want to withdraw from every race I had planned in 2019. I obviously can’t do the Boston Marathon in April now; and probably not the 70.3 I’m registered for in May. (Don’t worry Tiff, I’ll still be there no matter what.) Who knows about Ironman Lake Placid in July. And I’m no longer excited to go watch people whose bodies aren’t such traitors race Kona in October since I feel that dream slipping forever away. Presumably I’ll be healthy in time to train for Ironman Arizona in November, but who wants to train for something so late in the season after everything leading up to it has been a let down. (Plus I could just have another fall injury.) A big part of me wants to just pull out and ask for my refunds now rather than spend the winter and spring agonizing over it all. (Thank goodness for race insurance. Learned that lesson in 2014.)

I also expressed this fatalism to Ellen and she promised it’s natural to feel this way, though I haven’t previously so I met her with skepticism and self-pity. She promised I wouldn’t continue to feel like this, that the hunger would come back stronger than ever. I intellectually kind of know I’m wallowing in the lowest depths right now but in my heart I’m just not sure about the rest of it. I’m thinking about the passions that sustained me in the past and wondering if I need to give up triathlon and return to music or horseback-riding. (A night of karaoke could help with the wallowing; even more costly and concussion-y with the ponies though.)

I just don’t see a future in endurance sports right now. All those races I gleefully threw my name (and credit card) into? I feel like a fool for thinking I would be healthy enough to do them all. Two full Ironmans! My own KQ one day? What on earth was I thinking? That’s not a goal my body seems to be capable of reaching. I don’t think I can or want to do this sport if I can’t be competitive at it, but how can I be competitive if my body can’t take the work and miles it takes to get faster?

And I don’t want to hear advice about mileage or other ways of training right and smart. I do all the things I’m supposed to do.  Case in pedantic point, below is a noncomprehensive list of all the “right”  things I do to train responsibly:

• I run low mileage – three times a week, sometimes four but the fourth is always a mile or two easy transition run off the bike. I know I can’t run five and six times a week or pile on the dozens of miles I see others do and so I don’t.
• I lift weights which increases bone density
• I’m a triathlete so obviously cross training is a way of life
• I take Vitamin D, calcium, and iron. (All for diagnosed deficiencies and at doctor’s orders.)
• I eat a lot and I eat well. I don’t do sodas or artificial sweeteners or much sugary or fried food, but I also learned from a nutritionist years ago that as an endurance athlete I have to embrace the calories so trust me I replace what I spend.
• I go to physical therapy.
• I take rest days. I had to learn how, but I do it.
• I commute in sneakers. A younger me on the subway vowed to myself that I would never do such a thing, but I got over that and lean right the hell into the sneakers and dress clothes look in the mornings and evenings now.
• I stopped wearing heels as much, and not nearly as high or stiletto-y as I used to. I still have to for work at times but when I don’t need them I don’t touch ’em. And in the office I’m usually just walking around in socks. (Sorry colleagues!)
• I roll my legs, use my Normatecs, take BCAAs and other things to aid recovery between workouts.
• Goes without saying but I don’t smoke or use any drugs. My biggest vice is wine most nights a week and that means 1-2 glasses. A binge is 3 drinks. I’m a cheap date. (Oh except for the food part.)

I feel like I’m in an abusive relationship with this sport and the injuries because every time I’m hurt I try to pin it on something I did. There’s a voice in my head that says this is all my own stupid fault, but that voice is liar. I didn’t do this through poor decision-making or irresponsibility.

The reality is that I have issues with Vitamin D (as do most people, especially fellow women with difficult menstrual cycles) and after bloodwork last week I’ll be on a Vitamin D prescription instead of the otc supplements that clearly weren’t working. I’ve also always had low iron (and I’m shamelessly grateful for not being able to donate blood) and am on supplements for that. On top of those deficiencies, the inhaler I need to breathe includes corticosteroids which impact bone density – but my specific inhaler also interferes less with that birth defect in my heart making it the best option for me overall. That breathing vs. bones vs. heart inhaler situation has always felt lose-lose-lose and I do my best to only use the inhaler when I really need it rather than preventatively. (Which is how it was originally prescribed.)

And a (highly combative) side note to those non-endurance athletes reading this who I know are indulging in even the fleetingest fit of schadenfreude: fuck off. Every time I’m injured people are all too eager to “joke” that it’s because tris and marathons are bad for you and I should do less. You’re all transparently guilty about your own unhealthy decisions. Please re-read the above paragraphs and get it through your heads: I’m an anemic asthmatic with a heart condition and I still get off my ass and have a lower BMI, resting heart rate, and blood pressure than you. (Although the latter is admittedly high as I type [vent] this.)*

Back on the health stuff, I’m also scared about these do-nothing weeks because the thing that got me addicted to fitness was the discovery that exercise is the only thing that keeps my migraines at bay. I haven’t been this inactive for this long since my early twenties and I’m terrified the headaches are going to come back. Of course stressing over them coming back is probably not helping to keep them away. (Fuck does this blog make me sound like some sort of sick-prone invalid. I am not.)

I’m going to try not to end this on a total down note and to reintroduce a dose of perspective into this meditation. I do know that in the scheme of things this is not so bad. There are many far more dire diagnoses in the world – I’ve had a few of them. And in this specific case if the fracture were in a slightly different spot on my femoral head I’d be looking at surgery with screws and hardware instead of crutches.

I also have a teammate, Madi, who was recently diagnosed at a very young age with osteoporosis which is devastating. She’s so talented and strong (just qualified for Worlds!) and wonderful and it’s all just genes and none of it is fair. I have a bone scan Friday so who knows, maybe the same diagnosis is in my future, but in any case I’m not handling my sentence as gracefully as she is hers. She told me something earlier that made me hopeful cry instead of angry cry: Paraphrased (and credited to her coach) she said that the best stories are comeback stories and that time taken away from the sport is only agony because we love it so much.

