Falling Off the Trail

Our first campground in New York was at the top of a hill/mountain in Watkins Glen State Park. (The hills in the finger lakes are much much bigger than ours, but I don't actually think it was an official mountain.) On Tuesday I decided to run down into the town, which was on the lake shore, and try to find a way to run by the lake. The lake is something like 50-60 miles around or some such distance I couldn't possibly manage. On my way out of the campground, I found a little semi-hidden trail, so I decided to take it. It took me down (literally) to the entrance to the part of the campground we were staying in. Then I took the road to town which was windy and down down down. I had only gone two miles or so when I reached the town and the bottom, so I tried to find a lake trail (there wasn't one) and explored the town some. After I had run another mile or two, I realized I had better start back up. Up was harder than I thought. I was glad I had done the small hill at Johnson's Mound a few times the week before. Two miles of steep incline is more than I am used to, and I was thoroughly done and very satisfied when I finished. I had that pleasant exhausted muscle buzz the rest of the day.

Because I sincerely intended all along to be extremely cautious to protect my meager running gains, I took Wednesday off. I had found a way that the tiny trail out of my campground area connected with the rim trail of the gorge which we hadn't hiked yet. (We did the more exciting and treacherous and popular gorge trail to see the dozens of waterfalls.) Thursday, I decided to explore the trails. Of course, since my tiny trail went down and down, the rim trail, which went to the top of the area, went up and up. I had my Garmin watch, so I could see that between the incline and my cautious trail running, I was going very slowly. For a moment I contemplated turning around and repeating Tuesday's run, but then I decided that I don't often get to trail run in the woods up a gorge rim and that I could always go easy on the trail and hard on the road the next day. Good plan, I thought. I ran the rim trail, being cautious, and came out at the top in less than two miles. Boo. Not long enough. I started down the road I found at the top, and only a few minutes later, I passed a little sign that labeled a "punchbowl extension" trail. I decided to take it. It took me straight down into a little clearing by a large pool of water, maybe the river just before the falls? I don't know. It was clearly a planned trail but very little used. I hadn't seen a single soul on the rim trail either, but this place seemed even less traveled. From the clearing, I spotted an even smaller trail (perhaps my definition of cautious is a bit stretchy,) and I started down it. I hadn't gone even a quarter mile around the edge of the "punchbowl" when I tripped on a root or a hole or something. It happened so quickly. My left ankle twisted and then slid off the trail towards the pool, and my right side--all the way up to my right cheek--hit the trail. Moments later, when I had time to reflect, I was rather impressed by my body's survival instincts. Although I haven't run on a trail in a couple of years at least, and even then I only had the chance a few times a year on vacation, my body knew what to do. I live in a flat part of the world, so I don't ever practice falling off of a precipice. I didn't think about grabbing hold of the vegetation on the side of the slope or digging my fingers into the trail, but I did those things. When I caught my breath, I pulled myself up on the plants and the roots, hoping I hadn't grabbed a strong vine of poison ivy in the process, and regained the "trail." "Well," I said to myself, "I guess that's the end of that run."

The problem, of course, was that I had a short, steep climb to get up to the main trail, and then a longish trek back to the join with my little campsite trail, and I had clearly sprained my ankle. The steep incline was rough, but I found another trail with roots and things that I could use to pull myself up with my arms, mostly. Then on the main trail I told myself it was not so bad. I could definitely make it. I had been reading Into the Wild, so my head was full of stories of people who have done crazy things and survived against the odds. (Of course, the main character survives for quite a while and then makes a rather small mistake and dies from it, but I chose not to focus on that part of the book.) A less than two mile hike on an obvious trail in a state park didn't seem that extreme, even with a sprained ankle. But it was slow going, to say the least. I felt like I was not moving, and the longer I walked, the worse I felt. I considered sitting down and crying for a while, but I talked myself out of that decision. I could be sitting there for hours. I had at least managed to get myself onto a real trail, but no one had taken the trail yet, that I had seen. I decided that really my only option was to gut it out and get myself back. I confess that I did cry a few times, but I kept going.

