OK....I've had enough now!

The foot is finally starting to feel better and approaching normal, I was cleared to ride again by the doc and I am only a few days away from being cleared to run again....all is well right? One would think so but I guess I needed to get beat back down again one last time.

This past Sunday it was the picture perfect fall day. Bright sunny skies, white cotton ball clouds and a refreshing crisp in the air. Morgan and I planned a cruise-y ride up 9W to Piermont with no agenda what so ever. Just enjoy being out riding and try to NOT look for hills to climb along the way. Sounds perfect, right? Well it was going perfect, we cruised our way across town to the west side greenway, made our way uptown and through the MS bike tour which was also using the greenway. We had just entered Riverside drive at 72nd street to make our way up to the George Washington bridge and over to the wilds of NJ when it all started to come apart.

Morgan was riding in front of me and I was just behind his wheel. We have ridden together enough that we can generally tell what the other one is going to do so we tend to be a bit lack with our hand signals to slow and stop. I know that we both tend to be aggressive riders in the city traffic so when we were approaching a traffic light on Riverside drive that was about to turn yellow I assumed that Morgan was going to speed up to make it through the light. So I "hit the gas" so to speak and stomped on the pedals a bit to get my speed up to cruise through the light. I also must have been looking down or not fully paying attention because before I knew it I was right up on Morgan's wheel because he was slowing down to stop for the light instead of going through it.

Everyone tells you not to grab both brakes when you learn how to ride a bike because grabbing the front brake makes the possibility of you flying over the handle bars that much greater. But I challenge anyone in a split decision situation to not grab both brakes out of panic! Well, panic I did and grabbed two heaping handfuls of front and rear brake. I immediately locked out my wheels and my tires started to skid which in turn made me hit the asphalt before I even knew what was happening. It all happened so quickly but in the moment I saw my head hitting the ground and realized that this was not good.

Somehow I missed taking Morgan down with me and I also avoided getting hit by any cars, thank god. The woman who was in a car right behind me who must have had a pretty good shock seeing all this go down immediately jumped out of her car to see if I was OK. There were also cops on the scene almost immediately which I found weird because there are never cops around when you need them but thankfully they were this time. They asked if I needed an ambulance. I wasn't sure that I needed one because nothing hurt "that" bad so I didn't think I had any broken bones but I told them that I know I hit my head so they put the call in for one for the possible head injury. Morgan came over to look at me and said that my helmet was cracked from the blow to the asphalt.

As I was laying there on the asphalt on the side of the road there were two "Italian" (you know what I'm sayin') men that came up to me. They had on suits, gold jewelry and were pungent with cologne. They introduced themselves as Dr. Mario and Dr. Luigi (not really...but they were Italian...do you really expect me to remember their names?) they were two doctor brothers that just happened to be walking by and wanted to know if they could help. Ummmm, sure...."am I dying?" They checked out my neck asked me a bunch of questions and had me up on the sidewalk before the ambulance got there. I never passed out and I was coherent and the doctors and the ambulance guys said it was up to me if I went to the ER or not. I didn't think I was in that rough of shape but the shock was just starting to hit me I think and I was feeling a little light headed.....not to mention that I had just smacked my head on the asphalt.

I decided to just hop in a cab and make my way back downtown to meet Scott since Morgan had thankfully woken him up with calls and texts explaining my predicament. Besides the road rash covering my left arm which you can see in the healing process above, road rash on my left knee and face, my other significant injury was a large flap of skin and a bruise under my right thumb that either needed to be glued or stitched back together so I had to go to the ER to get it looked at as well as just get myself checked out. My ER experience definitely could have been a lot worse, I made it in and out rather painlessly and did not thankfully have to spend all day there. They wound up doing an x-ray of my left hip/upper thigh because it was really the most painful/sore part of me even though I didn't have any road rash there. It had also started to swell up significantly so they did a precautionary x-ray just to make sure nothing was broken but they really thought I was probably fine since I had full range of motion with no significant pain. They glued my thumb back together and sent me on my way with some peroxide and neosporin to deal with the road rash on my own.

The patch of road rash on my arm is really the worst bit of it although I have more on my upper bicep and forearm. I have a HUGE bruise on my left upper thigh where it was swollen and sore right after the crash. I assume that was the first point of impact with the ground which is why it is so bruised. I tried to take a photo of it but really is there a flattering way to take a photo your own upper thigh? I'll just leave that to your imagination but Scott did describe it as beautiful last night.....

