Getting Back Up This article was originally published in Triathlete Magazine, 1999 During my senior year at Brown University I had a roommate, Perry, who was working on a thesis to complete a sociology degree. From a muggy Rhode Island Summer into a hot pre-graduation spring, she spent each and every evening coupled with a stoneware mug full of Peaberry’s strongest dark and the keyboard of her Macintosh, days and weeks and months where I always tiptoed past her room, in which I couldn¹t help from stealing glances, such was the intensity of her effort. I’d see her either scrunched over her keyboard hunt and pecking the keys or holding her blue mug chin high, a thin line of steam curling up past her ear, her brown eyes fixed on the monitor as if she were an astronomer looking for a new star. It was an hour after dusk on one of these typical evenings when an electrical shudder passed through our northeast Providence neighborhood, a trip in the power relays that blinked our lights off for a second or two. I didn’t think anything of it. But when a minute later I heard the sound Perry made, I knew what had happened. The shudder had swept clean the entire memory and hard drive of her computer, taking with it the 360 pages that she had lived, dreamed and died for nearly a year. No backup. No hardcopy. Nothing left but the pain of knowing how much it had meant to her. This kind of story is no stranger to triathlon. A friend of mine who raced at Ironman Australia in 1998 told me that at the post-race awards banquet, the video footage that drew a long and loud groan from the crowd was of a triathlete in a ditch, holding in his hands a broken bike chain. It was just a quick image, but everyone knew what had happened and instinctively knew how they would have felt had it been them. You do everything you can to prepare for a race, and an element that is out of your control puts a swift end to it. Wherever this fits in to the lore of triathlon experience, it was at this year’s World Championships where I shared in it. I arrive in Montreal. Nervous of course, but this is what I have been working for since December 15th 1998 when I started up training again after my 4 week rest. I had had a successful season thus far, having come in the Top 5 in my first 4 World Cup races and Top 10 in the next 2. At the time of World Championships , I was ranked 3rd in the World Cup standings for 1999. I was confident in my preparation like never before, descending to sea level 21 days before hand, and had recorded personal bests in swimming, biking and running time trials. I’d slept tons, had eaten a textbook- perfect diet and hit the scale at 136, my perfect fighting weight. I arrive in Montreal and am given #13 for a race number. Now, I’m not the superstitious type, except for my ritual of removing and kissing my dolphin, crystal and cross necklace right after setting up my transition area. And that of taping my college ring to my finger. And the other ritual where I bring pictures of Gertie (my cat) and Whoopi (my dog) to every race. Other than that, my only pre-race superstition is that I have to read the “Controlling Attitudes and Energizing Attitudes” pages from Jim Loehr’s The Mental Toughness Training Book. So I don't really give this #13 race number a second thought. I’m the fittest I’ve ever been in my life, and a number certainly isn't going to ruin my chances. I take it and put the #13 stickers all over my helmet and bike, and clip it to my race belt. Retrospectively however, I must have been giving it a third thought, because I felt additional pressure to get my bike triple checked. Being completely mechanically illiterate, I had to rely on a bike shop to check all those things you need to before a race. On Friday I took it to the mechanic and did a thorough pre race check. I decided I needed to do it again the next day and of course one last time, the day of the race. Race day at the Montreal World Championships, a year away from the Olympics. After the kind of swim I wanted and a solid transition, I assessed my situation and I was right where I needed to be: in a bike pack with the past world champions, Michellie Jones, Emma Carney, Jackie Gallagher and Jo King. The first turn came into view. As I leaned my body weight in and felt for a good line and balance point, the weight of my bike was snatched out from under me, as if I’d cycled onto a trap door. I slammed into the concrete. I’m thinking, “Get up now”. As I press my hands on the pavement to give my legs leverage to stand, the front wheel of another girl’s bike rams into my bike, and we crash into a heap together. We untangle, and — although my legs are bloody &#*212; the adrenaline springs me to my feet without a trace of pain. It was then I began to register that the bike was ruined, that the reason for my bike’s collapse was that the front tire inexplicably peeled off the wheel, and that my own ten month thesis had been irretrievably swept away. My race was over. I was crying and bleeding. I moved out of the way and sat on the roadside curb and looked at the ground. Ten months. The base phase, the speedwork, the strength training, the technique practice, workouts powered by the dream of a spot on the podium, all knotted in my mind. What kind of a cruel game is this? The pain that was now driving through the adrenalin was nothing compared to the pain of the moment. One instant I was a perfectly-peaked triathlete and couldn’t have asked for a better position in the race; the next instant, a DNF feeling the emptiness, the loss, and the devastation that sinks in when you comprehend that this is reality and not a dream you’re going to wake up from. Like the triathlete with the broken chain and like my roommate and her thesis, my world was nothing more than the rawest of these feelings. I sat there for the longest time in a black hole with my puddle of tears, my puddle of blood, and my broken bike while photographers took my picture. All I could think of was how I wished the pain would go away. Someone sat beside me. I looked up and it was triathlete Sister Madonna Buder who looked at me for a moment and then gave me a huge hug. She then said a very warm and thoughtful prayer, a prayer that broke through the pain and lifted me to the point where I could begin, slowly, to see the good of the moment. First, I was uninjured. For this I am so thankful. Having unexpectedly become one of the fittest spectators at Worlds wasn’t much of a consolation, especially since the next thing I had to look to in my triathlon schedule was a long rest period, but I was in one piece, and a serious injury easily could have been the result. Second, I felt as though this was minimizing my chances of this sort of thing happening again in the near future, with the Olympic trials on the horizon. It wasn’t easy to look at this positively, feeling as jipped as I did. And of course, I’m not the first triathlete nor the last that this has happened to. It’s a possible outcome each of us face every time we step to the line, and the depth of the risk is proportionate to how much we’ve put into preparing for the event, a risk that, oddly enough, somehow adds to the sport: the reminder of how lucky we are to be a part of the lifestyle and a part of such a special sport, regardless of the goals and regardless of the results. Back to Articles Page

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