Adversity is a dish best served in March

Of course I arrived a day early to preview the course for the 2010 Xterra Miami. I like to be prepared and ready to rock. I knew this is a race that I could win. It was my goal and I wanted to see the course to help prepare me for victory. In retrospect…

I was flying along the course keeping my eyes peeled for problem areas and dialing in the tricky spots. Then it hit me. Actually I hit IT. It was a tree. Man did I hit that thing HARD.

I really don’t know what happened. One second I was riding and the next I was wrapped around a tree. Lucky for me my head hit first. Unfortunately, my shoulder was the next to make contact. Ouch.

Now for my parenthetical statement of the day: If you are riding a bike you should be wearing a helmet. If I hadn’t been wearing a helmet I would have been typing this from my hospital bed and not my kitchen table.

My shoulder was hurt badly. Crap. I struggled back to my car then back to the hotel room. The rest of the day was spent being a tourist in pain. Things didn’t look good. Saturday night I gave my chances of being able to swim on Sunday morning at about 50/50. Lifting my right arm above my head was excruciating.

I really thought I’d broken my collarbone.

Thank god the pain had subsided by 6am. We were good to go.
Half mile swim. Go.

Out of the water around 10th or so out of about 100. Not too bad. Not to good either. I guess I should be glad that I could even swim. Peel the wetsuit off and onto the bike.

Bike was going well for the first part of the first of two laps. I had passed a few people and was feeling good about my chances.

Then I heard “Ptsssssss….”.

Oh shit.

Front time went from 40 lbs to like 20. It was ok because with tubeless tires you can ride real low pressure… for a while. Then it went to like 5 lbs and I couldn’t ride anymore. I started running with my bike hoping to come up with an idea. What the hell?

I was hoping to run into the wheel fairy or something. I don’t know what I was thinking. I ran for at least 5 minutes until a passing rider gave me a C02 cartridge and an adapter. Nice. I was going again.

That was the front tire.

At the start of the second lap the same thing happened to my back tire. I rode almost the entire second lap on about 10 lbs of pressure. I had to brake at every corner and be super careful at every root and rock. It was awful. With about a mile to go it finally went down to nothing and I rode it in. Have you ever ridden on a completely flat tire? Try it sometime. It sucks as bad as you think.

Now I can run; finally. And I ran like the wind.

I was flying. It was awesome. The run in Miami is kind of neat. It actually had 3 water crossings. Yes, you actually have to swim. It cools you down. It’s fun but your shoes REALLY weigh you down.

Anyway I had a good run. Some fast runner was there and beat me by a minute! His swim was a couple of minutes slower than mine and so was his bike. But boy could he run.

My run was 36 minutes. Fast runner dude was 35 something but nobody else ran under 40minutes.

I ignored my painful blisters and mercifully the race ended. Overall I finished 5th.
My wife asked me what I learned from the experience. I learned that adversity is cool and is a dish best served in the month of March when the races really don’t count. I learned that I have a serious tire problem. I learned that my run and bike fitness are both excellent. I learned that Advil helps when you bust your shoulder up before the race.

I learned a lot. Above all though I learned that one of my best talents is to simply keep fighting and doing my best, despite the challenges that I may face. (Even when doing my best fast falls far short of my expectations)

I’ve done three triathlons this season and two have involved some sort utter travesty. Both times, however, I continued on and ended up doing ok despite lost time.

Oh yeah. I guess I learned that I need to bring my own CO2 with me in races. Put that on the to-do list. Next race is in 3 weeks in Fort Myers. Another Xterra. Frank Fernandez-Posse will not beat me again. Mark my words!