I arrived in Austria with my wife and a friend a few days ahead of the race. We settled in quickly and got up to speed with the bike course, the run course and the swim. I was confident that my nody was recovering nicely and I thought I might still have a good race. I knew how bad I had been and people started to break it to me exactly how bad my head injury had been. I was missing the nine days immediately after the crash, I had (and still have) no memory at all about those nine days. I certainly don’t remember trying a four hour turbo only a few days after the crash and only stopping when I fell off. I was a complete vegtable for about a fortnight. But this was behind me, best not to focus on it and to move on and focus on the race ahead. So I did my best to do so.
On race morning I woke up bright and early and headed down for breakfast. Truth be told I hadn’t really slept so getting up was a welcome end to just lying there thinking. Up and down for breakfast we’d bought porridge the day before the race they cooked it in the hotel for us. After a good feed but not overfed. Rich, Liam, the girls and I hoped in our car and drove towards the race site. Traffic got mental but we had a plan. We jumped out beside the Ironman city and Peter Kerns took and parked the car. Made our way to transition and I said good bye to the wife. By this stage I was getting emotional. A big hug later and into transition I went. By this stage on my own. Checked my bike and went to go to the swim start. Still emotional I bumped into Peter again. I’d never hugged a German man before and I’m pretty sure Peter would prefer if I never do again. