CRASH!!!

This story will end with this.

Prologue

Two weeks ago, I was running in the woods with Michelle and the dogs (yes, I've been sneaking in trail runs). I stepped on a pile of pine needles and my feet came out from under me. I came down hard on a sharp rock with my left elbow, and the pain that shot down my arm kept me from holding the leash for several minutes. Blood dripped off the tip of my finger from a gouge in my pinkie. It hurt like hell for weeks (still hurt this morning), but I didn't get a cool bruise, so it wasn't really worth complaining about. Who's going to give sympathy when all you've got is a flesh wound less than an inch long? However, the affected spot was exactly where my elbows rested on my aero bars, and during the 12-hour race it went from a dull ache to a stomach-turning aggravation.

In addition to my sore elbow, my cheek was also very tender. This has nothing to do with the story I'm going to tell you today, but it's still funny and involves bodily injury, so I'm going to tell you about it anyway. The day before I left for Ohio I was walking down a side street from Starbucks with my coffee for today in one hand, and my coffee for tomorrow in the other. Suddenly this dreadful little 9-year-old brat coming out of the candy store across the street screamed the kind of scream spoiled children emit when their ice cream drops off the cone. "Get ON the sidewalk, Jackie!!!" her just-as-beastly mother yelled at her. I craned my head around to see what was happening. My line of vision was blocked by some parked cars, so I twisted even further to see what had happened to the filthy brat. Suddenly "CRACK!" my cheek, shoulder, and knee went slam into an iron light pole. My coffees went flying out of my hands and exploded on the sidewalk.
Dazed, I looked at my coffee on the ground and started to whimper. It felt like someone had hit me in the face with a baseball bat and my $7 of coffee was ruined. I left the mess on the street and turned right around to buy 2 more coffees. "Are you okay?!" a guy in a pick-up asked, leaning out his window.
"Yeah, I... I just lost my coffees," I said. I was still stunned. I kept walking and went back into Starbucks.
The good Samaritan in the pick-up parked and came in after me. "Are you sure you're okay?"
"Yeah," I said. "I'm just so embarrassed!"
Over a week later, my cheek bone is still sore. Still, no cool swelling or bruising to show for my pain.

Prologue Part II (the important part)

The final prelude to today's story happened this Wednesday. I figured that since it was a nice day and I still had the aero bars on my bike, I would go to the weekly time trial. I pulled my front wheel out of the car, and it was flat. I didn't have a tube, so I had to buy one off another participant. When that was finally changed, I pulled the rest of my bike out. I gave my rear wheel a spin to see if anything was rubbing, and it stopped turning immediately like the brakes were rubbing. I checked the brakes and they weren't touching. I checked the wheel and it wasn't touching the frame anywhere.

I went over to a couple of guys and said, "I feel like I'm going crazy. Will you guys please look at my bike and tell me what's rubbing on my back wheel? Because I can't find it for the life of me." They took a look at it, and they couldn't find it either. We flipped the bike upside-down and pulled the wheel off, then put it back on. It still wouldn't spin for more than a second. Then I called Grease Monkey. After telling me to do the obvious like check the brakes and frame for rubbing, she had me pull the wheel off again and check that the springs on the skewer were loaded properly and the cups on my axel weren't loose. Then she told me I was fucked.

I didn't race, and when Grease Monkey took my hub apart the next day, she said that my bearings were so far gone, that they didn't even spin. I didn't even know there were bearings in there. I thought... you know... it was round, so it spun. Duh! "I told you that your bearings were going when I replaced your bottom bracket," she said. That was in the beginning of March, and I had been so butt-hurt that she'd made me pay for the labor that I hadn't even paid attention to what else was wrong with my bike.

Since March apparently my bearings have been in a state of steady decay, slowing me down so gradually that I hadn't noticed the difference. In the 12-hour race I had noticed that I felt like I was dragging a concrete block, and had reached back and released my rear brake calipers, but I had just figured that my general crappiness was the headwind.

While we were waiting for new bearings to be delivered, Grease Monkey lent me another wheel. Riding it yesterday I was furious. My bike felt like it was flying. Until now I'd been at peace with my results of my races this season, and had accepted responsibility for the 'what if's.' Now I was thinking about how I'd just been out of the money by one place in Turtle Pond, I'd just barely not been able to hang in the Quabbin race, and I'd been only 3.5 miles off my PR in Ohio. And what about the crits before that? How could I have done in those??? What was I really capable of?

