OMW: Annoying

One-Minute Writer: Annoying

I had just made another pass in a string of many when I sensed something was wrong. The Dutch cyclist I had gone by was now sucking my wheel, cheating by slipping into my draft zone. I could hear him behind me, over the rush of wind, and even feel him on my back, eyes planted firmly on my ass as he continued to take advantage of an illegal position.

Fighting into ferocious winds on the polders of the Dutch countryside, I put my head down in attempts to stay as aero as possible and pushed as I tried to forget about the cheater behind me. But it was hard. Here I was, racing in a triathlon World Championship of top age groupers, playing by the rules, and this guy was out to use me to his advantage. The wind was unlike anything I’ve experienced before. Over the rushing sounds of a wall of wind, I was still able hear the guy behind me, annoying, ticking in my ear to the point where I finally had enough.

At first chance, I peered back with a scowl to show my displeasure. The pain registered on his face told me he was holding on. The over-distanced 5K swim before it in swirling, choppy waters plus the 60 miles already covered on the bike had taken its toll. This guy was hurting. But he was cheating. And he was annoying, totally disrupting my race.

Just then another rider, this one a German, hopped on his wheel, with me leading the charge, doing all the work into this dire wind. Both were cheating, as the International Triathlon Union mandates a draft-free ride for all participants.

Five miles later the road finally turned away from the wind. I used the opportunity to make a push, to shake the two cheaters, but having expended so much energy fighting into the wind in the earlier miles, I had no extra push remaining. When I looked back, I saw both riders sitting up out of their aero positions looking at each other and exchanging words.

That was it. Here I am, in a race of a lifetime, worrying about these guys behind me, letting them ruin my race… I had to do something. At that moment, annoyance exploded into action.

With me leading the way, with a Dutch cheater on my wheel and a German cheater on his, I reached down for my sport drink and took a swig. But instead of swallowing, I turned around and sprayed the sweet fluid up in the air, completing covering my competitors.

Even through this, these guys stayed glued to my wheel. So I sprayed them with sticky sport drink again. And again my plea was ignored.

A mile later a race official came by on a motorbike. As the official riding on the back looked at me to check that all was well, I told him about the two guys, how they were drafting. The motorbike slowed to the Dutch. As I looked back, I saw the official say something and wag a finger at him. Then he dropped back further and did the same to the German.

Not long after the motorbike pulled away, the Dutchman was back on my wheel. Thankfully the German took the message and was done cheating.

So annoyed I was at this point that I turned around and gave him a universal symbol with my middle finger. The Dutchman was unshaken. He didn’t even look at me as I had turned.

Just then a cyclist with a red Canadian maple leaf on his uniform pulled around the Dutchman to by my side. “This asshole has been drafting you for the last half hour.” I shook my head, I knew. At that moment, the Canadian slowed down to the Dutchman, now beside him, and thrust a middle finger at him, as if he would punch him.

It was the last time the Dutchman drafted my wheel.

My annoyance turned to elation nearly two hours later when I was done with the bike and now on the run course. As I was completing the first loop of the 30K run course, I spotted a familiar face on the other side of the pathway, runners going in either direction. It was the Dutchman. He wore the same expression of pain on his face. Dejected with dreams over, he was walking.

This “Annoying” moment was caught in an official race photo. This picture was taken right after the Canadian had pulled in front of me but before he told me of the cheaters drafting my wheel. It wasn’t long after this picture when I was finally able to shake the Dutchman and the German, with great thanks to my friend from Canada.

Trakkers: January Update

January has been a busy month for Team Trakkers. Professional triathlete and Team Trakkers leader Carole Sharpless has been very busy working with both corporate and team sponsors to get things going. On the sponsors front she’s done a remarkable job!

Sponsors

Team Trakkers is happy to have supporting their cause the following top-flight companies: Rev3, Saucony, Kestrel, All3Sports, First Endurance, and Tri-Swim.

Many thanks to Saucony for helping the team with high-performance running shoes. I am now training in Saucony ProGrid Triumph 7.