I was watching my Garmin to judge how much longer I'd have to hold it together. I knew I'd be back by mile four, since I had fallen around two and had taken a short-cut up from the bowl. When I had been walking for about a mile, I saw a glint to my right, away from the gorge. A car? A road, then? I thought a road would be much easier to walk on than a trail, but then I wouldn't know where I was and might end up walking even farther. I stopped and stared. I decided that it was not a road, but a campsite! I figured it must be somehow connected to the campground I meant to find--at least part of the same state park. I decided to leave the trail and walk through the woods to the campsite and figure it out from there. Again, I must marvel at a fortuitous turn of events. Not only did I not fall all the way off the trail when I fell, but when I did leave the trail on purpose, I walked into the only campsite with an awake camper. A woman was sitting in her sweats having coffee and doing a crossword. I came up behind her and apologized for startling her by crawling out of the woods and then explained what had happened. She said she had a map of the campgrounds in her car, which she fetched, and we determined that she and I were camping as far from each other as was possible. She said she would drive me back. I generally hate to impose on people that way, but I had to. I thanked her profusely and got in her car.

As she drove, we talked a bit about running. I said that I had, to amuse myself, asked myself if I had been in a trail race, would I have tried to finish? I concluded that I could not have finished. She said her boyfriend had recently sprained an ankle in a trail race and did finish, which she thought was a stupid thing to have done. She, it turned out, was an ER nurse practitioner! My guardian angel maybe dozed off a bit when I was down in the punchbowl, but she worked hard afterwards to make up for it! The nurse reminded me to stay off the ankle as much as possible for at least 48 hours and to take it very slowly after that. She reminded me that a sprain takes much longer to heal than a fracture (grrr) and could bother me for up to six months and that the worst thing I could do is push it before it's ready. As she was talking, the pain, which I must have been keeping at bay with adrenaline or desperation, started to climb. I could barely tolerate the jostling of the car on the rough roads. I felt myself going into that sort of semi-consciousness that happens in labor and other intense pain situations.

When she dropped me off, my family was all still sleeping, so I called out for some help. The nurse asked me if I needed help making it to the picnic bench on the far side of my campsite, and I said no, I had just walked a mile, and someone would come help me in a minute, but then my vision blacked over and the world tilted and I got hot and cold at once. I grabbed for the car and held myself up, and she dashed out of her seat and caught me. By then Doug was out of the camper and the two of them carried me to the picnic bench, where I laid down. The nurse commented that she probably could have just carried me herself, and I should have said I was going to faint. She said to lie down for a while and whenever I felt faint again to lie down with my foot up.

We put ice on my ankle for 20 minutes at a time, and I started to shake. It was a chilly morning, and I was wearing a tank top and shorts. Doug gave me a blanket and some towels to cover up with, but I couldn't stop shaking and shaking. I shook for about two hours. I should have eaten something, but I was too wrapped up in my pain and too light-headed to think of it. Finally my family got up and ate, and I ate too, but I couldn't stop shaking. Was it from cold or pain or fear? I don't know. I kept replaying in my head the moment around the fall and the scenarios of how that all could have ended differently. I decided it was always going to end up OK, one way or another, but it certainly could have been much worse than it was.

Twin Lakes Triathlon

A couple of weeks ago, I signed up for Twin Lakes Triathlon because back in January my friend Jen signed up for a women’s tri in June.  She was nervous, but I was excited and maybe a little bit jealous.  To encourage her training, I found us an indoor triathlon to do in February, but when the time approached, my back was too sore, and I didn’t know if it was a return of all of my problems.  She did it alone.  I was sedentary. Then in May, when I was feeling better again, we did a brick workout, and I told her everything important I could remember about the day of a triathlon.  I told her about setting up the transition area and walking through the entrances and exits, about being dizzy after the swim, about the 300 lb woman who was near me in transition at Lake Zurich and wouldn’t let any of us other women help her because she needed to prove to herself and to the world that she could do it.  Oh, lots of things.  As we biked and ran and biked and ran, I put myself back in my triathlon days and gave her whatever seemed valuable. It was her first triathlon so the things I left out were the things about winning, the things about specific pace strategies.  I focused, for her and in my mind, on how fun it is to swim and then bike and then run.  By the time the morning was over, I was thinking, “I just did Jen’s brick workout no problem.  I believe in her.  She is ready. So why would I not believe in me, too?”  I didn’t think Jen was going to win the triathlon, and that didn’t affect my excitement for her in the least. She was going to have a great day. Why was I letting unrealistic expectations hold me back? Didn’t I really and truly believe that it was wonderful that she had signed up, that she would be awesome for finishing, and that a day spent swimming, biking and running is a day well spent?  I thought about it, and I decided that signing up is about being brave, finishing is about celebrating where you’ve been, and all the rest is about joy.  I am brave, I’ve had a long, heart-rending journey where athleticism is concerned, and I am ready for some joy.  

