Another Perfect Weekend
This past Sunday the New York City Triathlon hosted the the Paratriathlon national championships for the seventh consecutive year. I, too, was there for a seventh go at it. As one my expect, everything over the weekend went perfectly and life was enriched because of it.
The notables started, as they often do, at the airport on the way out of Denver. I took advantage of the technology Expedia offered and downloaded my itinerary—which my prosthetics provider A Step Ahead of Hicksville, NY provided me—directly to my computer’s calendar. This made it so easy to keep track of my departure time and, hence, show up with plenty of time to spare. Nevertheless, I missed yet another flight.
Let it be a lesson to you all that despite a departure from the Mountain time zone, the downloaded version of your itinerary could be on Eastern time.
The nice lady behind the counter at check-in actually remembered me from my flight to South Africa a couple of months back. She kindly checked, free of charge, my bike and bag a healthy 14 hours before my newly scheduled 1:00AM flight, making it a breeze to head back home and cook up a delicious kale soup to enjoy with my family and neighbors in our driveway—the kids played on bikes and scooters while the day’s light dwindled. After dinner and toddler clean-up, I snuck in an hour of shut-eye before heading back to DIA for the red-eye.
Airline sleep is typically difficult to come-by so I did something completely novel for me: I brought my own pillow! And it worked perfectly. I had a whole row to myself, laid my head upon my personal bedding and slept so well they had to wake me up on the tarmac in NYC after everyone had already deplaned. Perfect.
It was then 6:30AM EST and the nice people at Delta ensured me that despite my luggage’s alternate route to Minneapolis, it would be in by 2pm and delivered to my hotel by 6pm. This would make my trip into the city so much smoother without having to lug that bike with me. Perfect.
At 6pm the nice lady at Delta’s baggage counter informed me that my stuff had been noted as “Departed,” but just to make sure she’d check it’s progress toward Manhattan. “Looks like it never left the deck. It’ll got out on the 8pm delivery, you’ll have it by 9.” The mandatory bike check-in would close at 9PM. Wow. How perfect.
At 9PM, with the delivery remaining elusive, Delta assured my things would be at the hotel by the wee hours.
I slept well, perhaps as good as I’ve ever slept before a race, knowing that my machine would be with me when I awoke.
The wake-up call came at 4AM and I immediately proclaimed, as I’ve done many time before, “Rrrrrace Dayyyyyy!” I headed right downstairs to put my bike together so as to arrive at the race start no later than 5AM. But it wasn’t there…
I pulled out my iPhone to make a few calls, eager to come up a bike somehow. The first couple calls provided nothing; the third call was a winner: Justin Modell, a local triathlete and the organizer of the paratriathlon division, had a bike for me and, since he was already at the race, he made the call to his doorman to let me in. I cabbed it over, grabbed his bike and his right shoe and peddled my way to the race, arriving at 5:15AM, in the clothes I’d donned 36 hours prior.
(I would later learn that my bike and wetsuit arrived, in perfect timing, the moment I jumped in the water to start the race at 7:10AM, by a company aptly named, no joke, Perfect Delivery Service!)
Surprisingly, without the wetsuit, I swam one of my faster races there and exited under 17 minutes, ninety seconds ahead of the fastest one-legged triathlete out there: JP Theberge. That 90 seconds turned hard into a seven minute deficit. I had a tough time riding crunched up on a too-small road bike with my bike leg unable to clip in on the mismatched pedal/cleat combo, i.e., I was unable to pull up with the prosthesis or get out of the saddle—JP blazed by me about a third of the way through the ride.
Without my speed lace race shoe I was forced to sit and tie the lace of the race shoe I’d traveled in (probably doesn’t mean much to most of you) and stopped twice before exiting transition to stretch my aching crunched-up back, making for a very slow T2.
I knew I was at least seven to eight minutes off pace of JP when I saw him coming the other way from the 180 turnaround near the bike finish. So, with no hopes of winning, and with the thin skin from the recently-healed blister from the previous weekend’s race, I sucked it up and pre-emptively rebooted a few times on the run. This, I’m happy to say, resulted my first blister-free finish of seven there. More perfection.