Stay tuned for other good things to come from both Saucony and our other sponsors. At this hour it looks like First Endurance is already helping us achieve our goals, both as a team and individually, with nutrition support of the finest from the finest. My order is already in. Can’t wait to see how First Endurance helps me kickass!

Uniforms

Saucony has graciously taken the lead on Team Trakkers uniforms. Orders have been placed, and they are diligently processing them. One thing is for sure: the infamous Trakker GREEN will be featured!

Website

Check out the team website if you haven’t already! Featured are team member bios (including Pro’s and amateurs), Trakkers GPS information, and other kick ass stuff.

Share the Glory: www.trakkersgps.com

Rev3 Race Series

Many top-named Pro’s have been signing up for one or all of the Rev3 Series races. Here is the current list:

Knoxville
Quassy
Cedar Point

With Matty Reed, Craig Alexander, and Michael Lovato, among others, fighting for top honors on the Mens’ side; and Mirinda Carfrae, Natascha Badmann, and Amanda Lovato on the Women’s, each race will be a duel to the end. Don’t miss it. Especially with Trakkers GPS technology bring the race to you. You will be able to Share the Glory these fine professionals aim for.

Did You Know

Tara Costa, fame from the Biggest Loser, has signed up to do the Rev3 Race Series! So if you see a familiar face at any Rev3 event, yup, that would indeed be her!

Fun Slogan

Share the Glory,
Live the Glory,
Be the Glory!

Bike Fit

At the end of last year (2009) — in fact, on the very last day of the year – I went to Fitwerx(2) for a bike fit. I had been having issues with my current setup at the time and, after tinkering for months without ever getting it right, I finally decided to go to the professionals. Fitwerx, the area’s premier bike fitter, is where I went.

Below is a quick visual of the differences…

Bike Fit Pre-Dec. 31, 2009: video (done by me)

Bike Fit Jan. 4, 2010: video (done by Fitwerx)

And here’s a bike I’m toying with right now and will purchase from a trusted friend if I can dial in the fit (still having issues). If I can do that, and if I like the ride once I log a few miles on it on the Trainer, it will be a keeper.

Kuota K-Factor: video (fit based on new bike fit… close as of now, but still not there)

Changes:

o New saddle - I went with a new saddle since the old one never worked for me even though I kept riding it. Too much pressure on the undercarriage.

o Seat Up – We raised the seat a smidge, which I was happy about since I tend to favor a taller seat height. I seem to be able to generate more power that way.

o Saddle Forward – We jammed my saddle forward since, mainly, I used to ride the rivet, like, all the time. I have a tendency of scootching forward farther and farther to the point where I’m riding with my ass at the very tip of the saddle, a position that is commonly referred to as riding the rivet.

o Drop Aerobar Assembly – The areobar assembly was dropped to give me an extremely aggressive aero style with a drop of 14 cm from top of saddle to aero pads.

o Shift Arm Pads – Arm pads had to shift forward some to allow me a ninety degree angle in the upper arm coming straight down to the pads so that I can use my skeletal system to support my body over using muscles.

o Aerobar Extensions Shortened – The aerobar extentions had to be shortened drastically so that the gear shifters would fall at my hands.

So far so good with the fit. It seems like a keeper. I’ll have more on this as the days tick by.

Derry 2010 Pictures

Many thanks to the Greater Derry Track Club (GDTC) for pictures of the 2010 edition of the Boston Prep 16 Miler race. Complete pictures and videos here!

Derry 2010 – Race Start - Pictured right of center in dark blue Boston Marathon jacket and shades is Thor; Frankie, in red, is to his left (right in the picture) while Brian, in white, is tucked behind; all three ran together at 7:30 pace through mile 9.

Derry 2010 – Monster Hill – Thor climbing the long hill between miles 10 and 12.5. Nice knee lift. Nothing but net!

Training: Top-End Speed Experiment

The month of January has found me in an experiment working on my top-end run speed. Based on the premise that in order to run fast you have to, well, run fast, I decided to work on my top-end speed.

To this end I have been hitting the treadmill on Wednesday mornings at the local YMCA with my friend Sharon. I put a workout together consisting of intervals that progress one notch faster than the previous. We warm up with ten minutes of random jogging followed by a mile at 5K race pace. Then we begin the workout.

The workout consists of only 6 intervals of two minutes in duration with three minutes jog as recovery time. The first interval starts near our respective top-end speed and notches up one faster as the intervals progress so that by the end we are smack against the speed to which we cannot run any faster for the given duration (two minutes). By nudging up against this upper end speed in a progressive way, and doing it for several few weeks, we have upped the top-end speed we can hold. The effect of improved top-end speed has been that paces slower than this feel far easier than they had.

With this under our belts, the only thing remaining in converting this to raw speed at the marathon level – our goal – is the endurance speed typically earned in longer intervals. The hope is that by the time we start up those longer intervals, such as the common mile repeats, our speed for the given interval will feel easier to the point where we can go faster. This sets us up well for the next phase of speed, those infamous mile repeats.

Methodology

“In order to run fast you have to run fast.”

We’ve heard this uttered time and again, but it’s true: If you want to run fast in a race, you have to run fast in training. We all agree on that, sure. But how can we make running marathon pace feel easy? I can run 8 minute miles for a very long time. And it’s because my body is so conditioned to that pace that it really is easy, where my breathing is good, heart rate under control, and the work required to power on is minimal. Absent of running crazy miles and doing endless speed work, the thought here is to nudge up the top-end speed we can run so that those slower miles feel easier.

Think about lifting weights. You train to get stronger by doing either lifting a lower weight over more reps or higher weight over lower reps. It is well known that if you are looking for sheer power, you want to lift to fail; you do not want to be lifting lower weight with higher reps. You want to lift the most you can so that you cannot lift again after 6 reps. Once you get to 10 to 12, you move up in weight. If you took this approach with your biceps, and if this is something you haven’t done before or in a while, by doing 4 sets of a weight you can barely lift 6 to 8 times, and do that twice per week over the course of a month, I guarantee that in even that short amount of time, a weight that felt easier to lift prior to starting this workout routine would now feel easy. And it’s because you gained sheer strength. The first wave of strength comes very easy, and it’s because your muscles haven’t seen that look before or in a long while. But you will plateau quickly, which is why to gain more you need to lift to fail and change up the workouts.

The theory here is that this applies to running too. How many of us training for a marathon really work on top-end speed? Probably very few. We do speed work that quickly progresses to 800’s or mile repeats. But what if in the early stages of marathon training we trained the run like we would in lifting weights to fail for maximum strength?

Why Now?

You’re training for a marathon, so shouldn’t you be doing longer intervals, like mile repeats, or hill work instead of top-end speed, and what does top-end speed have to do with it?

The idea here is to work up your top-end speed so that marathon pace now feels… easy. And if marathon pace is easier than it was before, you will have more energy for those later miles. And you might even up that marathon pace to take up the extra energy. This, of course, assumes that you will take this top-end speed into those longer intervals. You cannot ignore them. Those long intervals, such as mile repeats and tempo runs, are breath and butter. Come into it was a layer of top-end speed and that bread and butter will turn into cinnamon and raisin swirl bread.

A higher top-end speed will help you get more out of those mile repeats once those kick in.

As for me and why I’m inspired to work on top-end speed when I’m training for a marathon – not a 5K – I have always wanted to run a 5 minute mile. It was a goal I set several months back. And since I was between marathons, with Philadelphia being late last season and Boston being in spring, I wasn’t yet ready to start up the longer intervals. Philly seems still too close. So why not have a little fun!

Proof

After a full month of working on my top-end speed, a few benefits became very clear:

1) My top-end speed is notching up, if even for only a short two minute interval.

2) Running a mile at my 5K pace feels far easier than it did only a month ago. Sure, it’s only a mile. But it’s always good to feel better than you did before running the same pace.

3) My running form at that top-end speed is far better. It requires immense focus, but I’ve already learned that when I’m starting to muscle through, that’s exactly when my form goes down, so that’s the clue to get back to better form. Of course, not long after that there comes a point where I have nothing left, where I really am too tired to support good form, and where I must resort to muscling through to just keep going. But these teach you what good form feels like.

4) My body is learning to recovery more quickly between sets, or even when I’m out on the roads running hills in a different workout, I seem to recover more quickly.

5) Probably most importantly is that in my last race, the Boston Prep 16 Miler, one of the toughest courses in the New England area, I cruised through mile 9 with friends, then turned it up through the hills to mile 12, and then hammered home the last 4 miles in 6:11 pace, with the last mile at 5:46. Sure, these miles were mostly down hill or flat, but the truth is… I felt comfortable while riding redline. I never felt I was holding on, and I kept pushing and pushing pace to the point where I couldn’t run any faster than I was.

Workouts

Workouts started on the easy and short side with the notion of getting me ready to run at high intensity for short duration. I didn’t want to be hobbled for days after a workout, so I gradually worked up to a respectable top-end speed from which to start with the real workouts.

The real workouts are only an hour in duration, so they don’t become something to dread; rather, they are manageable, doable, and even fun, especially since each time out you up your speed.

The key to the workouts are that once the real work starts, where you up your top-end speed more and more, nudging it higher and higher, you do this each week by increasing speed on the treadmill each week for all intervals.

Weeks 1 & 2: Get body used to running fast

Example by end of Week 2. Work up to something like this:

Week 2
WU – 10 min
7 min @ 5:52 (slightly slower than 5K pace) w/3 min recovery jog (jog)
2 min @ 5:21 pace w/3 min jog (chose a pace that is roughly 30’s faster than 5K pace)
2 min @ 5:18 (on Treadmill this is one notch faster than previous)
2 min @ 5:15 (one notch faster)

Weeks 3, 4, 5: Top-End Speed Work:

Week 3
WU – 10 min
7 min @ 5:52 w/3’ jog (same as last week)
2 min @ 5:18 w/3’ jog… (same as last week)
2 min @ 5:15 (one notch faster)
2 min @ 5:13 (one notch faster)
2 min @ 5:10

Week 4
WU – 10 min
7 min @ 5:48 w/3’ jog (one notch faster than last week)
2 min @ 5:18 w/3’ jog… (same as last week)
2 min @ 5:15 (one notch faster than previous)
2 min @ 5:13 (one faster)
2 min @ 5:10
2 min @ 5:07

Week 5
WU – 10 min
7 min @ 5:45 w/3’ jog (one notch faster than last week)
2 min @ 5:18 w/3’ jog… (same as last week)
2 min @ 5:15 (one notch faster than previous)
2 min @ 5:13 (one faster)
2 min @ 5:10
2 min @ 5:07
2 min @ 5:05

Weeks 6 & 7: Top-End Speed Cont.

Week 6
WU – 10 min
7 min @ 5:42 w/3’ jog (one notch faster than last week)
2 min @ 5:15 w/3’ jog… (one notch faster than last week)
2 min @ 5:13 (one notch faster)
2 min @ 5:10 (one faster)
2 min @ 5:07
2 min @ 5:05
2 min @ 5:02

Week 7
WU – 10 min
7 min @ 5:39 w/3’ jog (one notch faster than last week)
2 min @ 5:13 w/3’ jog… (same as last week)
2 min @ 5:10 (one notch faster)
2 min @ 5:07 (one faster)
2 min @ 5:05
2 min @ 5:03
2 min @ 5:00  TARAGET

Week 8: TEST & beginning of starting into longer intervals

Week 8
WU – 10 min
7 min @ 5:42 w/3’ jog (one notch slower than last week)
2 min @ 5:10 w/3’ jog
2 min @ 5:05 w/5’ jog (one notch faster – NOTE long recovery)
5 min @ 5:00 w/5’ jog  TARGET MILE
2 min @ 5:30 w/3’ jog
2 min @ 5:30 w/3’ jog

Week 9: REST

Week 10: Start up with longer intervals.