Honestly ending on that note probably suggests to you dear reader(s) (hello mommy, hello Kim) that I’m in a healthier place than I really am. I still just want to scream, or quit, or binge drink (aka 3 drinks); but I don’t want any of you to have me forcibly committed so I’m trying hope on for a paragraph or two. Going to bed despondent (shit, how will I get upstairs to my bed?) but maybe I will feel (a little) better in the morning. (And if I don’t feel better, I’ll just take it out on my able-bodied 6am bootcamp students. See? Silver lining.)

*That may have gotten meaner than I intended. Considered editing but in the interest of open (and ugly) honesty there it is.

Pre-Amble

My beloved Rev3 had to make the tough decision to sell its signature long distance races – Quassy, Williamsburg, and Maine – this year to Ironman. Our team had recieved this news only a few weeks before Maine and it wasn’t yet public yet during that race, so it was an emotional and bittersweet weekend for us. There were lots of tears, and not just thanks to the heightened emotional impacts of buckets of rum. We support our Rev3 leadership and the hard call they had to make and as a team – nee family – we’ve vowed to do everything we can to stay and race together for seasons to come. 

Where to even begin? My weekend at Ironman (Rev3) Maine was hands down one of my favorite weekends of all time. Not just race weekends, weekend-weekends. Sitting down to write this less than a week later (I mean I’m starting it less than a week later but let’s not play odds on when I’ll actually finish and publish*) I have such withdrawal it’s almost hard to put pen to paper. (That is an idiom and despite all my known technological challenges I am obviously typing this on a computer.)

*I’m now proofreading and adding pictures six weeks post-race, which for me is still ahead of blogging schedule. 

I’m not entirely sure what finally convinced me to pull the IM Maine trigger and register some months ago but I’m so glad that I did before it sold out. It’s technically a Rev3 race that we license to Ironman (or it was) so I was fortunate to be comped to do it as part of the Rev3 team, and Maine has been on the domestic travel list for some time so it should have been an obvious choice. Still originally I hadn’t planned to do it as I was going to try and make Rev3 Punta Cana in the Domincan Republic work in October. By spring though I knew that wasn’t going to happen so I put the call out to some of the Speed Sherpettes to join me in the northeast and went ahead and registered.

Ultimately the only Sherpette who decided to do it was Melissa of Santa Shuffle onesie podium fame. I love a big crew but quality over quantity, right? By the time we registered there were few accommodations left in Old Orchard Beach but I found a tiny house (yes an actuall 100sq ft tiny house) that looked to be near transition on Airbnb and booked it. I also found shockingly cheap airfare/miles on my preferred (only acceptable) airline, Delta (I’m from Atlanta, we’re not legally allowed to fly anyone else) from DCA to Portland and booked that too.

In  the process of booking her own flights Melissa figured out that shipping our bikes was going to cost $750 each so she decided to drive and make a longer road trip through Maine of it. Race day was Sunday Aug. 26th, and on Thursday Aug. 23rd she swung by my house and kindly loaded up Koopa Troop and most of my race gear to drive north. I was up early the next morning for an 8am takeoff and after two 40 minute flights and an hour layover at Laguardia I was picked up by Melissa in Portland around noon.

We got some lunch in Old Port (cute part of downtown) and then went in search of our tiny house which turned out to be two miles due east of transition and Ironman Village. This is a lesson learned: Airbnb doesn’t give exact addresses until a reservation is made and near, so the little house had appeared to be much closer (walking distance!) to the race than it was. The house itself was charming and a lot of fun but my only real complaint about the weekend was being farther away than we would have liked.

Ok the other complaint would be that, let’s all be honest, Old Orchard Beach, Maine is TRAA-SHEEE. It’s a pit of fried things, lower back tattoos, and public intoxication. Melissa and I drove the couple miles there a little before 5pm to get packet pickup done on Friday and we were both taken aback by the scene. I had definitely pictured some sort of little Kennebunkport historical fishing hamlet in my Ironman Maine fantasies and what we got was little Panama City FL during spring break.

We parked amid the Friday evening chaos and made it to Ironman Village in time for the 5pm information and safety session, during which I looked around and noticed Rev3 teammates and staff all over. I’d already been having a great day but I started getting an excited inkling of just how epicly fun the weekend would be with so many friends there.

After picking up our packets (and collecting hugs from many Rev3 friends) Melissa and I made a stop in the merch tent where I attempted to totally negate my free race entry by buying every cute thing I saw. Mission pretty much accomplished we returned to our car and drove back to our tiny house. There was a market a five minute walk from our little abode where we stocked up on essentials like milk and breakfast foods and cans of wine. (Ya know? Just the basics!) We relaxed with our haul in our little screened in porch, did sessions in our Normatec sleeves, and then tucked into the double bed we’d be sharing that weekend.

Luckily we’re both quiet, motionless sleepers (ahem, Madi) so the small shared mattress wasn’t an issue. We also both have to pee more often than a Myrbetriq commericial in the middle of the night but being well-hydrated athletes that came as no surprise or concern. (We just kept the same schedule: if one got up to pee the other would follow suit.)

We also shared a hate for unnecessarily early wake-ups so rather than setting alarms we let ourselves sleep until we woke up. (Josh always says two nights before a race is the sleep that really matters!) Being triathletes as well as employed attorneys this sleep-till-you-wake thing really meant sleep till 7am, then scroll through your phones for 30 minutes before finally admitting you’re up for the day. (This was a long way of saying Melissa and I travel well together and I hope she’ll accept this tri-bestie proposal to continue to race the globe with me!)

Saturday

The Saturday plan was to drive the bike course, do a practice swim with the Rev3 crew, get in a bike-run shake out, rack the bikes at transition, and 5pm Rev3 team pizza dinner at Ironman Village. We coffeed, breakfasted, and got on the road to check out the bike course at 9am. With Melissa at the wheel I directed us to the bike start with the turn-by-turn map pulled up on my iPad.

