A One Handed Blog

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: