post-triathlon dreams.

Last night I had a dream I was in Thailand. I was hungry, and I saw some golden arches in the distance. McDonald's. I headed towards McDonald's, and it was on the second floor of the building. The only way to get up there would be to jump really high and grab ahold of this ladder attached to this ceiling.

I looked up and thought "No chance in hell. I really need to keep doing my pull-ups."

There was a kitchen and restaurant on the first floor, and I ordered local food instead. It was wheat-free, but it wasn't soy-free.

Then I was at home, and I realized I had signed up for an Ironman probably the year before. The race was in San Diego. It was 3 weeks away, and I didn't want to do it. I hadn't been training, and I didn't want to do it. We started to weigh out the cost of the entry fee I already put down, with how much it would cost to fly out to San Diego, with the bike and everything, and hotels and food etc etc etc.

I actually started to contemplate if I could do the ironman on basically ZERO training.

But even in my dream, I knew I wasn't going to go. I didn't want to do the Ironman. I don't even know how I signed up, and paid for the entry fee too.

Ironman lottery's new Legacy Program

The Ironman Lottery just opened today! New this year is the "Legacy Program" to reward... frequent customers. Am I eligible?

What is the Ironman Lottery Program?
Beginning in 2012 the Ironman Lottery will select 100 general Age Group athletes, 100 Legacy athletes plus five Physically Challenged athletes, to compete in the 2012 Ironman World Championship in Kailua-Kona, Hawai’i. Winners will be announced on April 15, 2012 at 12 p.m. ET on Ironman.com. One entry per athlete, duplicate entries will not be valid.

When does the Ironman Lottery open?
Registration for the 2012 Ironman Lottery and Legacy Program will open at 12 p.m. EDT on November 1, 2011.

What are the eligibility requirements for the 2012 Ironman Legacy Program?
To enroll athletes must meet all four of the following requirements*:
1. Athlete must have completed a minimum of twelve (12) full-distance Ironman-branded** races (includes existing and past events) by December 31, 2011
2. Athlete has never participated in the Ironman World Championship in Kailua-Kona, Hawai’i
3. Athlete must have completed at least one Ironman event in 2010 and 2011
4. Athlete must be registered for an Ironman event in 2012
*Legacy athletes will be required to submit their information during online registration.
**2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike, 26.2-mile run

Soooo, am I eligible? Let's see....

1. I've done 17 Ironman-branded "full-distance" events.
2. I've NEVER raced the world championships in Kona.
3. I did 8 Ironman events in 2010... I did ONE this year (IM TX...and more than half of IM Korea!) in 2011.
4. Hmm. I'm not yet registered for an event in 2012, but I could be...

There's no rule that says pros can't apply to the Legacy program. I mean, there are the 100 spots specifically for "general age group" and 100 spots for "Legacy athletes". But it doesn't say Legacy athletes have to be age group. Maybe they assume pros wouldn't want a lottery slot? :)

I was always against the idea of going to Kona (personally, for myself!) by random selection and kept trying to go on performance merits. Well, that hasn't happened yet. Of course, I could always go back to racing age group and snag a spot. With my current injury, by the time I start training again, half the year of points-chasing will be gone to qualify as a pro, and to be honest, I don't feel like racing as frequently as I have in the past any more.

I'm kind of curious as to how many Legacy athletes are out there in the selection pool...

Part of me is just tempted to sign up for this to see if I get a slot and find a sneaky sneaky loophole in this whole "qualify for Kona" thing. It would be totally hilarious, no?

the Double Header: HTC El Salvador/ChesapeakeMan IM, part #1

So. I had been planning to do the ChesapeakeMan Ultra Triathlon (ironman distance) since back in April. It's only 2 hours away by car and the race directors were very excited about having a pro triathlete come do their race. They comped my entree fee and would be hooking me up with a wonderful homestay family. Then I decided to go back to work, landed a job, collided with a car during IM Korea, started the new job and took over a month off training due to the crash injuries. My summer racing schedule got thrown out the window and I was eager to get the DNF monkey off my back since it was an ambulance that took me off the race course in Korea.

