A One Handed Blog

My Ironman training kicked off in earnest this week and I’ve been getting back in the pool and back on the bike.

My coach, Paul Kinney, has me working out 8 times a week…8 I hear you say, but there’s only 7 days in a week. Well, on Tuesdays & Thursdays I swim at 5:30 am, go to the office and then I’m supposed to be lifting weights or running in the evening…10 months to go and counting!

Whilst I was swimming this week, Coach Mike had his Flip camera and kindly videoed me in the pool, so now you can see what it’s like to swim one handed…definitely need to pick up the pace a bit if I’m going to make that 2.4 mile swim in under 2 hours.

Despite my accident cutting my training short with two weeks to go before my first Half Ironman in October I’m determined to stick to my original plan, and with bones healed, start my bid to compete at the Ironman World Championship in Kona this October. That’s 140.6 miles and likely 16 hours of hard slog.

An Ironman triathlon consists of a 2.4 mile swim followed by a 112 mile bike and finally a full marathon, 26.2 miles…all in one day. And the mecca for Ironman events is the World Championship in Kona, Hawaii…birth place of Ironman. Since I’m unlikely to qualify for Kona as a world class athlete, I’ve instead submitted an entry into the Ironman lottery as a challenged athlete. They pick 5 athletes from those that apply, so keep your fingers crossed for me.

This will be the biggest physical/mental challenge I have faced to date, without a doubt. I have 10 months of training ahead, 6 days a week for the next 42 weeks. In between I’ll be throwing in an Olympic triathlon or two, a Half Ironman event, a triathlon including a swim from Alcatraz and maybe a half marathon for good measure.

As part of my bid I plan to fundraise for the Challenged Athletes Foundation (CAF), these guys have a mission to provide opportunities and support to people with physical disabilities so they can pursue active lifestyles through physical fitness and competitive athletics, they provide support for athletic endeavors by providing grants for training, competition and equipment needs. As you can imagine, a cause near and dear to my heart.

So here goes, day one of training done, my first swim since my accident, nice to know it hasn’t affected my swimming ability, next will be to see how I fair on the bike…wish me luck.

I’ve been recovering fast after my surgery a few weeks back. It’s been a real case of deja-vu, it was like losing my hand all over again. Since my arm had swollen too nearly twice it’s size after the surgery (much better now) I couldn’t wear my prosthetic, so it was back to making do with one hand again. It was surprising how used to my i-Limb hand I was…I really miss it!

The surgery was successful, if a little long (over 5 hrs). My collar bone now has a plate holding it together, which is great since it stabilizes the shoulder nicely. My elbow was a bit of a surprise, however. I didn’t expect to end up with so much metal work: a plate, screws, pins and even some wire, as you can see from the fluoroscope images. It’s amazing the amount of damage I did.

Now that my arm is back to normal size my one challenge is that, with all the metal work in my elbow its circumference has increased and my prosthetic sockets still don’t fit. Fortunately I still have my original socket from a couple of years back, and whilst it’s not ideal, at least it fits…which means I can drive again.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I don’t have to get new prosthetic sockets made, only time will tell.

As many of you know I’ve been training for the last 5 months for my first half Ironman triathlon, Big Kahuna in Santa Cruz. Unfortunately on Saturday my training came to a crashing halt, quite literally.

A group of us training for Big K (as the race is affectionately known) had gone down to Santa Cruz to train on the course in preparation for the race in 2 weeks. We were doing an hour and a half cycle out and back on Highway 1. It was on the way back that things went pear shaped.

There is a section of Highway 1, just after the crest of a hill, where an old rail track crosses the road diagonally. I remembered riding over it on the way out and it was a little knarly on my race bike with its razor blades for tires. On the way back it caught me a bit by surprise, you don’t see it until you crest the hill, and a thought went through my mind, “hope my wheel doesn’t get caught in the track”. Which, as you can guess, is exactly what happened, just as I picking up speed and going 15-20 mph. The next thing I know I’m down hard on my left hand side skidding along the road on my helmet and left arm…and then Ray hit me, he’d been riding just behind me and didn’t have time to take evasive action. So both of us were down in the middle of Highway 1…I guess we should count ourselves lucky there weren’t any cars behind us.

If anyone needed a reason to wear a helmet when riding here it is, my old Specialized helmet took the brunt of the impact and I watched the road skid by as it protected my head and face from major trauma, I’m serious when I say that without the helmet I would not be here writing this post!

Whilst my helmet fortunately saved my head, my left elbow and shoulder didn’t fair so well. As I fell to the left my elbow impacted the road hard, I had been on my aero bars and it happened so quickly I didn’t have time to react at all. My elbow fractured and the force of the impact fractured my clavical (collar bone) as well. After I managed to sit up and catch my breath I could feel my collar bone was broken (didn’t know about my elbow at that point) and got my team mates, who had arrived at the scene, to call for an ambulance.

I don’t know how, but a policeman was there in only 5 minutes or so, even before we called for an ambulance. He was taking my details and then asked whether I’d seen the sign warning cyclists to slow down and walk their bikes across the tracks…duh, missed those on the way out and on the way back! Me thinks they need bigger signs, flashing neon ones perhaps. Apparently they have about 30 bike accidents at that spot each year, given the tracks aren’t in use any more you wonder why they don’t fill the damn things in, anyone know a good lawyer…

So now I’m out of the race and due to the severity of the breaks I’ll be going in for surgery on both my shoulder and elbow. One thing you can say about me is, if I have an accident, then I *really* have an accident!

I’ll keep you updated on my progress after the surgery, I’m sure it’ll be a few months before I’m back in the saddle again, as Arnie says, “I’ll be back”.

Oh, and the bike, that’s in pretty good shape, luckily my body saved it from any major damage…seriously, it hardly has a scratch on it!

My half Ironman Triathlon is coming up fast on October 25th! Yesterday's training schedule called for a long bike ride, 56 miles, in preparation. Since I was up in Tahoe for the weekend I figured what better place to ride than around the lake.

The ring around Lake Tahoe is about 73 miles, I planned on riding 56 miles and having Kerry come pick me up, which meant I would get to go around 2/3rds of the lake at least.

I headed out at 8:30am on Highway 89, from South Lake Tahoe, and headed clockwise towards Emerald Bay, the first big climb. As I would learn during the ride, it sure ain't flat up here. The lake is at 6,200' and the roads around are continually going up and down, the highest climb to over 7,000'. Of course by going clockwise I got to ride the hilliest 2/3rds of the lake (great choice)!

Apart from the cold (what else would you expect in October, I couldn't feel my toes numerous times), and the wind which was blowing 20+mph and at nearly blowing me of the bike, it was a beautiful ride. It took me 3 hours 45 minutes to complete my distance, finishing just before Cave Rock (the tunnel on Highway 50). Kerry meet me there, with a hot cup of tea and my run shoes ready for a quick 10 minute transition run.

All-in-all a great days training and given the snow we got Saturday night/Sunday morning I'm sure glad I did the bike yesterday…although the snow sure looks pretty.