I continued announcing each impending turn and thought I was helpfully navigating until mile 40-something when I realized there were bright pink arrows marking the whole course. Melissa had been following those and thought I was just I dunno, being an absolute helpful-to-the-point-of-not-being-so weirdo still calling out directions. My only real contribution to the effort was comparing the drive with the elevation chart so we knew when we were on the course’s toughest ascents and could mentally mark them. We were happy to discover none of the hills looked too daunting and the 8 mile-long climb the chart suggested comprised miles 18-28 was in fact not so bad.

We managed to time the drive pretty perfectly and arrived back in OOB a little before the 11am practice swim. We parked and walked down to the beach where we easily found the quickly growing throng of Rev3’ers. There were hugs all around, lots of moaning about how rough the ocean looked, and much socializing to procrastinate in the face of the scary practice swimming.

We goofed around while Melissa tried valiantly to hold our attention long enough for several group pictures. I felt the first of many bittersweet pangs over how much I love these people, how welcome they’ve made me feel, how they’ve become family in less than a year, how happy I was to be there and how heartbroken I am that this is ending. (It hit me some then but writing this these feelings are real.)

Eventually we all wetsuited up, and organically broke into factions to take on the Atlantic. After some extra dawdling I waded into the water with teammates Caitlin, Krissy, and Ron. The water was chilly but I had to pee pretty bad so I walked right in up to my waist. After a little more jackassery we finally dove in for real and made our way out to the first buoy.

With the experience of Cleveland’s rough waters so fresh in my memory I was pleasantly surprised to find that, while unpleasant, I wasn’t oversly-stressed or intimidated about the chop. It was bad, but I don’t think it was as bad as Lake Erie had been either pre-race or during the race. Regrouping at the first buoy we all acknowledged that conditions were not great, but Caitlin quickly took the reins pointing to a floating platform between the second and third buoys and demanding we swim there to play a game. None of us dared object.

I wish we had pictures of the absurdity that ensued. Caitlin ordered all of us to climb aboard the slippery 5×5 security raft. We did as we were told, scrambling awkwardly aboard and clinging tenuously on all fours awaiting further instructions. The “game” was to try and stand up without falling off. And the “game” was impossible so we just teetered to our feet and fell immediately off the raft. And then we did it again and again. Soon we were gasping for breath laughing at each other and ourselves.

I was so relieved to have the distraction from the ocean’s waves that I let Caitlin convince me to join her in continuing on to the third buoy while Krissy and Ron called it quits and headed in. Right away she started pulling away from me; because I am terrible at swimming and she is not. We met up at that third buoy, at which point we’d swum about 500m from shore which seemed more than sufficient so we called it quits as well.

I was eager to have the waves push me back in but they did not acquiesce. Heading back towards the beach, Caitlin was off ahead of me within 100m and suddenly I felt like I was alone in the middle of the Atlantic. I don’t know how Caitlin and I ended up being the two crazies who opted to swim the furthest out as we were also the two most afraid of sharks on the team. I guess our highjinks jumping off the raft had emboldened me, plus she’s very persuasive and I’m very (sw)impressionable.

As I swam, the shore seeming impossibly far, I had to choke down panic and the thoughts of ‘what else is in this water?!’ that creep in. I could hear Robert Shaw decrying “dolls’ eyes” and had to stop every few strokes to spin in a useless 360 as if I could really assess my surroundings. 200 or so meters from shore I became convinced I’d seen a fin to my starboard side and began windmilling violently toward land. The Old Orchard Beach pier was to my right and ssemed like it went on forever as I swam alongside it desperate for shore. Eventually I got there and immediately felt like a buffoon for my terror, but worse, I also felt a new sense of dread about the next day’s swim.

The one thing I felt good about was the water temperature. I’d been fearing frigid temps that I knew from experience would leave my Raynaud’s fingers and toes numb until the race was over. In the mid-60s in my long sleeve wetsuit the water had felt great – a little brisk the first couple minutes but comfortable after that and no residual numbness or pins and needles. This was a huge weight off.

After the swim Melissa and I headed back to our lil abode, stopping first at a massive seafood cafeteria, the Clambake, for a mountain of shrimp, scallops, clam cakes, and onion rings. (I’m sure the gentleman who took our excessive order realized it was too much food for two small ladies but he gave us no warning. Luckily, leftovers!)

Back at the house we pulled our bikes out to ride down for racking, planning to then run back. We changed and biked back toward transition at 2:30pm, figuring we had plenty of time. Melissa quickly discovered though that her power shifting was dead and I remembered that I’d taken my bento box off the bike when I got my new fit, so we were both in need of unexpected expo help – though Melissa was in more dire straits than I. She dashed to the mechanics and I found help at the Profile Designs tent – albeit from a misogynist arse who, while I tried to pay for my new bento box, had time to talk to every guy who walked up with a question, to take a call, and to mansplain to me why I should pay him to build me a custom bike with 700s talking over me when I explained that at 4’10” I preferred my 650s and research supports that preference thankyouverymuchjustletmepayyoueffingjag.

The onsite mechanics from the Gorham Bike & Ski shop were much easier to work with for Melissa. They had the charger she needed and plugged her bike in with a promise to call in an hour or so once it was done. While her bike juiced I racked Koopa Troop, and then we ran the two miles home which, like the swim, was probably more of a shake-out than we needed.

All the mechanical drama left us shorter on time than we expected before the Rev3 pre-race pizza party at 5pm. We very impressively each showered and changed in 20 minutes and got back to the Expo – and parked – by 4:30. Melissa’s bike was ready to go so she collected it and got it racked while I joined the Rev3 crew in setting up the next day’s athlete food tent – our job to earn our dinner.

After dinner we hit up Rite Aid for gatorade, pretzels, peanut butter, and other assorted race necessities. Then it was back home to prep the morning, hit the Normatecs, and wind (not wine this time) down. Despite both our inclinations toward night owl-y-ness, somehow Melissa and I were in bed by 8:30 – a record for me.