The Race

But all that was in the past and there was nothing I could do to change it. Luckily, I did have a race today where I had a good chance of bringing home the bacon. There was a separate Cat IV start, which meant that I wouldn't be racing against the big girls to get my points. Unfortunately, for the third week in a row, after warm, sunny days for the two or three days before the race, it was pouring on race morning. I woke up to thunder and lightning and the sound of a full-blown downpour outside. And it was only 50 degrees. I dug my leg warmers out of a drawer, took my raincoat off the hook, and got in the car.

Fast forward to the first few minutes of the race. There were about 20 of us in a tight pack, riding our brakes for the neutral start. It was pouring again, and I could feel the water seeping into my socks and chamois--the two places you hope to keep dry for as long as possible. The roads were slick, the riders were squirreley, and brakes weren't working right in the wet. I got caught in the back of the group because I didn't dare shove my wheel into tight spots to get through the pack. You've gotta get out of here, Claire, I thought. Someone's going to crash, and you want them to be behind you when it happens!

Finally I got toward the front, and not long after I did I heard the clatter of a crash behind me. Then I got spooked. We were bombing down a long, steep hill with crappy pavement and my glasses were fogged up. It was so wet that gritty water had found its way under my glasses and into my eyes, and all I could see were dim shapes in front of me. I let a big gap open because I was afraid I wouldn't have time to react at 30 mph. "ON YOUR RIGHT!" a girl called as she came around to close the gap.
"I'm so sorry!" I whimpered. "I just can't see a thing!" The clatter of the crash was still echoing in my head and I was thoroughly frightened.

Finally we managed to blow the pack apart on an uphill, and the group was whittled down to about 10 riders, before long we were down to six. Despite numb fingers and constant accelerations from the other girls (like we were on the last lap???), I managed to get my glasses into my pocket so I could just squint through the spray.

The finish line was at the top of a steep hill lasting about a quarter mile. As we approached it, heading out for our second of three laps, I easily kept up with the lead girls. They were breathing like elephants in heat, and I was still feeling very comfortable. I can win this! I thought. I knew with absolute certainty that I could trounce most if not all of these girls on a final uphill sprint. One other girl was about 10 yards in front with me, and I figured she would be the best person to try to make a move with. I said to her, "Want to work together on the last lap?" She nodded.

Now that I was confident that I had it in the bag, I flew through the first three-quarters of the second lap always keeping my new ally close at hand. I tried to stay near the front of the group to avoid someone else sinking me by doing something stupid. Coming over the top of a hill about halfway through the course, a third girl said to me and my ally, "We have a huge gap, let's try to keep it." I looked over my shoulder and wondered what she was smoking. They were only about five lengths back, and I decided not to work too hard. The other girls caught up and one girl used her momentum to shoot off the front, trying too early to make a solo break. I chased her down with everyone else on my wheel.

Now we were all accelerating, trying to prove to eachother that You can't drop me, toots! We were no longer in an organized paceline, and everyone was swirling around everyone else. I felt so strong with the resistance off my rear wheel, and I was working only hard enough to cover everyone else's moves, saving myself for a big move on the final lap. We were going at least 20 mph, probably faster.

Then, all of a sudden I saw my front wheel parallel to the road about 18 inches in the air. In a split second I realized that I'd drifted onto the white line, which turns icy slick when the road is wet. I hadn't even slipped, my bike was just upended... I must have mashed down on my left pedal so hard that I kicked the bike out from under me.

...And then I hit. I came right down on the elbow that was still sore from two weeks ago, then I slid on the ground, first on my chest, then on my hip and back, but always on my already-sore elbow. I vaguely remember looking through my legs (which were sticking straight up in the air) and watching my bike stop sliding, so I must have twisted or rolled to be facing backward. I remember being horrified through the whole thing, but I don't think I uttered a peep. It all happened so fast, that I didn't even have time to react. Finally I came to a stop.

I don't know if I lay there like I was dead for an instant, but I think I got right up to get out of the road. I know I had my bike upright as I watched the girls disappear over a ridge. "Are you okay?" a race official on a motorcycle asked. I nodded and he pulled away, leaving me alone wondering if I really was okay.