Training: Be a ballet dancer!

This article, Hill Drills: Running for Triathletes, shown here raises a very good point for runners and triathletes alike.

Lee Gardner, the author, opens with a quote that, if you don’t get it, means that you probably have much to gain by doing hill work on the run, even if all you do is race flat courses, because being strong on the hills makes you a strong runner capable of powering through paces and undulating terrain, even the flatter courses with minor dips and rises.

The quote:

“We don’t want our runners like weight lifters, we don’t want our runners like gymnasts; we want them like ballet dancers.” – Arthur Lydiard, Osaka, Japan, 1990

Gardner goes on to say that dancers in the ballet are “incredibly gifted athletes (dancers) executing quite amazing movement: Leaping and bounding with precision and speed over distance, arguably not unlike great runners.”

And it’s true.

If on the run you cannot “power over” short-to-medium sized rolling hills, then you can probably stand to gain strength and in turn speed by doing some of the hill workouts proposed in the article. I will summarize these below for varied abilities.

Put another way, if you cannot charge a hill, even a steeper, longer one, and on the way up stay on top of your toes with rapid cadence, using your feet as a spring boards with each foot fall, then you are leaving a lot of time out on the course that otherwise inflates your race times.

For beginners to hill work, or if you consider hills a weakness, start with doing hill repeats. Gardner calls these “Basic Hill Intervals,” where you would add a set of hill repeats to a run. Start with 3-7 repeats of 20 seconds to 60 second at easy to moderate pace. Work up to 8 repeats at 60 seconds or longer at moderate.

For intermediate runners, once you can work to 8 to 10 repeats of 60 seconds to 2 minutes at moderate pace (you can do fewer reps for the longer hills), you will want to layer in what Gardner calls “Hill Sprints.” These are short but race pace effort on moderate hills. Gardner recommends steep hills, but I won’t go that far. A hill with a moderate incline that you can charge up at 5K race pace effort or faster for between 30 seconds to up to 2 minutes is perfect.

Hill Sprints is where it is all at. This is where you can gain the sheer strength in the legs to power over hills, bound up them, and learn to recover on the fly. These alone will gain you an order of 10’s of seconds in a 5K if you aren’t doing them already.

For veteran runners, get right to the Hill Sprints, but pick a lengthy hill and charge it at better than 5K race pace. You want to charge the hill so that by the time you get to the top you can barely run another step. Spit up. And recover on the way back down the hill. Then repeat. Don’t worry about time, just charge. Do this workout a few times and you’ll have numbers dialed in. And you will improve drastically over a month since, after all, this is new to your legs.

Do your Hill Sprints and you too will feel like a ballerina, leaping and bounding over the stage that is the next hill, on your way to a PR.

(I left a lot of detail out of this, but if you want more information or even ideas for workouts, feel free to contact me at thor at kirleis dot org.)

Boston Prep 16 Miler – Derry 2010

Boston Prep 16 Miler (aka “Derry”)
Derry, New Hampshire
January 24, 2010

Results
1:56:10 – 7:16 pace
80th place Overall of 800
20th place AG M40-49
*Training run.

Race Report

January in the New England area for runner training for the Boston Marathon means one thing: doing the Boston Prep 16 Miler in Derry, New Hampshire. The course is billed as being “moderately challenging,” which is a laugh for those in the know. Derry, as it is affectionately known, is the single toughest race in the area – due to the hills and the notoriously brutal winter weather. Derry will tell you exactly where you are in your training for the big race later in April. The hills are so honest that they expose weaknesses in your training. The hills come so alive that most runners do not race; instead they use Derry as a supported long run. Racing Derry would leave even the heartiest mountain goat with too steep a recovery that, in the grand scheme of preparing for the Boston Marathon, it isn’t worth it.

Derry, NH – Mile 10 – Waving to buddy Mark, the fine photographer!

