A One Handed Blog

 March 29th 2009, Kona, Hawaii…Lavaman had arrived, it was time to race!

Kerry and I arrived in Hawaii with the TNT crew on the Friday and settled into our hotel and picked up our bikes. On Saturday it was an early start to see Dave Scott (6 time Ironman World Champion) provide some sagely advice for race day, then off for a practice swim, bike and run.

And then it was Sunday, up at 5:00am, quick bite to eat and cup of tea and then off to the hotel lobby for the 5:45am meet up. From there we all headed down to the transition area to setup our kit, get marked with our race numbers and pickup our timing chips.

At 7:00am everyone gathered at the start, or went for a warm up swim, come 7:15am the tension was building as the first wave of pros got ready to go at 7:30am, 3 minutes after that I'd be off and after 9 minutes Kerry would be following.

7:33am and I the race was on, 7:34am and my right arm was dislocated…as I reached forward with my hand someone must have been kicking backwards and kicked my shoulder out of its socket. So there I am, no left hand, can't use my right arm, just kicking to stay afloat. I waved my stump at the safety support dude on his surf board, unfortunately since all I could wave was my stump he just stood on his board staring at me blankly. So I had to kick myself over to him, rest my head on his board, relax my shoulder and pop it back in, then on with the race! All-in-all it probably cost me 2 minutes, but at least I wasn't out of the race.

Since I'm slower than most on the swim and the subsequent waves started only 3 minutes apart I had the pleasure of having the next 3 waves catch up with me and literally swim over the top of me…even the women, man they don't take prisoners!

45 minutes later and the swim was over. A short jog up the beach to the transition area and it was time for the 40km bike ride along Queen K (the main road of Ironman course fame). Despite my slow time on the swim I was able to make up time on the bike, passing many people during the ride. The last 6 miles or so were into a 15-20mph headwind, even though I was going down hill it was like peddling up hill! I was glad to be heading back to the transition area after about a 1 hr 30 mins ride.

Last leg left, 10km run…definitely not my favorite part. The first 1/2 mile of the run was across a lava field, uphill and into the headwind, what a start. At several points during the run I was heading uphill into that same headwind and the last mile or so of the course was along a single track path through lava fields, coral and finally a sandy beach.

I have to admit, I had to walk parts of the course, a combination of the heat and wind just wore me out, but I was determined to finish and just over an hour later the finish line was in sight. My total time was 3 hours 21 minutes, a few minutes faster than my tri at Pacific Grove, which considering the conditions wasn't too bad really.

The fun part was yet to come though, I had no idea, but, as we watched the awards ceremony I heard my own name, I wondered what on earth was going on…apparently I was first in my class, so I got to stand up on the podium and accept my prize in front of all these great triathletes. It was a bit lonely up there mind you, since I was actually the only one in my class, but hell I'll take all the awards I can get.

You can see more photos here.

Another day in the life of a triathlete, today was our first open water swim of the season at Aquatic Park in San Francisco and the water was a balmy 48F (9C), what a joy! Despite the chilly water we still had a great turnout by the team, all in their shiny new wetsuits.

I must say, it was a beautiful day once the sun came out, considering it's winter we've been very lucky with the weather.

After our swim we then headed out for a 40 minute run up to Crissy Fields and back, probably about 3 or so miles. After the swim my feet were so cold that when I started my run they felt like wooden blocks, I just couldn't feel them. The things we do, eh!

So far we've raised over $1,000 towards our $5,880 goal, thank you to all those that have been so generous in these tough times. If you'd like to make a donation it would be greatly appreciated, it's easy to do online: http://pages.teamintraining.org/sf/lavatri09/kezandkeiron

To quote Britney Spears, one of the great bards of our time (not!)…well, Kerry and I have signed up for another triathlon, Lavaman, in Kona Hawaii, on March 29th, 2009. It's an olympic distance race again (swim 1.5km, bike 40km, run 10km) and the course is partly on the Ironman World Championship course, which should be a great experience since I'm toying with the idea of doing an Ironman triathlon in 2010 (that's about 4 times the distances of an olympic event).

We're raising funds again for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) through Team In Training and this season we have also volunteered as staff to help everyone else achieve their dreams. We actually started training back in November and training through the winter is a bit different from training during the summer, not nearly as enjoyable. As you can see from the photo, riding in the rain is just one of the many pleasures.