Race Morning

Our alarms went off at 4:15am, but I’d been up since 3:47 – my final of three nocturnal pees. I didn’t love laying awake for a half hour but I was up quickly once the alarm sounded. I made us some PB sammies and we silently zombied through our morning routines, ready to go by 4:45.

We drove the two miles toward transition and had to do a pricy pay lot which was a pain but at least pretty convenient. We were with our bikes setting ourselves up a little after 5am with plenty of time to get what we needed done.

I enjoyed seeing lots of teammates in transition and totally soaked in all the Rev3 love. I also, wisely, pooped early. I walked the long way out of transition and I’m glad I did as I found some shorter porta lines. There were not enough bathrooms and some people got stuck in especially long waits depending on which bank of jons they chose. I did my business, got back to Koop, borrowed a bike pump, and pulled my wetsuit half way on for the walk to the beach with Melissa and Krissy.

Krissy and I both spaced and missed the Rev3 team picture at 5:45 which is sad, but I’m glad I didn’t feel rushed through setup. Once on the beach a little after 6, people were already being pulled out of the practice swim. It was low tide and a total change from the day before in terms of both the water line and the tranquiility. I knew better after Cleveland than to trust the looks of a body of water but I was hopeful that things in the wave department had improved. Adding to that hopefulness, just before lining up I met a Great Dane puppy and her parents graciously allowed me to hug and love on her. She was gorgeous and the giant puppy cuddle gave me a pre-race zen. (If you think I’m kidding or in any way overselling the calming effect of  slobbery Great Dane kisses you don’t know me that well.)

Reluctantly bidding my puppy love adieu Melissa and I lined up for real. It was a self-seeding race based on your predicted finish time. Josh had instructed me to go with a group a few minutes faster than I expected to be. (My swim-clination is always to go the opposite way and hang back with the people slower than me and then use that as an excuse not to try too hard in the water. It’s worked out great for me so far.) I figured I’d be around 40 minutes – my time in Cleveland where the course had actually been 1.2 miles and ocean-level choppy. But I actually heeded Josh’s race plan and squeezed in with the 35-37 minute group, hoping I wouldn’t make anyone mad when I went slower than that pace.

The Swim

As we hesitantly blended in with the 35-37 minute crowd Melissa and I ran right into Rev3 teammates, Caleigh and Steph. Having my crew around me loosened me further while their hysterical company got me hyped for the race. We’d been told we would go in two-by-two so Melissa and I planned to go in together, but as we approached the start they were actually releasing four people every few seconds. Melissa ended up in the group right behind Caleigh, Steph, and I, but we all entered the water at just about the same time.

Rev3 Prez, Eric, was the one releasing athletes so we got even more amped up with high fives and shouts from him as he sent us running toward the water a little after 7am. By then all my ocean-fear had been replaced by laughter and mushy lovey feelings being surrounded by my Speed Sherpa and Rev3 family. We laughed like idiots as we ran toward the low tide water and surrounded by my people I felt totally capable of the next 1.2 miles in the Atlantic that had scared me so much only a few minutes before.

The low tide situation was bonkers and added to our frenzy. We ran the entire length of the Old Orchard Beach pier (which I’d swum so frantically 18 hours earlier) and then another 50m almost all the way to the first buoy before it was deep enough to swim. We absolutely exhausted ourselves trying to run/skip through the deep sand and thigh-high water – still laughing the whole way – but for someone who usually backs off the swim, afraid to spike my heartrate early in the water I think this was the perfect way to start. By the time we were finally deep enough to swim my BPM were spiked and I just dove right into it and embraced the higher exertion than I usually feel comfortable with swimming.

The water had looked calm from shore but Cleveland had taught me such looks can be very deceiving. Going in with that kind of skepticism I was ecstatic to discover the Atlantic was in fact calm and comfortable that early in the morning. (So really, LAKE Erie, what gives?!) I had no problem buckling down into a good rhythm and I actually enjoyed focusing on my Swimbox lessons, keeping my catch straight, working my kick, and pulling all the way through. With my mind on those form tweaks, and aided by the longsleeve wetsuit I hadn’t worn in almost a year, (and the salt,) the buoys seemed to fly by.

At 65 degrees the water felt perfect in that wetsuit. No icy toes or fingers to worry about or work through on the bike. The first turn came around 600m in and all I was thinking was, ‘holy s*** I’m actually enjoying a swim!’ Heading north/northeast parallel with the beach there eight sighting buoys, the first four of which were yellow, while the second four were red. This you’re-halfway-there color swap was a huge mental assist and again I was shocked by how quickly it seemed to happen.

There wasn’t too much crowding or jostling either for the most part, except that somewhere in the middle of that 800m straightaway I did get clocked in the face the hardest I ever have in a swim. A guy who had apparent issues with sighting and swimming in a straight line cut a diagonal line in front of and over me, catching me under my chin with a bizare upper cut. A hundred meters later the same bozo swam across me diagonally again but going the other way. As soon as I realized it was the same jabby nitwit I backed off and let him pass. (Later that night in a bar bathroom I discovered he’d actually drawn blood and left a good little scab and bruise under my chin – glad I didn’t attract any sharks!!)

Soon enough I was turning back toward shore and with only a few hundred meters left it was time to try and pee. I have to slow down and stop kicking to swim-pee, and I wondered if the person who’d been chasing my toes at that point realized why I’d stopped fluttering my legs. I giggled thinking of how gross we triathletes are and tried to pee (potentially on someone’s head.) And tried and tried. This pee-struggle is becoming as common a blog appearance as the pre-race porta potties! Especially when I’m in a wetsuit. I tried and gave up a few times before finding a little success halfway back to the beach. It wasn’t much but eventually I gave up opting for a faster swim.