So just as I was getting back into a routine....down I go again. I am heading to Michigan this weekend to see my family and hopefully get some R&R to heal and recover. I am hoping that the road rash heals enough to get back in the pool next week which will also commence my running come back as well! I might just start walking around with a helmet on to avoid any future injuries though.....

95%...We'll Call That Good Enough

Last doctor’s appointment and x-rays revealed that the foot is now about 95% healed and is not in danger of re-breaking at this point. Good to know. I had called it quits with the boot a few weeks ago because I couldn’t stand it anymore and it was feeling pretty good to walk around in just tennis shoes. This week I have even ventured back into flats and shockingly today I even sported some short heels for the first time in two months. I must admit, I haven’t missed them.

Doc advised to give it a few more weeks before I start running again and even then to take it very easy and start out on soft surfaces rather than the asphalt. Hmmmm, ok well in a few weeks it will likely be butt ass cold out and dread-mill time anyway so that works for me. He did give me clearance to get back in the saddle on the condition that I am not going to fall or have to stop short and quickly put my foot down. OK….how does one guarantee that while riding in NYC traffic?

I have sat by long enough while all of my cycling friends have done lots of great (and not so great…but still fun) fall century rides and I pretty much couldn’t stand another boring weekend without a ride. Morgan saw my injury update on Facebook and basically read my thoughts that 95% was likely good enough for me to ride again. I knew this cycling come back tour was going to be a little ugly since I went from doing cardio workouts six days a week to zero cardio workouts and minimal strength and swimming workouts for six weeks.

We decided to just do some loops of the park instead of heading out of the city just to play it a bit safe. The loops were going well and I was feeling really good just being out there again that is until we hit the hills. Cat Hill was do-able because it is short enough that by the time it starts to be too much it is over but Harlem Hill….not so much. I tried to stay on Morgan’s wheel but the legs and the cardio were just not there. I had a feeling that the hills were going to be ugly but this was just crap-tastic. Morgan took pity on me and we called it quits after three loops.

I have gone to a few spin classes, which are decidedly harder to get through than they were six weeks ago, to start building up the leg strength and cardio again. Master’s swim classes started up this week as well which will motivate me to keep getting in the water even though it is turning chilly out. I have really been loving a lunch time abs class on Tuesday’s that I have been going to, although a last minute site visit today forced me to miss it which sucked. I’m trying to establish a basic workout schedule that I will try to stick to over the fall since the injury has forced me to take a coaching break from ELF until I am back up to speed.

This weekend Morgan and I are heading out of the city to the wilds of NJ….not really trying to find any hills to climb, just getting some miles back into our legs. Riding for fun and not for training right now is pretty much my definition of perfect.

Twin-kies!

Coincidence? I think not......

(that's Michael Phelps by the way....if you haven't heard about why he is standing with Shaq check this out)

Abs Watch

Day 2 of my new mission to find something that I can do at the gym with a broken foot which turned out to be abs yet again.

And, ummmmmm.....yeah, it hurts. Raise your hand if you are a triathlete that has the endurance of a pack mule but a core so weak that two 30 minute sessions has you crying.....woot, woot. So, definitely some work to be done and progress to be made so that is a good thing. I try to divert my eyes from the treadmills and spin bikes that are calling my name as I hobble past on my way to the studio for abs class. I just have to keep reminding myself that stuff will be there all winter for me to get back into shape on so I just have to give it time. See, progress....no?

My friends are likely hitting the road soon for Timberman. I have wished them well and told them I will be thinking about them all weekend and wishing that I could be there for every swim stroke, pedal revolution and running stride. This weekend is all about rest and getting some things done in my life that have been on the back burner for months. And you know what, that feels good too.

Broken

So this happened. No, no…not the getting dressed up and looking nice bit of the photo. Yeah, a bit lower….see that. Yup, that is a SEXY looking moon boot type cast that I am not wearing just because it matches my dress. HI….my name is Sara and I am the idiot who slipped and fell during a site visit to the apartment that I am working on and broke a bone in my foot……HI, Sara….welcome to idiots anonymous.

Ugh, I have moved through the stages of this injury in a slow and meticulous fashion to now arrive at laughing at this. But let me tell you there were tears and a HUGE pity party that was thrown in my honor with copious amounts of ice cream. So needless to say I am not racing Timberman this weekend, hence the driving force behind my pity party. I am upset about it, I am bummed about it and I am frustrated about it but it is done, nothing more to do about it at this point so I am moving on.