I looked at my bike, then dropped my head on my top tube and let out a sob. There wasn't much behind my crying, so I stopped right away. I was terrified, not upset... yet. I still didn't know if I was okay. All I knew was that my elbow hurt and I was scared as hell. It looked like I'd knocked my brake hood too, and who knew what else was fucked up on my bike. If I'd hopped on my bike that second, I might have been able to catch back on to the other girls, but I needed a minute to pull myself together. It wasn't till I'd been riding for several minutes that I realized I was okay. I could still bend my elbow (no broken bones), and I didn't see too much blood (yet). My bike looked like it would still work, so I got on and started riding slowly to the finish line to tell them that I was out.

I couldn't believe how long it took for more girls to ride by. I felt like I'd been sitting on the side of the road for an eternity, then slowly pedaling for almost a mile before another pair of girls came by and yelled, "Hop on!" I shook my head. There was no way I was riding anywhere near anyone else today. I kept riding with my left arm hanging at my side, and people kept cheering for me. I cut my hand along my neck to say, 'cut it out, I'm done.' I felt awful. I had been in the lead pack. I knew I could have beaten those girls. Now my race was over. I saw no point in finishing. It would be one thing if I was dropped, but not like this... There was a camera at the bottom of the hill to the finish and he pointed his lens at me. I covered my face, and then I had a better idea. I flipped him off just so that the picture would never be posted on the internet. Climbing up the hill, people were still cheering for me. Won't you all shut up?!?!?! I thought. "I'm hurt. I'm done," I yelled at the top of my lungs so they would all leave me the hell alone.

The race officials didn't give me a hard time about dropping out, which I appreciated. "You should go to the EMT over there and have that looked at," one of the women said. My sleeve had been rolled up in the crash, and I checked my elbow again for the first time since I'd gotten back on my bike. When I saw the giant bubble of grated flesh and blood, I made an "Eeeeeeew!" noise in the back of my throat and blanched. I hate blood.

Now woozier than ever before, I went over to the EMT and told her that she could patch me up as long as she promised I wouldn't have to watch. Instead, I watched as girls continued to finish their second lap as she blotted blood off my elbow. We'd only been riding for about 16 miles and these girls must have been 10 minutes behind me; goodness knows how far behind the lead pack they were. Again, I was furious with my luck. As with other times when I'd gone ass-over-teakettle on my bike, I was surprised how little it actually hurt to crash at 20 mph. I'd slid more than I'd grated on the pavement, and I hadn't even ripped my shorts. But I could have won!

"Let me know if I'm rubbing too hard," the EMT said. "I want to make sure I get all the grit out."
"Actually, I can't feel a thing," I said. It was true, I couldn't even feel the pressure on my elbow. The skin was completely numb. I tried to make light of the situation without ever looking at what she was doing, and she hid my boo-boo under a thick gauze pad. It took us forever to get my sleeve pulled back over the bandage, then she sent me on my way. I had a long ride back to the car, and I rode the whole thing with my injured arm hanging limply at my side. I was hoping someone would ask me about my race, since I was riding back with all the Cat III men, but no one seemed to care about me and my bum arm or my ripped jacket.

As I was driving home, the skies opened up and it rained so hard that the windshield wipers couldn't keep up. I dimly wondered if the rain we'd been riding through had been this heavy. My elbow ached like hell whenever I bent it enough to hold the steering wheel, so I drove one-handed, squinting through the rain to see the car in front of me. My arm throbbed, but I was more pissed that I'd lost the race. I knew that I could have beat those girls. I KNEW it! Prizes went five deep, and now every girl in that lead pack was going to get money because I had eaten shit. Points, money, glory, satisfaction, all gone! And now I didn't have any races to make up for it for several weeks. I almost cried.

At least the bandage was big.

Grease Monkey made me stop by the shop to drop off the bike on my way home, and while she explained to some old guy why he couldn't put inner tubes in sew-up tires, I stood there staring off into space. I felt like I was living inside a cotton ball and all my joints had been replaced with static. I don't know why I was still in shock. I'd crashed before. I almost cried when she hugged me and said, "Poor pumpkin!" She called me 'Pumpkin' because (come on!) I really was fine, just upset. All I wanted was to drag her off into the break room so that she could hug me, lick my wounds (figuratively) and tell me that everything was going to be okay. I felt like a 5-year-old who starts howling not because he's hurt, but because he's shocked by falling off the monkey bars and if he howls then he knows he'll get a hug. But because I'm 27 years old, I just drove home to take pictures of my wounds instead.