Like the swim start, the low tide turned the exit into a bizarre modern dance through the deep sand and shallow water. With my little t-rex arms I was able to swim it in further than most people before I was forced to get upright. When my feet were forced to ground I glanced at my watch and was thrilled to see 36:30something. I ran up the beach towards the T1 sensors eager to keep my time in the actual 35-37 minute range for which I’d reluctantly queued. Ultimately I ended up with a 37:13 swim and my first non-downstream swim under 2:00/100m. Heading toward my bike I felt like the day was already a win with that performance in my first ocean swim. I got emotional and teary and smiled ear-to-ear heading up the beach.

T1

Wetsuit strippers lined the walk way from the beach toward transition. I dove to my back in front of the first available one, throwing my legs up in the air. She deftly yanked my neoprene over my ankles and I jumped back up and started running toward my Koop, still on cloud nine.

It was a quarter mile barefoot down the road to get back to transition. We had to traverse some train tracks where organizers had laid carpet, but otherwise it was just feet on blacktop, and cognizant the trashy,  boozy proclivities of the normal Old Orchard Beach population, I tried to be careful about where I placed my feet.

Josh had given me a direction to be very deliberate about every action in transition, and this made total sense to me. I slowed down a little bit as I pulled my bike shoes and helmet on and took in some calories which ultimately I think made me faster, and ensured that I had everything I needed as I pulled Koop off the rack and started running toward the Bike Out.

On the way I ran past a lone porta potty; I glanced at the door and saw that it was green – unoccupied. I made a game time decision to bathroom. I propped Koop up on the jon and ducked inside where I peed and even pooed again – not something I would have wanted to do in my wetsuit! – and I felt great as I emerged and grabbed Koop again to head toward the Bike Out.

The pitstop added a minute or so to my T1 but it was the absolute right call and I felt great as I mounted and got on my way. It was a lengthy transition at 7:20 but I wasn’t unhappy about it because I was still too damn thrilled from a fast (for me!) and (more important!) fun swim.

The Bike

The bike course started up a slight incline with some tight turns around a few back roads heading toward a main road that was shared with the run course, and then onto a 50 mile loop. My good mood (and empty bladder) carried me easily up the small rise and toward that main loop.

A Finisherpix photographer was stationed early on in those first few windy backroad blocks and I grinned and waved as I rode by him. This doesn’t sound like a big deal but it was to me. I’m not very confident in my handling and I don’t take my hands off the handles more than I have to to eat and shift. But I was in such a good mood and I’ve been working on handling this summer, so I didn’t even think about it – when I saw that camera man I just sat up and waved like a maniac. Once we’d merged onto the larger Portland Ave. I dropped down into my aero bars, feeling proud of myself and eager to put some of the recent upgrades I’d made to Koopa Troop to use.

After miles of terrible hip pain at Cleveland thanks to a new, higher seat fit I had swapped my old 165 crank arms for a more comfortable ride at 155. They say never do anything new on race day but there was no way I could have ridden 56 miles with the same set-up that was agony over just 25 in Cleveland. I’d done a short ride a few days before and then ridden the few miles to transition, but I had no real way of knowing how I would fare in a longer competition like this. Coming out of transition I felt good and I could feel the difference in my ride with the shorter crank arms giving my hips a break.

Immediately I was happy we’d driven the course as well. I felt like I knew what to expect and was pleasantly surprised by how detailed my memory of the previous day’s excursion was. It allowed me to stay in my aeros without worrying what was coming next. I’m too clumsy to climb and too afraid to descend in aero, so when I don’t know what’s coming I err on the side of chickenshit and sit up just in case. With nothing to surprise me out there I had no excuses to deter me from riding more aggressively.

At one point, about 12 miles in, there was a bit of a traffic jam turning onto River Road. There were cars and trucks backed up for half a mile and we were forced to slow and ride single file on a barely-existent shoulder. I was nervous and didn’t want to embarass myself or hurt anyone with my inept handling. Approaching the lefthand turn that was causing the logjam I slowed more than I needed to, taking excessive care to protect other riders (and my own ego) from my clutziness. As I blundered nervously around the cars hanging an awkward left I heard someone call from behind me, “don’t worry, Liz! You’re ok!” I didn’t know who it was at first, I just knew it was a Rev3 family member, and I felt instantly lifted up and supported. In the warm (cheesy?) glow of kinship (oui. tres frommage.) I looked up as teammate Eric Oberg (gotta specify cause we have beaucoup Erics) rode by, in all (and I mean all) his glory: he was wearing nothing but a tiny Rev3 shimmer speedo as he flew past. My warm mushy feelings melted into laughter, which was equally useful to keep myself calm as I found my way past the vehicles and onto River Road.

And what a road was River!  It was like blacktop butter. One of those newly paved stretches of asphalt that feels like you’re riding on nothing. It was a little congested with athletes after having to manuever around all the car traffic, but once the field spaced itself out some I dropped back down and tried to find a little speed. I also took some time to eat and drink, again feeling proud of how much more natural my handling had become.

I was happy to have my new bento box for easy caloric-access and made use of the gus and shotbloks I’d stashed there. I had also done something pretty foul and shoved a handful of pretzels into the back pocket of my jersey hoping to head off my tummy’s tendency to turn on gels and high-density sports nutrition during longer efforts. Pretzels are my belly’s happy food when I’m on the digestive strugglebus(bike). Several times throughout my ride I reached back and fished out an increasingly soggy handful of carbs. (I liked to think the sweat just made them saltier and even better for me. Plus, so efficient reusing my own excreted sodium![Oh god I’m sorry, “excreted” is a terrible word.])  A few miles in they had basically dissolved to mush so I had to quickly wash them down with water each time but they hit the spot and I suffered no GI distress, nor shame because I own my tri-grossness.

Miles 12 through 28 are the prettiest of the course, snaking through farms and small New England villages replete with old churches and cemeteries. I enjoyed the scenery and felt good. I never pushed too hard and found the rolling hills that comprised those miles really manageable. The bike course elevation map depicts a long climb from mile 18 to 25, but after driving the course I knew it wasn’t too drastic, really more like a lot of false flat and a few punchy-but-short up-and-downs. After maintaining an average just under 19 mph over the first 15 miles I dropped back some over 15 to 25, but I never felt over-exerted.

Maybe I should have pushed harder here and throughout the whole bike. I really wanted to have a strong run – something I’ve never managed in a 70.3 – so I stayed conservative. Plus my new crank was amazing so I felt like I didn’t have to push it. The mechanics at Conte’s Bike Shop who had installed it had warned me that I would be faster and I may not realize it. True enough, at several points I felt like my effort was low and merited something around 17mph, only to look down and find I was actually holding strong at 18 or 19mph. This was especially true after that protracted climb leveled out and we turned onto US-202 a little before mile 28.

This was the longest and flattest part of the ride – 12 miles on the 202 with very little turning or climbing – and like everywhere else I felt like I was just in a very maintainable rhythm, but every time I glanced at my speed I was doing better than I expected holding steady around 20mph. I started doing the math to figure out what I’d need to do over the next 15 miles to go sub-3 hours on the bike. It was within reach but I would have to hammer it back to transition to come in under three. That’s when I started to think that maybe I’d played it too safe, but I didn’t want to blow my run by overcompensating on the last third of the ride so I stayed the course.

Close to mile 40 we turned back onto Portland Ave and I was excited knowing we’d made our way through most of the big loop and we were back on roads with names I recognized. I also knew the two punchiest hills of the day were coming so I sat up a little more, vigilant for these two spikes.

As I’d expected, the two punchy climbs between miles 40 and 45 slowed me down some and knocked me off my sub-3 trajectory. Around the same time my hips started talking again. Not nearly the pain that had derailed the second half of my ride at Nationals, but uncomfortable enough that it was hard to drop the hammer over the last ten miles, pushing that sub-3 even further out of reach. I could have been upset by this but I was still so proud of my swim, of my handling, so happy with the perfect day Maine was serving up, and I’d made it 40-some miles comfortably – a massive improvement over the 15 miles I’d managed in Cleveland.

The last five miles back to town were the same as the first five miles and included a few minutes alongside the run course. I saw Caleigh and a few other Rev3 teamates already out running and couldn’t wait to join them. I tried to lay down a little speed while staying safe around the twists and turns back to transition. The chute back in was lined with people cheering and as I unclipped and ran back to my rack I totally teared up again from the crowd support and from pride at my swim-bike efforts thus far.

I hit T2 on my Garmin and it flashed 3:00:35 – so close! (Official time said 3:00:52 so still close but slightly less so.) In hindsight I do wish I’d pushed a little harder earlier on in the bike; I definitely could have shaved off a minute somewhere over those 56 miles, but I also enjoyed the entire bike and I felt proud of how I’d ridden it. It was one of those race experiences where I could feel the work I’ve put in – not just to increase my fitness but my technical riding, so I can’t really say I have any regrets.

T2

I made it back to my rack and tried to replicate the deliberateness of T1 switching shoes, (and socks!) grabbing some salt tabs and pretzels – this time in a ziploc bag to be slightly less disgusting.

Speaking of disgusting, I had to pee and recalling the success of my T1 porta pitstop I thought I’d go in transition again. The run out was on the opposite side of transition from where the bike out had been, and there were 4 jons there. I ran towards them and pulled the first door open, only to find someone had had a truly vile BM all over the seat. I joke about how nasty triathletes can be, how comfortable we are with gastrointestinal honesty, and how we wear our ability to relieve ourselves anywhere like a badge of honor, but this was next level horrifying. I hope whoever did that had a terrible race because that shit (yeah) was unacceptable.

The other three stalls were occupied and I was gagging as I gave up on that plan and turned for the exit figuring there’d be places to go on the run – or I could always try peeing on the move (badge of honor, right?) – if things got more dire. Hitting the exit sensors my watch flashed a 4:41 (official time said 4:40) for a quicker but still slow T2. If I could go back and change just one thing about how I raced IM Maine I would have cut out that attempted porta stop and tried to tighten up my second transition – both for time and because I can never unsee  that porta potty horror show.

The Run

Much like Cleveland, my lack of hammer dropping on the bike had me ready to run. The half marathon course was two six mile loops plus the lolly pop stem from transition and then back to the finish line. I was under strict orders from Josh to take the first loop very conservatively – his race plan called for mile times in the high 8s or even low 9s to start out, but that sounded way too slow and I knew I could do better than that and sustain it. I decided to focus on heartrate and break the race into 3 mile chunks where I would allow my BPM to climb a little on each consecutive one.

The first couple miles traversed a decent hill under direct sunlight. I was happy to see heading up it that my heartrate stayed in the high 150s/low 160s. Cresting the top and heading back down I didn’t sprint, but I did let the descent pull me forward and faster. In that first pitch downward I coined the mental mantra that would carry me through the rest of the day’s descending: Let go and let gravity.

In the past I’ve pulled back on hills to preserve my joints, to milk the heartrate recovery, but feeling happy, enjoying good conditions, I decided to just go for it anytime geography gave me the opportunity. My heartrate still came back to the 150s and leveled out once the ground did and I averaged 8:23/mile for the first three.

Heading into miles four through six I allowed that BPM to creep up to 160 and was happy to find cover as the course took us onto a shaded out-and-back for miles four and five. This stretch was also trail, which some people had been nervous about, but it was hard-pack and didn’t feel much different under foot than pavement.

That is, it didn’t feel much different than pavement on the trail itself, which was very narrow – only wide enough for one runner across in each direction – and surrounded on each side by tall grass and uneven footing. This caused me miles of headache – or leg-ache more accurately.