I missed the glut of early June triathlons, and I am unavailable for the mid-July triathlons, so I settled on a sprint in Palatine in late June. That didn’t leave me any time to really train, but I had been riding my bike and swimming and running a little, and thanks to Jen, who did great in her triathlon, I knew I could finish. Plus, I’m still recovering and still trying to figure out what that recovery means.  Training, real training, training to win, is probably not a good idea for me at this point.  The soonness of the triathlon made true training impossible.  Perfect. 

Last weekend, I decided it was probably past time to get out my road bike.  I hadn’t been on it in almost two years!  When I bought it, I simultaneously bought the bike shoes that snap into the pedals. The first time I tried to get on, I fell over in the street in front of my house.  I thought I probably shouldn’t repeat that performance in T1. On Saturday, I rode maybe 6-8 miles (my odometer wasn’t working) to practice clipping in and out of my pedals. Last Sunday a friend and I did the 62 mile route of the annual Swedish Days ride. My speedometer still wasn’t working, but for most of the ride, I felt like I was flying.  I was, in fact, moving faster than the birds flying along the side of the road. Oh, it felt good. I didn’t start to feel tired until maybe 50 miles in, and I managed to not fall off my bike, even when in the second turn of the ride a peloton of crazy riders passed me on a turn and the leader wiped out from the fast turn on gravel. I took it as a cautionary tale, not that I needed it. I am always cautious on turns.

For some reason, I didn’t get all keyed up the day before this triathlon, maybe because I didn’t take any days off.  I swam easy on Thursday and rode easy on Saturday.  I spent the day Saturday shopping and having lunch with my sister, and getting together the stuff required for a triathlon seemed like an afterthought after the kids were in bed and the house was quiet. Maybe I didn’t get keyed up because I didn’t have any expectations for myself other than to finish. Maybe it’s because in spite of my beliefs about bravery and celebration and joy, I was a little uncertain how I felt about getting back into the sport and not looking like I was any good at it. Boo to me for those thoughts. Unfortunately for me (or fortunately, since it didn’t allow me much time to freak out?), I didn’t open all of the e-mailed documents about the swim, bike and run courses until Saturday evening.  I had been aware that the swim was going to be 750m rather than the more common 400m for a sprint triathlon.  I somehow had missed, though, that the run was not 5K, as I had been counting on, but 4.5 miles.  That’s 150% of what I thought I’d be running. My heart sank.  If someone had asked me some years ago which of the three sports was going to be my weak link, I never ever would have predicted it would be the run, but Saturday night, I was sure it was the run.  My longest runs now are six miles, and they are a struggle for me.  4.5 is quite close to that.

At 3:30am on Sunday I woke up to torrential downpour. Boo.  I hated the thought of packing up all of my stuff in the pouring rain.  I hated the thought of driving for an hour for no reason.  I also, I admit, didn’t love the idea of doing the triathlon in a downpour, if there was no lightning.  But I ate a bowl of oatmeal and put my bike and my other stuff in the car, along with an extra towel, and started out.  