(I must note that JP had a fantastic finish time of 2:19, edged only by the ageless and legendary One Arm Willie Stewart. Wingers Joel Rosinbum and Tommy Knapp also had great races and I wrapped up the top five. The top five on the women’s side were visually impaired Robin Caruso, below knee amp Meg Fisher, VI Yvonne Mosquera, wheel-bound Carly Waugh and in fifth was my very good friend and one of my worldwide favorite people, above-knee amp Sandy Dukat.)
So don’t let this photo fool you. I wasn’t stomping mad at Mile 1 as I ran straight at Erik Shaffer, my prosthetist and sponsor from A Step Ahead. I was, atypically, just having a little fun on the run.
The last little bit of perfection relative to the race transpired a couple days later: my customer service experience with both the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission and Yellow Cab was so much more satisfying than that with Delta. After a series of phone calls placed by myself and the lovely Dr Sharon Wetherall, FedEx delivered my iPhone I had dropped in the back of the cab at JFK!
(Regarding the photo, that was kinda how I felt sitting on the tarmac for two hours, waiting to depart, when I discovered the missing phone…)
Running and Skating
Before I say anything else, I must give attention and congratulations to Amy Palmeiro-Winters, the recipient of the AAU Sullivan Award, presented to the nation’s Amateur Athlete of the Year. For those of you not familiar with Amy, she is a fellow below knee amputee and patient of A Step Ahead Prosthetics, in Hicksville, NY, on Long Island.
Last New Years Eve/Day, she ran 130.04 miles in a “how far can you run in 24 hours” race and beat the nearest competitor—the nearest able-bodied competitor, male or female—by 15 miles! This qualified her for the 24-Hour World Championships, to be contested in France sometime in May, as part of Team USA! YEAH AMY!!! Read all about her at www.seeamyrun.com.
Earlier today, I completed something a bit more mainstream. The Boston Marathon. I did, however, run six miles beforehand and squeezed in a difficult extra mile after crossing the finish line. I was staying with a friend 1.4 miles from said finish line and had a plane to catch (on which I now type).
The extra miles and the 26.2 in between were all part of my own ultramarathon ambitions. You might have read about my commitment to run the 56-mile Comrades Marathon on May 30 in South Africa. Today’s race doubled as both a training day my official qualifier for next month’s run. I needed only finish under five hours—a goal I’d have bet large money on. What I was truly hoping for was to get in under four hours, so my 3:58:47—my slowest Boston finish of five—was warmly welcomed.
I’ve preached the following outlook on many stages in many cities over the years: I look forward to life’s adversity’s because nearly each and every one brings me a gift. Today’s challenge began last night when my host, Christine—one of my wife Sharon’s best friends who happens to inhabit 10th floor apartment with a killer view overlooking the River Charles!—injured her lower back at her nephew’s birthday party…in the bouncy house! She shuffled through the door at 8PM in miserable pain and this morning, about the time she was to drive me to the start, she nearly passed out, right after she nearly vomited… Suffice to say I had to find another way to Hopkinton.
Her apartment isn’t too far from where the buses were loading up adjacent Boston Common and I had 30 minutes to spare, so jumped in a cab and put myself in line with thousands of other runners. Some say this is a quintessential part of the Boston Marathon experience and one I had yet to partake in. That was the first silver lining. The second was when the guy sitting next to me on the bus offered to sponsor a World Vision child in Africa in support of our team’s mission with the running of Comrades Marathon! My heart goes out to Christine—who was the first person to support me by sponsoring a child—and her suffering, but because of this challenge, which barely splashed on to me, a child and his or her community will have a better life. Some things are just meant to be.
(Please visit www.theultimatecause.org and sponsor a child. You’ll be glad you did.)
That was today’s excitement. Last week’s excitement went down in DC where I met Lord Stanley’s Cup! The vast majority of you just said “Cool!” To those of you who just said “What’s that?” it’s the coolest trophy in sports: the 100-plus year old championship trophy of the National Hockey League. It was in DC to celebrate the National Disabled Hockey Festival. The weekend was filled with hockey players who don’t have all their “normal” parts. I played with the National Amputee Team. There were also deaf players, players with intellectual disabilities (special hockey), and sled hockey players. These guys and gals are mostly double amputees, above knee amps or paraplegics. The sleds are essentially seats set low to the ice, mounted on skate blades. They propel themselves across the ice with modified sticks that are shorter, have a more obtuse angle at the blade, and have spikes at the butt-end to push with. The US Team just won the gold medal at the Vancouver Paralympics!
