Blog

With another race scheduled for this Saturday, I had best get on top of writing my blog!  Last weekend I had the great pleasure of racing in Frankenmuth, which is just the cutest town and I love racing there!  Unfortunately the week before the race did not go as planned.  While practicing some bike handling skills for my upcoming and first ever draft legal race, I suffered a near-fall that cost me dearly.  It was one of those really stupid slow motion falls, where I thought I was falling to the left and unclipped my left foot, but then my bike tilted to the right.  Instinct kicked in and I wrenched on my right foot to unclip it, but instead of unclipping I felt a sharp and sudden pain deep in my groin.  I actually managed to stay upright on my bike, but the pain was an all-too-familiar pain.  As some of you may know, about 4 years ago I had surgery to repair my right labrum and to shave off a bone impingement in my hip.  Things were a little rocky about 6 weeks after the surgery when I tripped on a curb (I’m noticing a trend of clumsiness here…), but I eventually recovered and cancelled the second surgery I had scheduled.  Now that pain was back. 

I was still determined to race in Frankenmuth.  Besides being clumsy, I’m also quite stubborn!  My sports med doc told me if it was my labrum then I couldn’t make it any worse, it would just hurt.  A lot.  I didn’t run until race morning when I decided I would try it out with my usual pre-race run.  It actually went pretty well!  I could feel myself favoring my right hip ever so slightly, but I wasn’t getting any sharp pains.  I headed back to the hotel room and rustled up the two Todds, then we headed to the race site.  All three of us got to feel special by being the first ones to the rack, but it quickly became clear as amazing bike after amazing bike rolled in that this would be a very competitive race.  I tried to ignore all the shiny carbon and instead focused on my pre-race routine.  I tried to see if my flying mount would work, but when I tried to throw my right leg over the bike my hip let me know that was not a good idea.  So I would settle for a normal mount, no biggie!

With my transition checked and double checked, I headed down to the water with my parents.  My dad was also a walking wounded and had been struggling with a sharp knee pain for a few days.  Sadly his pain did not get better and on race morning he could barely walk, so he decided to throw in the towel with the goal of finishing the season strong.  Maybe I should take lessons from the people around me?  Nah, that wouldn’t be any fun! 

All the athletes in the elite wave gathered on the dock, pulling wetsuits into place and waiting for the race to start.  I was pretty intimidated!  These were all incredible pros and it was cool to be in a wave with them.  We lined up in the water by the dock and the countdown started with people cheering from the bridge above us and the shore behind us, then the horn went off!  I had no idea where I was in that darn river, pros start so fast and throw up so much water I couldn’t tell who was where!  I tried to just swim in a straight line and headed for the first buoy.  I have never been very good at starting my swims off fast, apparently I’m more of a steady pace swimmer, so I quickly found myself all alone.  I tried my best to challenge myself by throwing in little bursts of speed to buoys and managed an okay swim time for me.  I have been struggling with my swim this year, so I was glad to see an improvement in my time.

The run from the water to transition is pretty long, but it goes by quickly thanks to all the cheering age group athletes waiting for their turn to start lining the path up to transition.  Their cheers energized my tired legs and I ran into transition, yanked off my wetsuit and sped out with my bike.  My dad yelled that I was 2 minutes behind 3^rd.  My goal for the bike today was to be brave.  It is hard when all I could see was empty road ahead and empty road behind, but I really wanted to push my pace hard, so I let my watts be my guide.  After about 10k I caught my first glimpse of 3^rd place, so I kept pushing.  I caught her around 20k and continued pushing to see how much time I could gain, I knew I needed a lot of time because the 3^rd place woman, Kyla Chapman, was a NCAA Division I runner, yikes! 

I got to the run and knew I couldn’t put as much time into Kyla as I needed, but wanted to hold her off for as long as possible.  I challenged myself to push my pace fast with the goal of holding her off until 5k.  The miles ticked by and I continued to hold a pretty darn good pace for me, considering the injuries and setbacks I have dealt with this season.  Kyla didn’t catch me until after mile 4, so I was pretty darn proud of myself!  As Kyla turned the corner and was out of my view, I felt the wall hit me.  I was so tired!  I had given everything I had to catch her and stay ahead of her for as long as possible and now I was left with the carnage.  I continued trudging along.  Somewhere around mile 5 a wall of pain slammed into me and I pulled up to a dead stop.  My hip felt like someone had just slammed a knife into my groin.  After a few seconds I convinced my legs to jog and eventually to start running again.  The remainder of the run passed in a haze of that oh-so-familiar pain.  I crossed the finish line and that was it, I didn’t want to be standing on that leg any longer and sank to the ground. 

Well I’m sure you don’t want to hear about all the lovely details, such as shoving ice packs up my shorts and packing my groin with ice.  Yup, it’s a lovely place to have pain, people give you such funny looks when you have ice shoved down your pants.  I’m so thankful for all the support I received from my husband, family, friends and medics!  But I seriously need to stop meeting medics that way.  Maybe next race I will just walk up and say “hi” instead!

Huge congrats to my Tri4Him teammate Abby for finishing a very close 2^nd overall and taking home that awesome giant beer stein!  And also a huge thanks for sharing her prize money wealthy and buying myself and The Todds cupcakes, yum!!  Todd Buckingham edged out Todd Kennedy by 18 seconds (sorry T-Buck, I have to quote it exactly since I live with him and all) and has now passed the title of “Other Todd” to my hubby.  But there are still more races to be run this year!  Another huge congrats to all the Oak Park Tri Team Members that were out racing and thank you for your support as well!  I have said this before, but I can’t say it enough, they are an amazing supportive and super nice group of people and I’m so lucky they have invited me to be a part of their team!  Michelle Husted-Brittain finished 2^nd in her age group and Chris Sharrock also rocked it with 2^nd in his age group!  I know there were other Oakies out there, let me know how you did!  And it is always cool to see Jacob Bremer killing it with 2^nd Overall in the sprint.

This weekend I am heading to Milwaukee with my hubby for lots of racing fun!  Todd is racing the Age Group National Championship and somehow I ended up being selected for a Super Sprint Showcase that takes place Saturday afternoon.  It will be my first draft legal event and it is a strange one!  It will be swim-bike-run-swim-bike-run and all the distances are very short with multiple laps for the bike and the run.  If anyone is sticking around after the race, I would love to see some friendly faces in the crowd!  Happy training!