Then with less than a month's notice, my boss volunteered me to go on the medical mission in El Salvador because the CPO who has gone in years past was expecting his second baby...so they had been scrambling for an orthotist with not much luck, and it's a pretty key role for the orthopedic team, as I would soon discover myself!

The only caveat...it was the week leading up to ChesapeakeMan. Could I do both? How could I refuse a trip to El Salvador and the opportunity to help out kids who couldn't afford it? Aren't you supposed to taper right before an ironman anyway? And so began the Double Header: a medical mission trip to a foreign country right before my first ironman race coming off getting hit by a car. This was honestly the hardest week I've ever experienced in my life, and if I knew what it really entailed, I'm not sure I'd choose to do both again. But somehow I lived to tell the tale...

Part I:

Saturday Sept 17th, I flew to El Salvador to volunteer with the Philly chapter of Healing The Children with 28 other volunteers (orthopedic surgeons & residents, podiatrists, nurses, anesthetists & scrub nurses). I was basically team leader for orthotics and helped retrofit leg braces for kids that weren't candidates for surgery.

The team has been going to El Salvador for 17 years or so but this was the first time we were right by the city center in the capital, San Salvador. The sheer volume of kids I saw for orthotics was much more than any year before and I ended up working an average of 12 hours every day the first four days...and over 16 hours on the last day (Thursday).

It seemed like the number of kids and families that kept coming by would never end--very rewarding work but also extremely draining: physically, mentally and emotionally. It was hard to take time off for lunch breaks or even bathroom breaks when you had a whole room of families that had been waiting for you since early in the morning. Most days we wouldn't eat lunch until 2 or 3pm, and that was when the local Rotary Club (who took care of us and provided lunch for us each day) practically forced us to stop working so we wouldn't pass out.

Three of those 5 days, I woke up at 4:30am and did 1.5hrs of training in the hotel gym (with a 30min swim in the 15m pool...once) before getting on the team shuttle to the hospital. The last day I was too exhausted to get up early and train, but we also wanted a head start that last day--we worked from 6:30am until 11pm. "Hombre Araña" (Spiderman boy above) needed bilateral KAFO's (full leg braces on both sides) which is a huge project. Even making just one of them back in the USA, with a full lab at your disposal, is considered a "rush job" if you want it done in one week. We had very limited supplies and materials, and had to make four KAFO's in addition to a variety of devices for over 60-70 patients.

Early on, the motto of the trip became "Do the best you can with what you have." ...Foreshadowingly, this would also be my motto for getting ChesapeakeMan done in the condition I was in!

There was a lot of standing involved while we worked (when not kneeling down to fit the little bambinos), and Derek's legs were swelling up starting on Day 2. I only slept maybe 5 hours a night, 4 hours Thursday night, then flew back home Friday night, had an hour to pack for ChesapeakeMan then drove the 2 hours to Cambridge, MD, and slept 3 hours the night before the race (Saturday).

Not exactly what you'd call the ideal preparation the week before an ironman-distance race.

Part 2 coming up next! To be continued...

Ironman Korea in 4 photos!

SWIM!

my uber fast superhero Project:X "Tron" wetsuit!

BIKE!

sweet Token race wheels!

RUN!

The Camelbak filled with a new secret rocket fuel recipe...
that never got field tested.

WAIT, DON'T RUN!

Yeah that's dried blood on my neck. But I got yummy snacks!

POUT INSTEAD!

These super cool pics are from my Korean photographer friend Ahn, who has one of them fancy cameras. You can check out more of his awesome photos on his photo blog here.

more on the crash...and the aftermath

Well, so much for Ironman #21! Even my original plans for Ironman #22 (Full Vineman at the end of this month) have been altered due to the most spectacular DNF ever at Ironman Korea. It's now one week after the accident, where it was more me hitting a car rather than the car hitting me. Now that I'm much more healed up and saw the parents briefly on my SFO layover on the way home (so they knew I was ok!) I can post up some gory photos from the bike vs. car crash:

the first post-crash photo taken by big bro Michael Wright

That was after I was released from the hospital and most of the blood had already been wiped from my head and neck. "What exactly happened?" everyone keeps asking, and so I don't have to keep repeating myself, here is the story:

I was nearly done with the bike. Maybe a mile to go to transition (yes, out of 112 miles). Since it was a 2-loop bike, there was a fork where you went left to do your second loop and right to finish. This was a weird 5-way intersection at the bottom of a hill (from the direction I was going) which was heavily manned with cops and volunteers controlling traffic. There was a minivan stopped at the intersection. I was biking pretty fast downhill, hugging the right side of the road, heading towards the right of this minivan to go to the bike finish, when it begins to make a right turn into my path. I made the split-second decision to go to the left of it, while screaming and hitting the brakes...but just ran out of time.

my first self-portrait taken, post-crash and pre-shower. ouch!

The next thing I knew I was lying on the ground (I was still screaming for at least 5 seconds), there was shattered glass all around me and something warm was dripping off my head, which I knew instinctively was blood. I tried not to move much in case I had a spinal injury, and as my eyes looked up there was a lot of blood pooling on the pavement and all over my right hand and arm. It was pretty freakin' disturbing--I've been cycling for nearly a dozen years now and have never been in bike accident with a car. When the ambulance finally came and I got carried onto a stretcher, I saw that the rear window of the minivan was completely shattered. Whoa did I do that?!

White Tiger sacrificed his aerobars for me.

Piecing together info from other competitors who had actually saw the accident, and seeing the damage on White Tiger (my bike), it seems that instead of going to the right or left of the car, I hit the rear windshield somewhat dead-center. The aerobars hit first (they snapped) and my bike and body then got launched upwards and forwards, and my head went through the windshield before we all bounced back onto the ground. In hindsight having that windshield there and smashing it with my chin probably saved me from spinal cord or brain damage...or worse. (I just saw an episode of House MD where a BMX biker was internally decapitated from a blow to the chin. YIKES.)

the elbow stitches...not so pretty but they'll do

My original report on stitches was wrong--I got 16 total stitches, 11 in my chin and 5 in my elbow. My right knee was pretty badly bruised (probably from hitting the top tube of White Tiger) and I have some mild bruising elsewhere, and smaller cuts all over my neck which have all healed by now. The unanimous consensus is that I got off extremely lucky, which is why I am not that upset about the whole thing. I don't know if it was the cops' fault for not enforcing traffic or the driver's fault for not listening, but at this point I am just extremely grateful that I managed to escape the incident with pretty minimal injuries.

the chin stitches...which made me look like I had blue chin hairs

I got my chin stitches taken out yesterday by the Sherpa and his mom (who is a nurse) and everyone says it looks really good--the Korean doc did an awesome stitch job. The elbow ones come out in another week and then I'm allowed to swim again. My knee is looking much better and the swelling and discoloration has come down quite a bit...still a bit stiff, but walking on it is totally fine, stairs are a little tricky. White Tiger is parked on the Cycleops trainer for a little bit while we both get fixed. It turns out that it wasn't just the aerobar extensions that got busted but the base bar too...so replacement parts are needed but I can only do about 30mins easy spinning right now after applying some heat to help mobilize the knee.

the worst bruising was 3 days post-crash

Coach Beck is starting me on a light recovery program starting tomorrow, which is also my first day of work! So it works out well, as I'll be easing back into work again full-time (32hrs/week is considered full-time!) while also training and racing. In the meantime, thanks everyone for all the nice messages and hugs and concern. I am really ok and I will be ok! Most of the pics here were taken within a couple days of the accident; I'll put up newer ones later this week to keep you updated on my progress.

Sharing Haamonii...the best way to make everyone
feel better after a bike/car crash or Ironman!