And so each year I approached Derry the exact same way – and that is as a fun supported long run. This year, just like last and those before (minus the year I did the Derry Double) I toed the line with two running buddies. Our goal was to run easy yet honest pace through mile 10 and then turn it up. My two buddies are far more disciplined than I. They stay easy until the “real” hills are done, about mile 12.5, and then pick it up. Not me. I turn it on at just beyond the 9 mile marker, where the roads starts turning up.

Through 5 miles, with my buddies Brian and Frankie, we cruised at 7:44 pace up and down the early hills. It’s an up and down start that is tough, but not bad when you’re not racing. This continued to mile 9, when we knocked our average pace down to 7:37.

At the base of the hill at just beyond mile 9 marking the beginning of the tough part – a two mile long incline sandwiched by more hills – I turned it up. Up and over the hills I powered, passing throngs of runners who, miles earlier, I saw go by me. On and up, stride short, cadence high, going and going, I dialed in a high effort where my heart rate was just below red line but stable for the push through all. Breathing was labored but on edge of control. Through the hills I was able to knock my pace down to an average of 7:30.

Finally over the last of the hills, I kept the effort high and tried to push harder and harder while remaining smooth. Those last 4 miles felt almost easy. I knew the top end speed work I had been doing on the treadmill was paying off. I was working very hard, but my form was solid, and I knew I could hold to the end. And that’s what I did.

Last 4 miles I put down an average pace of 6:15, with the last mile at 5:47. I felt so fluid that I could have gone an addition 4 miles at this pace.

All in all, it was a solid training day in the hills of Derry with Brian and Frankie with no weaknesses exposed. Boston 2010 is on track. Time to turn up the real speed work soon.

Splits
1 – 8:23
2 – 6:59
3 – 7:28
4 – 8:12
5 – 7:37 (38:41) – 7:44 pace through 5 miles
6 – 7:19
7 – 7:34
8 – 7:07
9 – 7:51
10 – 7:35
11 – 7:35 (1:23:48) – 7:37 pace through 11 miles
12 – 7:19
13 – 6:27
13.1 – 1:38:17 – 7:30 pace through half marathon
14 – 6:20
15 – 6:27
16 – 5:47 – (last 4 miles 25:03 – 6:15 pace)
Finish: 1:56:10 – 7:16 pace

I Am Published!

As mentioned in an earlier post, one of my short stories, ”Fear’s Last Grasp,” has been included in a Mindset Triathlon anthology titled “Tri’s Toughest Sport.”

Tri’s Toughest Sport is now available free to download. Check out my story on page 17-18!

“Fear’s Last Grasp” is a true story about how I overcame an innate fear of the water — a near drowning when I was a kid — to go on to conquer the swim and, to do it with such conviction, that I even went on to complete an Ironman.

OMW: Ten

One-Minute Writer: Ten

Ten miles. That’s all I had left… ten miles.

To that point I had powered my body 130.6 miles through the swim, bike and run of Ironman Coeur d’Alene, with now only 10 miles remaining for the perfect race, I could hold on no longer. My body quit. Without notice. I had stopped running, my body so drained that it involuntarily gave up, succumbing from a world of hurt to a complete stop.

I replayed in my head how I had seen my wife only a few miles earlier at the half way point of the marathon. “You’re doing great,” she had said. “Keep this pace up and you’ll break 11 hours.” I chuckled when I thought about the words she had followed me with as I ran away: “But you have to negative split the marathon.” I laughed because I knew what that meant. It meant I was not on pace for a Sub-11 Hour Ironman; I was on pace for slightly over. But with that I took away the positive attitude. I can do this. I can hold onto this race.

But that was 3 miles ago. Now, disappointment clouded my thoughts. That’s when I realized that where I had stopped was directly in front of an aid station. I had been in that much pain that I hadn’t noticed.

Thirsty, a bit dizzy, and very hot, with my heart pounding even faster, the first thing I saw at the aid station was a tall plastic cup, the kind given out as a souvenir at a minor league ball game. It was filled with ice water and sitting toward the back of the table. Not thinking clearly, I skipped over the display of Dixie cups, each set in a line and half full of water, and went directly for the big cup. With two hands I tipped the cup back and started drinking. The water felt like spring water, cool and crisp, refreshing and even rejuvenating. After downing half of the water in the cup, I set it back on the table. I had been far too tired to realize that the cup had probably belonged to a volunteer.

