My National Championships Decision

Three weeks ago, as I sat inside a race volunteer's SUV doing my best to keep my blood off his leather seats, all I could think about was how my season was over. Maybe, I thought, I could make a respectable comeback by Pumpkinman. Everything before that seemed like a lost cause. It was only minutes after a crash, but I was obviously in bad shape and I couldn't imagine being able to train well enough leading up to USAT Age Group National Championships to make the race worth it. On the trip home I discussed my thoughts with Eileen. I don't know if she was just sick of listening to me complain or truly optimistic, but she told me not to worry about it and that I'd be fine. There was a lot of eye rolling on my part (paired with me holding up various bandaged body parts to remind her of the state I was in). By the time we reached Maine I was convinced that the entire season was done. I think she'd stopped listening. At the very least she was pretending to ignore me in hopes that I'd stop talking about it (or maybe just stop talking in general). It's probably not a coincidence that the pain had really set in by this time, because my attitude had gone from negative to outright angry.

 A week later, not much had changed. I'd been able to do some light running, but I was still at least a week out from getting back in the water and I couldn't ride my bike until my hands healed enough to grip the bars. I was still angry. Then, when I finally managed to get on my bike, the pain was incredible. The pain from those first two post-crash rides brought me to the verge of tears. Insert even more anger and frustration. Any hope I had of competing again in 2011 seemed to be fading fast. But I kept running and other than one minor setback, things seemed to come along okay. A slight lift in attitude accompanied my workouts. And then I was able to get back in the pool. Other than a little rust from two weeks without swimming, I seemed to be doing alright in the water. Obviously I must have been thinking about racing again at that point because I ordered a new race suit the same afternoon (I have three perfectly good ones at home, but I was a huge fan of my De Soto ITU suit that lasted all of 1.5 races before getting shredded). Two days later I made it through a short ride without any pain. Until then I'd totally written off National Championships and was just waiting to the last minute pull out. But I held off, figuring I'd see how my next few workouts went and silently hoping that I'd be able to train and compete respectably. Each day this week brought along a bit more confidence as I got back into some actual training. Monday night I figured I'd be in great shape for Pumpkinman, but planned to skip Burlington. Tuesday I felt really good about Pumpkinman and everything else surrounding it, but was undecided on what to do about Nationals. Same feelings on Wednesday. Then, this afternoon, Stephen sent me off to the track for some speed work. When I'd first seen the workout earlier in the day I knew it was sort of a make-or-break session as far as my National Championship start was concerned. The race isn't for another two weeks, but I figured that if this workout didn't show that I was on the right track then it was time to officially set my sights on the late-season races. Of course, the fact that the deadline to pull out and get a partial refund for Nationals is tomorrow was a factor. I don't have the cash to be throwing money away on races I don't start so if I wasn't going to race, I was at least going to get some cash back. 

I pretty much stunned myself on the track, going considerably faster than I thought possible given everything I'd gone through in the past few weeks. My times were very similar to those I was putting up just before the crash. Obviously I hadn't gotten any faster, but it seems that I haven't gotten any slower either. As I set out on the 2 mile cool down at the end of the workout I was amazed at how I could be at this point in such a short time. Eileen, Stephen, my parents, everyone in my "camp" kept telling me things would come back quickly and I should just see how things played out. I listened, but I don't think I ever really thought it was possible to get ready for Nationals. I was never willing to just go and complete the race - I knew all along I could do that, but had no interest in just coasting around the course. If I was going to go, I was going to go in shape and ready to race. Amazingly, that's exactly what I intend to do.