I’ve documented repeatedly that my lopsided swim-bike-run abilities mean I spend the run passing the MANY people who swim better than me. With hundreds of people running single file in front of me I spent most of miles four and five (and later miles ten and 11) running in the grass alongside the trail  unable to see where my feet were landing and exerting too much effort to maintain a pace while I worried I’d roll an ankle. It was a frustrating wrench in what would have otherwise been the most fun part of the run.

What was still fun was how many people I got to see on each out-and-back; and because it was two laps I got to see teammates from every part of the pack. There were high-fives all around, cheers, encouragement, and more cheesy warm-and-fuzzies having so many people I love out there. Josh always tells me to make sure I smile while I race, that the very act of forcing a smile releases endorphins, but even tripping over god knows what on the grassy shoulder I didn’t have to force it at all: I was happy as anyone can be 60-some miles into a race.

Leaving the trail lap one concluded with a long climb in direct sunlight. Mercifully we also got to descend the same hill before merging with people just exiting T2 to start their first laps. Despite the shade and permission I’d given my heartrate to surge, miles four through six were slower than my first three, averaging 8:34 min/mile, partly thanks to that hill but I think mostly as a result of all the effort and serpentining required to pass people on the trail.

I started doing the endurance athlete math immediately upon starting lap two. Heading back up the first big climb again I compulsively checked my Garmin to take stock of my time at the halfway point. Leaving T2 I’d realized that if I could go under 1:50 for the half marathon I would finish the whole race under 5:40. I tried not to obsess about this too much during lap one, not wanting to burn out under the pressure. But I’d felt good and had gas left to burn and I wanted to give myself a goal for the next 6.55 miles.

The first half clocked in right at 55 minutes meaning I just needed a slightly negative split to go under 1:50 and deliver a 70.3 in the 5:30s. I felt nowhere near maxed out so that seemed absolutely doable. Hitting miles seven, eight, and nine I was going to let my heartrate creep into the mid-160s and I expected my pace to follow suit. I was really ready to see some faster, sub-8, numbers.

Reaching the top of that largest hill for the second and final time I again let go and let gravity and was looking forward to a little break on the exertion. The sun was coming out and there was no tree cover the first two miles of each lap – the second time up that hill took a lot more out of me than the first. I let the descent pull me faster but my heartrate barely budged down at all. Once I was on flatter road again I pushed my heartrate into the mid-160s, but didn’t get the increased speed I’d been hoping for. The previous 65 miles of the day were catching up to me I realized, and couldn’t really be mad about that. Miles seven through nine ended up averaging 8:22 min/mile – barely faster than my first three miles. I was going to have to do better miles ten – 13.1.

I was heading back onto the trail and was looking forward to the shade, but not the passing game which would only get more complicated now that more slower runners had joined the run course. I stepped it up urging my heartrate a little higher and began weaving aggressively around people. The work required to pass people through the tall grass and blind footing was again a hang up, and mile ten was barely faster than mile four had been.

Taking the turn-around I knew it was time to get uncomfortable and push the last three miles home. I’d been so close to sub-3 hours on the bike, I didn’t want a sub-5:40 to slip away because I failed push myself into the pain. Swerving around other runners on and off the trail I let my irritation at having to pass so many people like this fuel me. My heartrate crept up as planned with my increased efforts and determination, and yet my pace was barely budging from the 8:20s.

Towards the end of the trail and mile 11 I saw a woman up ahead running just slightly slower than me but still moving at a good clip with a 36 on her calf – my age group. I was gaining on her but slowly and I was afraid if I passed her at the pace I was moving she would realize I was her competition and try to race me home; I feared that if she put up a fight I wouldn’t be able to stay in front of her once I overtook her. I needed to pass her at an aggressive enough speed that she wouldn’t try to keep up. When I was a few steps behind her I dug deep and picked up my feet. As I ran by her she yelled, “killer pace!” cheering me on despite being my direct competition. All I could think was, ‘damn. I love triathletes.’

Well that and, ‘eff this hurts.’ I yelled as much support as I could muster back at her through my huffing and puffing. I felt like I had to hold this faster pace until I was out of her range. Fortunately there was an aid station fast approaching followed by the hard left off the trail and back onto road and towards the end of the second loop. I slowed a bit to grab some water and flat coke before heading up the fourth and final real climb of the day.

I’d managed to force myself into the low 8s, but the  climb dropped me back and I finished mile 11 still in the 8:20s – but at least it was 20 seconds faster than mile five – it’s first lap twin – had been. By the top of this last hill I realized I’d let myself back off too much and needed to get in and stay in the pain cave the last 2.1 miles to the finish. With gravity’s aid once more I forced my legs to turn over faster and dropped into the 7s for the first time that day.

The 12th mile of the day was an acceptable 7:49. I was satisfied with the pace but it had been mostly downhill. The final mile flattened out and I needed to maintain and even accelerate. Checking my Garmin again I saw I had very little room to work with to go under 1:50 for the run – if I wanted it I could not back down one bit. I held on to the 7:40s for dear life and by the end of my 13th mile – a 7:46 – I was deep underground in that cave of agony.

With a quarter mile to go I ran by Rev3 teammate Thea who yelled me on, giving me a much-need boost. Heading past transition and through town toward the finisher chute the crowd support swelled and I fed off it. For the final .1 miles I dipped further down into the 7:20s and prayed it would be over soon.

Finally my feet were falling on the iconic red Ironman carpet lining the way to the finish line. Running up the chute I felt like absolute death and knew I had less than a minute to spare for my sub-5:40/1:50 goal. I clenched my teeth and tried to smile – very much forced at this point. (There were photographers after all!) I heard my name to my right and saw long-finished Speed Sherpa teammate, Ryan holding out his hand. I smacked it along with the hands of cheering strangers and kept sprinting forward.

A few steps later  I heard someone shout my name from the left. Deliriously I glanced toward the voice and saw (also long-finished) Rev3 teammate, Russ with his phone out. (Cameras everywhere!) I “smiled” as much as I could manage and finally a few seconds later, my feet were over the sensors and it was done. I got my sub 1:50/5:40 with a 1:49:25 run (6th fastest in my AG!) and an overall time of 5:39:27.