I hadn’t played with the national team since the World Championships in Prague, 2004. The team’s president and co-founder, Dr. Dave Crandell, phoned me several weeks ago asking if I’d like to return to the squad for the weekend in DC—the team needs more “leg guys”. (In amputee hockey, teams are allowed only so many arm amputees—typically below elbow—on the ice at one time to maintain a fair balance of skating ability, and Team USA is loaded up with “arm guys.”) With Jack and Luke and an extremely hardworking-in-a-stressful-job pregnant wife (I love you Sharon!!!!), I limit my travel to business, i.e., money-making, and so declined the offer. Then he held out the carrot …
President Barrack Obama had personally requested a meeting with the team! How could I pass up a chance to meet the President of the United States!? Regardless of what side of the aisle you sit, it’s an extreme honor.
Of course, I said yes.
As of late, I’ve been playing drop-in hockey once a week, then bumped it up to twice in preparation for the trip. This cut into some of my mid-week training runs for Comrades, but I still stuck to my two-hour Saturday runs, followed by four to five hour Sunday runs.
Ever so sadly, with the White House visit schedule changing constantly in the waning hours or trip, we were granted an phenomenal tour of the White House, but the President had to bail; apparently signing nuclear disarmament treaties in Europe is more important than shaking the left hands of hockey players who have no rights.
More (small) challenges
Three trips to the doctors this month have delivered all kinds of profound diagnoses.
Regarding the shoulder issue I told you about recently: Six weeks of physical therapy proved remarkably helpful in reducing pain and returning my ability to make it through a swim workout. Yet an occasion ache remains and certain movements continue to hurt. This prompted my orthopedist, Dr. Michael Repine, to schedule an MRI. That test showed a two centimeter tear in my labrum, the topmost tendon of the rotator cuff.
The good news is that it can be fixed. The only option to do so, as supported by Dr. Sharon Wetherall, is a complete detachment and reattachment of the labrum.
The bad news is that recovery time is four to six months for normal daily activity function. A year before full strength is returned.
The second piece of medical news started off a positive note. Since I began running on a prosthesis sixteen years ago, Stumpie has suffered from what I’ve come to consider a circulation issue, causing me to stop and dangle and/or reboot to subdue the pain and restore blood-flow. Though four different prosthetists have built me run legs over the years, the pain has been relatively consistent and I’ve always presumed the problem was some sort of fit issue; perhaps Stumpie is oddly shaped or constructed and, hence, a difficult fit…or something.
My current prosthetist, Erik Shaffer of A Step Ahead Prosthetics and Orthotics, proposed the problem could be vascular insufficiency. No one, professional or otherwise, had ever mentioned this possibility, nor had the thought ever crossed my mind.
Sharon highly recommended Dr. Nelson Mozia for a consult. He prescribed a CT angiogram to inspect the integrity the veins and arteries in Stumpie. The initial results were just what I was hoping for: both the veins and arteries are severely occluded. This is good news because we’ve finally found the cause, which means we can do something about it!
Well, after Dr. Mozio consulted with an interventional radiologist and a CT radiologist, they concluded that the occlusions were so severe and widespread that a fix was out of the question. Angioplasty will not work due to the severity and a surgical procedure could result in an above knee amputation if it were to go awry. I ruled that one out immediately.
The one non-surgical option is a blood-thinning medication called Plavix which might help much needed oxygen reach those little Stumpie muscles. In the short term I’ve opted to give this a go. I’m told it takes ten days for full effect—on Sunday’s 23 mile run, day 7 of the medication, I dangled and rebooted many times. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see…
In the meantime, I’ll be getting a second opinion.
The final trip to the doc was not for me but for the family doctor—Sharon. The ultrasound showed that there is indeed an embryo growing in her womb! Unquestionably the biggest challenge of the three.