Admittedly we've been a bit lax on the training so far, but, with the new year we'll have to kick things up a notch as we have less than 3 months until race day!

I'll keep everyone posted of my progress and if you'd like to make a donation to help us reach our $5,880 goal that would be very much appreciated, this time Kerry and I are fundraising together. You can donate via our fundraising page:

http://pages.teamintraining.org/sf/lavatri09/kezandkeiron

Happy New Year everyone and best wishes for 2009.

The alarm went off at 4:30am on Saturday, a quick shower to get the blood flowing and time to go meet everyone and cycle down to the race in the dark to setup in the transition area…thus started the big day.

Come 8:30am I was diving into the rather chilly waters of Pacific Grove surrounded by 100+ other nutters in the TNT men's wave, Kerry followed in the first of the TNT women's waves at 8:45am.

42min later I exited the water after swimming 1.5km and headed to the transition area to get my bike for the 40km ride.

It took me 1hr 26min to complete the ride and head back into the transition area to change for the run, my least favourite part of the event…2 down, 1 to go.

The 10km run was the hardest part, but, 1hr 3min later I was crossing the finish line with Mike Bishopp (a fellow Brit) waving the Union Jack flag high in the air.

In total it took me 3hr 23min 41sec to complete the race, beating my personal goal of 3hr 30min. Kerry finished in 3hr 55min 34sec, beating her goal of 4hrs. It was an amazing day, what an incredible sense of achievement!

Between the 2 of us we raised over $11,000 for LLS. To everyone who donated, thank you, thank you, thank you. Whilst it's been a long 3.5 months of training, it has been just so much fun being part of the East Bay TNT tri team and in a strange kind of way the race itself was actually quite enjoyable…maybe that means I'm now addicted to triathalons.

We're into the closing stretch, there's only 3 weeks until our triathalon at Pacific Grove on 13th September. The second half of the training program has continued to build the intensity level and I've now completed two 30 mile cycle rides (takes about 2 hrs), four one mile open water swims (takes about 45 mins) and this weekend we completed a 7 mile run, our longest yet (which took about an hour and a half). So all in all I feel I should be in a good position to complete the race in under four hours, especially since one of the 30 mile rides was at 6,000 feet in Tahoe!

(The photo is off Kerry and I with R2, one of the coaches, at Aquatic Park in San Francisco after our open water swim and run).

And after our seven mile run on Saturday Kerry and I were up at 5:30am on Sunday to head down to Monterey to check out the triathalon course at Pacific Grove and go for a swim in the sea to practice crawling through the kelp, of which there is a lot…much more than I was expecting (see the photo). Then it was all change and off we went for a cycle ride around the bike course, cycling about twenty miles. By the time we got back home we just crashed and slept for a few hours…this training lark is quite tiring you know!

On the fund raising side I have been very fortunate to exceed my minimum amount by quite a bit, thank you to all those that have donated so far and in particular to those that have donated $100 or more: Sean, Martin; Julie; Prashant; Oda; Rich (and team at Diablo P&O); Bernhard; Joe (and team at eLeaseReturns); Tim; Kristi; Scott; Robert; Ivan; Ephraim (and team at OMG); Maya; John; Barry and Jugdeep….you guys rock, thank you so much. Also, Hearst (Kaboodle's parent company) generously donated $5,000 as a corporate sponsorship…big thanks to Ken, Scott, Scott & Ed for making this happen.

For those who would still like to donate to this great cause there is still time, the deadline is the 28th August and since I have exceeded my minimum it would be great if you could donate to Kerry instead and help her reach her $3,300 goal…she needs about $1,000 more and I'm sure all you generous folks can help her! Here's her fundraising page: http://pages.teamintraining.org/sf/pactri08/kez.

This weekend Kerry and I took part in our first competition, an open water swim at the Lake Del Valle Aquatic Challenge. It’s a fairly low key and fun competition to introduce budding triatheletes to open water, competition swimming.

Here’s an action shot as I’m completing my half mile swim, it took me 23 minutes and 17 seconds.

What you can’t see is I’m pretty much the only one left in the water apart from Kerry, an 83 year old man (who completed the swim in 40 minutes or so) and our TNT coaches.

Hey, I came in 3rd in my age class for wetsuit swimmers (admittedly there were only 4 and the 4th person was my coach).