The Aftermath

I hit end on my watch and promptly doubled over and heaved.

I felt bile hit the back of my throat and quickly gulped it back down – ever-desperate to avoid the medical tent. I can’t explain this acute aversion to medical attention, (see Boston 2017 aftermath) but I avoid it with all my will – which in this case meant swallowing (reswallowing I guess) the yuck I’d just retched up.

I righted myself, took a moment, and continued on, collecting my medal and a couple bottles of water to wash the throw-up taste out of my mouth. In keeping with my foul triathlete embrace of normally-unwelcome bodily functions I felt proud to have come that close to puking – it meant I’d left it all out on the course and had held nothing back. I was very happy that I didn’t actually spew, but coming thisclose felt like an accomplishment.

A few feet from the finish I encountered Rev3 teammate Billy and we got some pictures together and hugged it out. Then Ryan again appeared over the barricades and there were more hugs. I wandered out of the chute and was immediately barraged by five or six more Rev3 family members; there were more hugs and pictures and comparing of race notes.

I was still in tenuous control of my stomach and its contents but within a few seconds of finishing the race I had nothing but warm mushy feelings for the past 70.3 miles. As people asked how the day had gone for me I gushed that it had been the perfect day. And it really had! The 65 degree calm water, the best open water swim of my life, the leaps (technical and velocital) made on the bike, the sunny but mild and low-humidity weather, a strong and measured run, the many friendly faces from the start of the swim to finish line and everywhere in between, and a 4 minute 70.3 PR! It was hands down one of the best races of my life.

Ryan and I reunited and found some space near the finish line to wait for and cheer in my roomie-for-the-weekend, Sherpette Melissa. She finished after not too long and we all hugged and photo-documented the team-love. Shortly after she and I said ciao to Ryan who had to go do dad-duties and hello to chow, seeking out the athlete food tent and a patch of sun to sit in and soak up. We then slowly meandered back to transition where we were able to collect our bikes. Along the way we ran into a dozen more Rev3’ers and Melissa was patient but probably tiring of my social butterflying. I however was lapping up all the teammate cameraderie.

Eventually we made it back to her car and headed home to our casita – stopping on the way for ice cream for Melissa, jalapeno chips for me, and beer for the both of us. Back at the house we just sat and ate and drank and chatted. Eventually we bathed and I started getting texts from the Rev3 crew about that afternoon/evening’s revelrie. There was talk of “buckets” at a hotel/bar called the Brunswick…

The Afterparty

Melissa was down for the count and wanted no part of the carousing. Rev3 teamies Caleigh, Robert, and Caleigh’s dad, Pip, kindly offered to pick me up since I wasn’t within walking distance to “downtown” Old Orchard Beach. A number of teammates apparently arrived to begin consuming said “buckets” around 3:30 or 4pm, but our unassuming group didn’t get there till 5:30 or 6. I think this was for the best because lawd I just can’t hang the way I used to! (And I’ll never understand how my incredibly fast and athletic friends still can! [Only a couple of them are in their 20s so it’s not that!])

Turns out these infamous “buckets” were noxious concoctions of four types of rum, (apparently there are at least four types of rum!) and some sort of juice concentrate for “flavor.” Oh and if you wanted to get real aggro on a Sunday (which I did not) you could add 151. (So actually there are at least five types of rum! Who knew?!) Upon arriving and learning all of the above Caleigh and I (wisely) took ourselves to the bar to buy our own beer, heading off any offers of buckets from our generous teammates (several of whom were already on their second bucket.)

We stuck around a few hours and the Rev3 party grew larger and rowdier. (Luckily OOB is the kind of place that welcomes loud and rowdy party crews.) And the buckets kept coming. At some point the group decided that anyone who got a PR had to get a bucket. Much chanting ensued – “PR buckets! PR buckets!” – and Caleigh and I nursed our lowkey beers tried to avoid attracting attention to our own mutual personal records that day.

Caleigh and I (with the help of Robert and Pip) extracated ourselves around 9:30pm while the party raged on. We apparenly missed a trip to the local carnival and after that to an ice cream parlour. I had a touch of FOMO but I also didn’t feel like garbage in the morning so I think it was a win.

The next day Melissa dropped me off at a Rev3 brunch and she and the bikes continued north for their Maine wilderness adventure. I didn’t fly out till 5pm so I spent the day with a number of teammates who’d stuck around, wandering Portland, which was experiencing some kind of late August hot flash that we were happy to have avoided on race day. Eventually I headed to the airport with teammate, Ron where I had my first lobster roll of the weekend – sad I know but it was still pretty good. He walked me to my gate and finally, at 4:30pm the Monday after the race I had to hug Ron and the weekend goodbye. From my curbside service courtesy of Melissa on the way in to this final embrace I’d been surrounded by the family I choose all weekend. It was hard to let go. (But I’d bought a first class ticket home and they were boarding so I had to claim my pre-flight cocktail.)

Ever since my first triathlon six years ago I’ve wanted this kind of tri family. For several seasons I went to races knowing only one or two other people. I was happy as my circle grew to be maybe four or five familiar faces per race but that weekend I had literally dozens of friends in Maine. Everywhere I went, every corner of the course, all over Old Orchard Beach, I knew people. And Cleveland had been much the same a few weekends before.

I only want to race like this from now on. Really it’s the way I’ve always wanted to race, and now that I have it I refuse to let it go. I want other things too. Next year I want to break 5:30 in the 70.3, go top ten AG at IM Lake Placid, and one day I want to go to Worlds and to Kona. But I want those things on these familial terms. A PR feels good no matter what, but to PR or to podium or to just exist in the company of 40 of your best friends is something different. Now that I’ve had a taste I’m not going back. #Rev3forever #bleedblue