I had printed out the directions, and I thought I was following them, but something confusing must happen with the exit from I-90 to 53. I thought I took the exit, but when the next road never appeared, I realized I was somehow still on 90. I am thankful for Siri, who told me to keep driving to the next exit, which was, unfortunately, 8 miles away, and turn around. My poor navigation luck struck again when the entrance ramp back onto 90 was closed for construction, so I had to drive ten miles back the other way to another entrance. With those added detours, Siri told me that instead of arriving around 5:15am, when packet-pickup began for those who didn’t pick up in advance, I was going to arrive at 5:52, eight minutes before packet pick-up ended.  Yikes.  Then, when I arrived, the parking lot was full.  The race organizers had warned of limited parking and said that later arrivals would need to park on nearby neighborhood streets and walk into the park through a side entrance.  The problem was that I didn’t even know where the nearby neighborhoods were, and Siri just isn’t that smart.  Luckily, I drove around for a bit and found a road lined with parked cars with bike racks.  The park with the triathlon was probably less than half a mile down the road. The lovely check-in women told me I could calm down: I had made it. Plus, it had stopped raining.

I had my arms and legs marked, set up my transition, put my number on my bike and my race number belt, went to the bathroom, and then it was time to listen to the opening announcements.  The first wave started a few minutes later, just as a brilliant sun emerged from the last of the rain clouds. I started my triathlon ten minutes after that, in wave five. 

The swim waves were determined, I believe, by predicted swim time.  In the pool, I can do 100m repeats at around 1:50, so I signed up, feeling I was being optimistic, to finish the swim in 14:00-16:00.  I had agonized over that for a few minutes but finally decided that even if I was fudging down, so would most people. Before we were released into the water, I looked around at my fellow wave fives.  Few were wearing wet suits.  The water was supposed to be 77 degrees, so maybe they had wet suits and decided the time gained with them would be lost in transition, and they weren’t needed for temperature.  There were several women wearing bra tops.  The wave was more women than men, but there were some men too.  One woman standing near me didn’t appear to have goggles.  I thought of my friend Rachel who, two years in a row (!), forgot her goggles at the Batavia triathlon.  “You don’t have goggles?” I asked the woman near me.  She said she didn’t because she didn’t really know how to swim freestyle, so she just does breast stroke with her head above water.  Hmmm.  I do have a friend who did backstroke in a triathlon, but he never would have signed up for under two minute pace on the swim. I asked about that.  “Oh, I’m planning to finish the swim in about half an hour, “she said.  Huh.  So it must not be assigned by predicted finish, I remarked.  She said that she put down a faster time on her registration.  Clearly.  “You’re planning to do 16:00?” she asked.  “Maybe I’ll just try to stay with you,” she said.  I agreed that that would be a good strategy for her, but I didn’t have much confidence that she would pull it off.  It reminded me of the woman I talked to before my first Olympic open swim, gazing out into a largish lake almost to the point of the horizon where there was an orange cone and saying, “Where are we swimming to?  That will take us less than hour, right?”  Both women made me feel like I was at least more prepared than they were, no matter how much I questioned myself.

Even as my wave was called down to the water’s edge, I didn’t feel nervous.  No one put him/herself at the front, so although I meant to be hanging back, I ended up only a few people back from the front and center of the wave. I resigned myself to having to either battle it out in the water or just outswim my wave.  Surprisingly, even as the whistle sounded, I still didn’t feel that nervous.  We plowed into the water for about a meter, and then the bottom abruptly disappeared and we were all swimming.  I don’t remember the swims in previous triathlons being so crowded except maybe in Bangs Lake.  There were people around me constantly: people I had to swim around, a few people I accidentally kicked, and then kicked again and again, people not really swimming, people swimming but slower than I was.  I didn’t feel like I was swimming super quickly.  I was just swimming a nice strong pace. On top of that, I was swimming freestyle for a few strokes and then breast stroke for a few strokes to keep myself oriented and find holes in the crowd to swim through.  I had my obligatory open-water panic, but I had prepared myself (and Jen) for that feeling, so I rode it out and kept swimming.  The swim was a long loop around a little island. Once I turned and was heading back, the swim felt less crowded and less long.  I did more freestyle and less breast stroke.  A lovely hole opened up and I had a couple hundred meters of unimpeded swimming.  It was marvelous.  The sun was blazing a couple of feet into the water, and I could see little green seaweed pieces and the sparkle of bubbles. My freestyle felt effortless and smooth. There was another thick crush of swimmers as I neared the end, most of them wearing caps in the color of the two waves ahead of me, so I figured I must have done OK on the swim.  The ground appeared beneath me only a meter or so before the shore, and I climbed up and crossed the mat into T1. 

I had forgotten to start my watch, so I had no idea how long I had been swimming.  In T1 I asked one of the few people there from my wave how long he had been swimming.  He said 12:45, so I thought I was probably faster than I had planned to be. I found out later that my time was 13:44, a 1:43 pace.  Nice. Even before I knew that, though, I felt good about the swim.  I felt strong.  Plus, almost all of the bikes from my wave were still racked.  I sat down, swiped at my feet with a towel, and put on my socks and bike shoes.  I jogged my bike over to the mount line, clipped in without falling over (yay!) and biked off.

I felt great on the bike too.  I passed a number of people who apparently swam in faster waves, and there were maybe three or four people who I passed multiple times and then they would pass me later. I am conservative on the corners, and there were about 30 turns, some of them more than 90 degrees, in a 14 mile course.  But on the straights and up hills I would zoom past people.  Of course, there was one moment when I looked down at my speedometer, saw that I was at 24 mph, figuratively slapped myself on the back for being awesome, and then was promptly passed by a guy who must have been going close to 30mph.  Oh well. I felt strong and fast and confident.  It was a wonderfully good time.  The course was through beautiful neighborhoods of expensive houses much of the time, and I got to ride down the center of the street as quickly as I wanted.  I ended up averaging 18.8 mph, even with all of those turns. What is more fun on a sunny Sunday morning? As I reentered the park on my bike, I was told to be cautious as there were still some bikes exiting. I surveyed the sparkling lake and smiled at a volunteer who cheered me on.  My eyes filled up with tears, and I choked up a bit. I was beyond joy. I was two-thirds of the way through a triathlon. I hadn’t thought I’d ever get to do such a thing again.

I dismounted without falling down and jogged back to my transition area.  I was one of the only bikes back from my wave.  Awesome again. I hadn’t bothered to buy speed laces for this tri, so I sat down again to change shoes and tie laces. Then I started to run. 

I remember from past triathlons that it’s extremely hard to judge pace at the beginning of the run.  I felt like I was not moving at all.  I felt, again, like running has become my weak link, and maybe it has. Of course, I told myself, it’s possible that I just felt so slow running because I had spent the better part of the last 45 minutes at 20+ mph, so even my best run was bound to feel slow in comparison. I also became very aware that I had been breathing hard for about an hour.  I hadn’t wanted to let up on the swim when it seemed like I was getting ahead of the pack.  I hadn’t wanted to slow down my breathing on the bike because I wanted to keep riding hard and speeding through the course.  I was having too much fun to prioritize something like breathing. On the run, though, I wished I could slow down, but my background, in spite of appearances, is running, and it just feels wrong not to be pushing a running race.  So I kept at it.  

The run was hot and steamy, as the morning’s rain was evaporating off the hot pavement.  I never could tell how fast I was running, even after the weird bike-to-run feeling wore off.  I wanted to stop many, many times, but I didn’t.  I told myself over and over, “I will just keep running.”  I decided that victory, for me, was not about pace but about not stopping. I never stopped.  The last mile was rough, but I ran it. I don’t know how the splits worked out, but I averaged an 8:23 pace.  That’s about as good as I could expect given the distance and my paltry training.  I’ve been running that distance (or often less) at between 8:30 and 9:10 pace, so an 8:23 meant I was trying.  With a bit of surprise and sadness, I will admit that the run was the least fun part of the race for me, but even so, I am nothing but grateful that I could do it.  I have a lot of blessings that I got to put to use. It was a morning wonderful beyond my expectations, both my recent short-term expectations and my long-term expectations as I’ve been down for so long with bad injuries. 

When the results were posted, I saw that I was 18^th woman.  I scanned for others in my age group and saw that I was fourth in the 35-39 category, but the overall winner was also 39.  Just in case she was therefore subtracted from the age group awards, I stuck around to see if I would get third.  I did. I am nothing but happy.