All-in-all it was a great experience which both Kerry and I enjoyed. The best part was after we completed the swim we got to go for a 3.5 mile run around the lake and then the next day we rode about 30 miles…all in a weekends training with TNT!

Kerry and I are now half way through our training with Team in Training for the Pacific Grove triathalon this September. We have both recommitted ourselves to the event through TNT, which means we are committed to raising our fund raising minimums or otherwise paying the difference ourselves…so please make a donation via my fund raising page (no amount too small, or too large).

On the training front, fortunately things have gotten progressively easier as the training has progressed and this weekend we did our first open water swim at Aquatic Park in San Francisco. It was our first chance to try out our wetsuits and brave the cold Pacific ocean on a chilly San Francisco summer morning!

The water certainly takes your breath away at first and it feels quite different swimming in cold salt water with a wetsuit and at first I just couldn’t keep going, I found I was constantly out of breath…it took me a while to slow my pace down so I felt comfortable swimming. Another challenge was having to keep sighting to make sure I wasn’t swimming in circles.

I managed to swim maybe half a mile before everyone headed in to get changed and then go for a 45 min run (about 3 miles). So a pretty hard training session, after which Kerry and I got home and crashed for 3 hours, we were just exhausted!

After our swim/run on Saturday, on Sunday we were back to biking, this time our longest ride so far. I managed about 25 miles in a little over 1.5 hours on my new carbon fiber bike that I picked up a couple of weeks back. This bike has been specially customized by Jose, the owner of Danville Bike. He added a set of aero bars (the middle ones) and switched the normal bars to bull bars. I have a single break lever for the front and rear brakes and both gear levers are on the right hand side. This configuration works really well for me and is so much easier to ride than my old mountain bike.

All in all not a bad weekend’s training!

Kerry and I had our first triathalon training session on Sunday with TNT, OH MY GOD! I'm not quite sure what we've gone and signed ourselves up for…this is going to be hard work (I didn't realise just how out of shape I've got).

The first session started with swimming, now even when I had two hands front crawl wasn't exactly my favourite stroke, well try doing front crawl with only one hand! I'd practiced in our pool at home, but, that's quite different from swimming 30+ lengths in a full size pool. In time I'll improve my technique, but that was hard work.

After the swim and a lecture on nutrition we got on our bikes for a 50 min cycle ride…oh boy. I was cycling into the wind, using a mountain bike with off road tires and was having a hard time of it. I had people of all shapes, sizes and ages passing me. After heading out for 20 minutes I was probably the first to turn back (after resting for 5 minutes), not particularly impressive at all. I guess it can't get much worse.

Another challenge riding the bike is the pressure it puts on my stump, I used the attachment I have that I can lock closed and slide over the end of the handlebar (I've moved the brakes & gear changers all to one side). In a normal riding posture I put quite a bit of force leaning onto the handlebars and this is somewhat painful over time as it causes the bone at the end of my stump to press on the socket. I got talking to the head coach (Paul) afterwards and he recommended I look at getting a different setup where I can actually lean my forearm on the handlebars…so looks like I'll be shopping for a new bike now.

Given where I am today I would say this is the biggest challenge I've taken on (and I've done a few things over the years). But, it's all for a good cause so please do support me in raising $3,300 to help advance LLS's mission (check out my fundraising page).

OK, as if life wasn't busy enough already I've decided to dedicate
myself to The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's (LLS) Team In Training
and become a triathelete (figured since I've only got 3 limbs, being a
triathlete was quite apt)!

Both Kerry and I have signed
up to raise funds to help stop leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin lymphoma and
myeloma from taking more lives and we plan to race in the Pacific Grove Triathalon this coming September.

Completing
a triathalon will be quite a personal challenge for me since I haven't
been doing any real exercise since I lost my hand back in 2006 (plus
swimming 1.5km, biking 40km, running 10km ain't no walk in the park).
Anyhow, this gives me the perfect excuse to get back in shape and
re-build my left arm/shoulder and legs after my accident
whilst completing this event in honor of all individuals who are
battling blood cancers.

So if you'd like to support me in raising $3,300 to help advance LLS's mission please check out my fundraising page (or Kerry's fundraising page). If you'd just like to get a laugh at my expense then keep checking back here as I post my progress!

A reminder of what my arm & legs looked like a little after my accident: