Two for Thursday?---

As made popular by the Leadville 100,

"You are tougher than you think you are, and you can do more than you think you can."

When I am tired on Sunday, I will say this to myself and hopefully find a way to dig deep to achieve my goals.

In less than 3 whole days I will be toeing the start line of my second 140.6 race.  Yes, the first one was very special.  I followed coach's plan and I had every confidence in my training that I could do it.  I was incredibly nervous about what if I could feel my tibia stress fracture return on the run.  Yet, everything fell into place and I was stoked to not only finish my first full feeling relatively good, but to break my goal of 12 hours with a 11:38.

This year the ride has been more bumpy.  On 6/14, I had suffered a bad bicycle crash where I fractured my shoulder blade, bruised my ribs badly and had a lot of road rash.  After spending a long night at the hospital, I walked out the door and the tears started falling down my face.

I was heartbroken.  Not only did I physically hurt badly, I was truly upset that I was not sure if there would be any more triathlons for me in 2012.  I love working out.  I did not know when I would be able to resume that which was now such a big part of my life.  I left the hospital to listen to a voicemail that had already come through from coach early that morning who had heard what happened, saying to stay strong and we could work through it.

Those first few days, I avoided some phone calls and was just rather down about it all.  I was dying to get back to it but simple clothing changes and showers were hard enough that first week.  The road rash was painful and required lots of dressing changes.  However, after 9 days I could take no more and I started running slowly on the treadmill, taking great caution not to move my left wing (as that brought on lots of pain.).  I also started riding indoors.

My friend, DM, brought over his computrainer for me to borrow as riding outside would be difficult for awhile.  I started working into some hard efforts on the bike over time with some very uncomfy ribs as I breathed in hard.

Slowly strength started to return to my shoulder and I noticed it start to move freely on its own while I ran.  Then I started back out onto the roads on the bike.  Many of those rides back felt rough, like I had just fell behind while I was down.  It was frustrating to feel like I could not keep up with folks that I was accustomed to riding with.  Yet, what could I do but be thankful I was back riding outside!  :-)

Swimming was the last thing that I was able to do again.  As swimming was never my strong suit, I am not sure I lost too much here despite my VERY limited swim training this summer.

My shoulder still is not right.  I was shocked when I saw my 6 week xray with such a visible separation.  I had been very nervous about it holding up to a 2.4 mi swim but the 1.8 mi open water swim gave me the much needed confidence boost I needed.  It may not be healed and still be sticking out a bit, but I am certain it will be fine for this swim....perhaps not great but like my swim ever is!  (this year...next?...it will be a goal to make this a different story!)

It has been 12 weeks since I crashed and this week I will be lining up to race a 140.6.  The progress has been all that I could hope for.  Frankly, I am just happy to have reached the starting line in this form.  There have been plenty of rough days during this round of IM training.  And just no matter what happens Sunday, I am just thankful to get the opportunity to do REV3 Cedar Point!

A Special Thanks to-
-Coach MG for all the workouts and guidance
-DM for letting me borrow his CT
-My training partners which make all the long days better (Espeed, ET, CV BH and the rest of the BAFF team and sis who was there when I was just finding my run again and LOTS of others!)
-Trakkers/REV3 team for all the connections and wonderful sponsor products
-And especially my husband for all of his support!