My current obsession is finding things that I can do to remain active but still follow the doctor’s orders for staying off my foot so that it can heal. My coach suggested this during my pity party when I was having an email melt down to her about how much this situation sucks. I almost spit wine all over the computer screen laughing at ridiculousness of it. (Oh yeah, did I forget to mention that I am also drinking copious amounts of wine to get through this situation….because, why not?)

Yeah, so I can’t imagine ordering that video on Amazon because I would be really afraid of the “since you ordered this you might also like these selections” emails. Can you even imagine where it would go from chair dancing videos?

I am happy to report that I successfully made it through an abs class at the gym yesterday afternoon without breaking another bone in my foot. It was touch and go for a minute during the side plank and the regular plank that I had to do supported on only one leg. But I think that upped my “abs cred” with the instructor because he thought I was hardcore doing everything on one leg to make it harder and didn’t realize that the contraption sitting next to me was in fact a cast and not some bionic limb. My next attempt will be a Pilates class….lets hope that the instructor will actually stick to the mat based moves as the description suggests and not turn it into a step class, ie my worst nightmare.

So, that is what is going on with me. I went from and 11+ hour training week feeling tired but good with the level of work that I was putting into getting ready to have a great day at Timberman. To a 0 hour training week and learning how to walk again. I have another doctors appointment in a couple of weeks where they will do another x-ray to check the healing process. Hold your collective breath everyone that I will get clearance to at least start swimming again or else I am going to have the worlds best looking 6 pack abs with absolutely no endurance.

(oh....and by the way, the photo of my hubby and I looking pretty is from my friend Karla's wedding from this past weekend. Which also proved to be an awesome distraction from the crap-tastic situation that I have found myself in because I got to hang out with some awesome college friends all weekend and celebrate my friend getting married in a beautiful setting)

Adventures in Cycling

No pictures=didn't happen. Well....here is proof that you can ride your bike without even having to pedal if you find yourself some good friends to push you!

I foolishly decided last weekend that it would be fun to convince my friends to go out and ride the KNOT last weekend. What is the KNOT you ask and why does it have to be capitalized (for dramatic effect, of course!). Most of our cycling adventures from the city take us across the George Washington bridge and north to the town of Nyack or Piermont. There are a number of hills you can climb in the area and depending on the mood of the group that day you decide which way you will go and how many hills to climb. And that brings us to the KNOT. The KNOT is based around one intersection that you approach from all four cardinal directions (N/S/E/W) climbing every hill in the area on your approach until you have crossed through the same intersection four times and thus tying the KNOT. Get it.....yeah, corny I know.

Well, we were two hills down and on our approach to the third hill I downshifted and heard a screeching of metal that did not sound good. I immediately lost all power in my pedals and I knew something bad had happened. Thankfully I was not going that fast and I was able to react quickly enough to get my feet out of the pedals so I did not crash. My friend Ed was more than thankful for my mechanical since he was suffering a bit in the hills so this gave him the opportunity to take a breather and try to fix my chain. Snapping a chain is not something that normally happens to a bike, not like a flat tire that we can easily and quickly take care of on the side of the road. Breaking a chain required getting out the multi-tool directions that Ed CARRIES WITH HIM (but that is why we love him) and trying to figure out how to put the pieces back together.

After 30+ unsuccessful minutes of not only utilizing the chain tool but also the "magic stick" on the ground we gave up our repair job. We had sent the rest of the group ahead to climb hill #3 and they were circling back around just as we were giving up our repair job. In other news, a bento box not only makes a convenient place to store nutrition but also a handy place to store your broken chain! So now we were faced with how to get my now very expensive glorified scooter to the bike shop with me having no ability to pedal. Problem solved....my friends will push me! I think I may be on to something here....escorted triathlon anyone?

It was by far the most helpless feeling I have ever had on a bicycle. When I was going downhill I was able to coast and use my breaks to stop but when there was an uphill I would slow to a crawl until I just wasn't moving anymore. Then there would be a frightful moment when I would have to decide to either clip out to prevent myself from falling over or hope that my friends would get there soon enough to give me a push to keep me going before I fell over. I was laughing hysterically when my friends were pushing me....it was just so ridiculous!

Of course the bike shop in Nyack is just past the Runcible Spoon which is a cyclists mecca on the weekend or any other day for that matter. Every cyclist in the area stops at the Spoon at the half way point of their ride to grab a snack, refill water bottles from the huge coolers that they leave outside and take a potty break before heading back to the city or further north to bear mountain. I knew I was going to cause a scene getting pushed on my bike past the Spoon and the roadies did not disappoint. I was getting whopped and hollered at that I was cheating and all I could do was laugh.

I made it to the bike shop in one piece and the owner was super impressed that I even made it there on a bike with no chain. He gave me a "gold tooth" and in five minutes I was out the door and on my way. (Gold tooth=master link for my chain. I'm feeling pretty ghetto fabulous now though, perhaps another strategy to scare off my competition with my pimped out bike chain?) After a quick stop back at the Spoon we were off to tackle the last climb of the KNOT but unfortunately Ed and I missed a climb during our bike repair so similar to my tried and failed attempts at century rides this season it seems I will always be the bridesmaid and never the bride at completing crazy endurance events on the bicycle.

Alone

I don’t know what it is about cycling but I love *heart* riding in groups. This is generally a good thing for me because I have found a group of cycling friends that push me to be a stronger rider and force me to get my butt out there to ride because I have committed to meeting up with them on days that seem much more suited for crawling back under the covers. But there is always another side to the story isn’t there? I sort of live by the rule of I’m getting out there and riding so who cares if I am actually following the workout exactly to the letter as prescribed by the boss woman? Miles in the saddle after all are miles in the saddle, right? Well, I have come to learn over the past two summers of training with Liz that she has got some triathlon game and she is super meticulous about knowing exactly what training is right for you to prepare you to have your best day out there come race day.

So that brings me to last night. Try as I might to convince no less than two friends to come riding with me I was unable to get any bites. I had an hour “recovery” spin on the schedule with the directives of “small chain ring, 90+ rpm”. An hour is bit longer than I am willing to go to the gym and suffer through on a spin bike alone especially without any intervals or hill climb simulation to break up the hour session. 60 minutes of sitting there spinning in a room by myself was more than I could handle. Plus its summer and it finally wasn’t raining for once this week at 6pm so I put on my big girl pants and went out to ride alone. I also figured since I was riding this alone I was also going to follow the workout since I had no one else to answer to but myself out on the bike today.

Even though I put on my big girl pants to ride today I decided to be slightly more cautious heading up to Central Park by taking the west side highway bike path than riding up First Avenue dodging rush hour traffic. When I ride up to the park with Morgan I feel slightly safer weaving in and out of traffic because two bikes together seem more likely to be noticed and taken seriously than one girl all alone. Probably not necessary in the end but I don’t like to press my luck…. So once I got to the park I made it my biz-ness to not chase after the “boys” in the park with their team kit on and keep my cadence over 90 rpm even in the hills.

I guess I should mention at this point that my nickname among my cycling friends is “the masher” and I have staked my cycling reputation on the fact that under only dire circumstances am I to use my granny gear. Yeah….I’m a regular Jan Ulrich. A recent email from my coach kept popping into my head over my last few rides that mashing a big gear and consequently having a low cadence is the number one way to ensure you have a suck-tacular run off the bike. Pro cyclists can mash a big gear and then go lay down after riding a tour stage….I have to go run a 10K or a half marathon…big difference.

I think I may just be a 90 rpm convert. I was feeling fresh as a daisy climbing hills and still seeing speeds that I normally see when I am in bigger gears. I made it up and over Harlem hill (twice!) at 90+ rpm which is no small feat for me. I did notice in the flats and small rollers that I was being “out-ridden” by people pushing larger gears but I would catch them on the up hills. I think this technique is definitely something I am going to work on over my next few rides to see if I can find the delicate balance between terrain and my small & big chain rings to keep myself more around 90 rpm rather than the 80 rpm that I usually ride in. This weekend’s epic ride to “the KNOT” will be a true testing ground when my friends and I set out to climb every hill on the approach to a single intersection until we have crossed through the same intersection from all approaches (N/S/E/W) hence tying “the KNOT”….get it? It is a fun ride and hopefully Saturday’s forecast will hold out to give us a fun day for a ride.

In other news, I just got back from a lunch time pool swim where the woman swimming behind me in my lane told ME that I am a GOOD swimmer! Ha! Thanks lady you just made my day even though that statement is completely false!