Just then I saw a tray of bananas, each but a few cut in half. Banana was all I thought about. I could already taste it. On a mission, I took a full banana, peeled it, and gobbled half, then the other. It was just what I needed.

Within seconds I tried to get my race back with a slow jog. Maybe, I thought, I could still finish the race in a respectable time. The more I tried to run, the more it hurt. Just keep going, I coached myself thinking back to my wife’s words of staying positive. Still, my pace was far slower than it had been before stopping. But a minute later that would change.

Fueled anew with a banana and mountain water, my pace got faster until I was running with more and more stride. Within a mile I was back to pace, again with the dream of a break out race. I held on, and held on, through far greater pain than imagined, to finish in just over 11 hours.

It was a ten miles I will never, ever forget.

OMW: Odds

One-Minute Writer: Odds

Last night while out for dinner and drinks, my wife Heather made a comment: “I see that you’ve been writing again…”

“Yeah,” I said as I sat more upright. “I found this website called ‘One-Minute Writer’ that poses a daily Writing Prompt. I’ve been pretty steady [writing something every day to the prompt]. But today’s prompt had me drawing a blank… for the life of me, I couldn’t think of what to write, so I skipped it.”

Still put off with myself for not coming up with something to write, I reached for the tall glass in front of me and took in a mouthful of dark winter ale, swirled it around, and swallowed.

“What was the prompt?” Heather asked.

“Odds,” I said. “The context is ‘In what way have you beat the odds?’” After a pause, I continued on. “When I think all the way back to childhood, I don’t think I ever had to ‘beat the odds.’”

Heather stopped me. “Yes you have,” she said. “Your accident… You beat the odds then.”

The accident! She was right.

“The accident,” as it had come to be known due to the sudden impact on my life, was back in the year 2000 when I had fallen on glass. As the glass had shattered, a large fragment cut into the outside of my left leg just below the knee and severed cleanly the Peroneal Nerve, instantly cutting off all feeling and movement from that point down. Adding insult to injury, as I had attempted to break my fall with my left hand, another piece of glass severed a nerve in the pointer finger.

Five hours of nerve grafting surgery was performed. A good nerve, one serving little functional purpose, was extracted from my left leg and grafted into the severed nerve area on the same leg and, a smaller piece, in the finger. After I was zipped back up, the doctors refused to answer questions about whether I could ever run or play soccer again. They would only tell me that I should start getting feeling back in the leg in 9 months to a year. Movement would take far longer.

Doctors wouldn’t say directly, but I knew back then that great odds were stacked against me from recovering to my pre-accident condition. Their goal had been to get me to function normally in life again – which included walking and being able to use my left hand like I had before. Never mentioned was a return to sport, let along competing at a high level. Those questions had been brushed aside time and again before I finally realized the seriousness of what had happened to me.

Now at the restaurant with my wife, the more I thought about “the accident” and “Odds,” the more I remembered just how hard I had worked at recovery. It wasn’t until 9 months after surgery when I had started getting trace feeling back in my leg and a year before I could move my foot even a millimeter, the nerve regenerating ever so slowly.

It would take an order of years before I could run again, and even then I still did not have full feeling or movement in the left leg and foot. This is something that to date has yet to return; it never will.

During this time, I had worked hard at recovery and been so successful that I had, in a sense, evened the odds. Continuing with physical therapy and then cycling and wrapping my foot up to walk – doing whatever I could – I eventually turned those odds in my favor so that years later I would excel, with life being back to normal, the accident a distant memory without lingering complications.

So when Heather said, “Yes you have… the accident,” it made me realize that me forgetting the true impact the accident had on my life was, in a sense, the ultimate reward for having beaten the odds so thoroughly that they too have disappeared from thought.

It was odd that I should forget.

I drew another fresh swig of ale. It never tasted so good.