The dark top-most mark is from falling in the woods two weeks ago. The rest is from smearing myself on the road today.

Not impressive road rash, except that I did that THROUGH my shorts and leg warmers. (Ignore the stretch marks! I'm just holding them for a friend, I swear!)

Again, not impressive until you realize that I tore this up through my sock.

Bloody gauze after only an hour.

This weekend, a washout

This weekend was supposed to be great. It was going to be a breakthrough weekend physically and mentally. I was going to see friends, do races I'd been looking forward to, set PRs, laugh, smile, and be merry.

Life is full of disappointments.

First off, it rained. A huge storm blew through on Friday morning, and it's been raining pretty constantly since then. Now, Monday morning, it still has not stopped. Despite Ray of Sunshine Damon's argument that training when the weather is bad just makes you stronger than the competition, I HATE the rain. Dreary days make me sad, grouchy, depressed, and most of all, wet.

Saturday morning was the Wicked Half Marathon in Salem (of witch-burning fame). It was going to be great. I had wanted to do it since I saw the t-shirts last year. The WICKED half marathon, get it? Wicked because it's in Salem, the witch city? Wicked because it's near Boston and we say wicked here? Wicked because wicked kind of means cool and badass at the same time? Get it??? And it was only a half hour away. Then when Michelle said she wanted to do it with me I was thrilled! I knew I could run a PR, but with Michelle to pace off of I bet it wouldn't even hurt!

But life is full of disappointments.

First, Michelle canceled on me. You can't really blame her, the race had an early start and she'd only gotten in from a week in San Jose the night before. So I was already pretty disappointed as I drove alone through the spooooooooooky fog in Salem at 6:15 in the morning. It was eeeeeeeeeerie driving around so early in the morning when no one was out. Come to think of it, where was everyone? Salem is a really confusing place to get around, and it took me awhile to find the right place. Finally I did, but it was deserted. Mysteeeeeeeeerious Actually, scaaaaaaaaary. I went up to the door. It was locked. Creeeeeeaaaapy. By this time I'd figured out that I was in the wrong place, but like an idiot I hadn't printed up a copy of the race directions to find out where I'd gone wrong. You know how sometimes the night before they have packet pick-up in a different place from the start? Yeah, I'd gone to the nighttime packet pick-up place, while the race was starting some 10 miles away. Fuuuuuuuuck.

But sometimes you fuck up. And life is full of disappointments.

So I did not run the Wicked Half Marathon. I went home and ran 6 laps around the pond a mile from my house, the same fucking pond that I run around all the time. I figured it was about time for a half marathon PR, and I didn't need any stinkin' organized race to do it. I figured 8:20 miles would be a pretty challenging pace to run, but I resolved to be tough and soldier through. Alright, it would be really tough, but since I figured I wanted to be able to run a marathon in 3:39:59, I might as well get used to running 8:20 min/miles. Sure, all evidence suggested I couldn't run 13 miles at that pace, and barely run 10K at that pace, but I was sure I could suffer through it.

You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you just might find... that life is full of disappointments.

The first 2-mile loop I felt great. I meant to be running 8:20 pace, but every time my eyes drifted off my wrist, I would drop down to 7:30 pace. I was a rockstar! Still, I somberly reminded myself, you don't want to tucker yourself out. Keep the pace.

The second 2-mile loop I managed to hold roughly the pace I wanted, like clockwork. I had finally mastered this pacing thing! I was feeling pretty proud of myself, but I was feeling pretty queasy too. When I run around my threshold it makes me feel like I'm going to poop my pants. I had assumed that this was just something that happened to everybody, but apparently it does not. It has nothing to do with an actual need to evacuate my bowels, as I found out early on (I can never actually go afterwards). It just feels like really bad menstrual cramps, or when you've eaten something that doesn't agree with you. Alright, it feels like diarrhea.

Anyway, by the time I set out on the 3rd loop I felt like I was going to shit my pants and decided to slow down a bit to see if I started to feel better. Then I planned to speed up.

