Great Floridian Triathlon
October 23rd 1999

Following my accident in August 1998, the 1999 season looked a bit of wash out. However, as time went on and my recovery improved, I managed to achieve a few things this year. I returned to Triathlon at the end of July with a Sprint race in Cherry Hill. Then had to have more surgery a couple of weeks later. I did enter and complete a 40k TT ten days after that (with the stitches still in my leg ;-)).

Thanks to a kind offer from Lori Mihalcik from the Tri-DRS list I was able to enter the GFT 99 race as the bike member of a three man relay team along with Lori's SO Paul as the runner.

Pictures Appear Here.

Training went well, and I completed the Reston, VA Century with no real problems 4 weeks before the race.

I got down to Florida a few days before the race, staying with my parents about 45 minutes from the race site. In retrospect driving 17 hours with my leg in one position a few days before the race may have been my undoing as it was fairly stiff in the days leading up to the race.

It was great meeting some of the fellow deads the afternoon and evening before the race, despite registration being perhaps a little more stressful than would have been comofortable - but in the great scheme of things, it got sorted out and away we went.

Unless you have actually been there, it is very difficult to express the feeling as you arrive at a race site for this kind of race. As I drew up it was still dark, and floodlights lit the transition area. Everywhere you looked there was activity, people being body-marked, athlete's warming up (seeing someone jogging while wearing a wetsuit is fairly entertaining too).

I met up with Lori shortly before the start, and walked down to the swim start. First went the people doing the whole Ironman, with relay teams setting off in a mini wave a few minutes later.

Just as the athlete's started my parents arrived, it was quite something to see my father, a veteran of 30+ marathon's looking around with wide eyes at the area and the buzz in the air.

I watched the first lap of the swim, then wandered off to the transition area to get ready and wait for Lori in the "Corral' set aside for relay teams.

While there, one of the fellow riders was concerned as he had not brought any water bottles for his bike thinking they would be provided. As I had four, plus a full Jetstream, I told him where my bike was on the rack, and that when I set off I would leave one of the bottles for him (that's what I'm doing in the rack picture).

Soon enough, Lori arrives and off I go. Probably the less said about this ride the better...

I felt great, my heart rate was low, and thanks to training in the hills around Northern Virginia, the hills here did not concern me at all. I won't go as far as to say that I steamed up them, as I still don't have all that much power in my left leg, but equally I wasn't struggling, only having to get out of my saddle for short periods twice on Sugarloaf. Sadly at around miles 35-40 it all came unravelled. A pain started somewhere in the middle of my knee joint and got progressively worse, spreading up my leg to the site of the break in my femur.

By the half way point I had to sit down and try to strethc and see if I could get it to go away. Peter Zein ran into me here, and very kindly offered me a pop tart, but I would say that my mental state was not really conducive to conversation at this point.

I got back on the bike and got going well enough, but in just a few miles my leg got worse again, and at the 65 mile point I did some mental calculations, based on the speed I could maintain only using one leg, I was not going to meet the cut off. I rode on another mile or so, before sanity prevailed, there was no point in making this injury any worse and I returned to the 65 mile aid station to call it a day.

I managed to find Lori and Paul back at the race site, and Paul continued out to do the run anyway.

So where does that leave me, obviously at the time I was bitterly disappointed, but I live to fight another day. As some of my friends have said (thanks 'Biddies), in a lot of ways it is a miracle that I even managed to get to the start line. And as Lance Armstrong said when he crossed the finish line in Paris this year "If ever you get a second chance at something in life, go all the way".

Postscript : I took the month of November off to let the leg heal itself completely. And am now training again, with renewed enthusiasm. I feel in a different place mentally from much of the year. I really don't have anything to prove to myself, and I have come back to just enjoying the feeling of being out there, whether it be cycling with friends or alone in the hills to running in the darkness. As triathletes/runners/cyclist/swimmers we have grasped a lifestyle that makes us feel good about ourselves.

For myself, I now fully understand that every training session is a gift and have a sense of achievement both during and after that I have never had before.

As for Y2K - who knows ?

Maybe I'll see you at the starting line :-)