But the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and shit happens. And life is full of disappointments.

I never sped up. In fact, I slowed down. I got this feeling that I never used to get, but I get now. My legs feel fine, my muscles aren't sore, and my turnover is fine. I just get tired. I can get enough air, but it's like there isn't enough oxygen in it. It feels like someone has turned down the volume or something, and I just want to curl up by the side of the road and take a nap. I THINK I am beginning to understand the need for proper pacing, and the implications of going out too fast.


Long story short, I completed 6 laps around that stupid lake (laps 4-6 tacked on another half-mile loop). I had hoped to run around 1:50 (8:24 pace), but I ran 1:56:57. Only about a minute and a half faster than my PR from February. Worst of all, I was only about 11 seconds faster than Anne's half marathon PR (under similar unofficial circumstances: loops around a different pond)! I knew I was better than that! I have been spending some quality time with the Jack Daniels VDOT tables, and he thinks I should be able to run 1:50:59!

I went home exhausted, deflated, and soaked to the bone. And I was disappointed. Life is full of disappointments.

I had planned to run the Vermont 50K the following day, Sunday. Now before you go all crazy on me, there was an actual logic to this. My big A race for this winter is the Disney Marathon, and I want to have a good race there. The only problem is that I'm also signed up for the half marathon the day before. This was actually NOT my idea, but that's another story. So what I wanted to do was actually get some overdistance training in my legs before I started my main training block, and I wanted to make sure it came in the form of back-to-back long runs so that my legs would be prepared to recover quickly for the marathon the second day. But because road racing is so hard on the legs (or mine anyway), and because I find my main limiter in the late stages of a marathon is mainly pain from the pounding rather than actual muscle fatigue, I wanted the second run to be on trail. See, not only do trail runs have less pounding and impact, but also there would be less pressure to run the whole, entire thing, thus lightening the load on my joints while maintaining the time on my feet and distance covered.

See? There is a method to my madness. But shit happens, life is full of disappointments, and there are days when it rains on your parade. You don't always get what you want.

This is what the Vermont 50K would entail:
Driving 2.5 hours to Vermont on Saturday midday to sign up (there was no race-day registration and I wasn't signed up yet).
Sleeping in my car at a campground (since I do not have a tent, nor am I the tenting type, especially in the rain).
Figuring out dinner, breakfast, and coffee in an unfamiliar place.
Then running 31 miles through a ski resort (we're talking alpine skiing) in the rain on trails that had been rained on for 3 days straight now.

I knew I COULD do it, but I knew that with the mud and the rain and the "camping" I would be miserable. And the performance from my legs that morning mad me think that maybe this wasn't the week to push my running.

So I stayed home. Life... sucks.

Instead I went on a 13-mile run with Michelle in the morning. I had slept really badly the night before, had already sent a text message to Michelle saying "If I'm not at the end of your driveway at 7:30, I'm not coming". When my alarm went off I hit the snooze button and thought, I'm going to lie here until that thing goes off again, and if I hear rain then I'm going to turn it off and go back to sleep. But I didn't hear rain. Fuck.

Life is full of disappointments, and it never rains when you want it to.

By the time I got dressed, though, it was raining again. And it rained the whole, entire time we were running. My body did that thing again, that thing where I just wanted to lie down at the side of the road. "Do we have to run 8-minute miles??" I whined. Then it became, "Do we have to run 9-minute miles??" Then "Do we have to run 9:30's?" What I really wanted to do was stop running and walk home, or curl up and sleep in a mud puddle at the side of the road. Eventually I DID let Michelle run on without me and I shuffled home by myself, disappointed and tired. I fell just short of a marathon over the weekend, which I suppose I should be proud of, but I'm not. Hey, it was over 2 days, it doesn't count.

I had such high hopes for this weekend, but it just fizzled. I'd planned to run 18 miles more than I did. I'd hoped for a PR and a huge mental breakthrough in the same weekend. I ran 26.16 miles in 4:03:05, but that's like adding up all my best mile splits of all time and saying that I'm a 3:15 marathoner. I know, I know, I need to rest.

I want to be a good runner, but life isn't fair, shit happens, and sometimes it rains (and more often on the weekends) on your parade. You can't always get what you want, and life is full of disappointments.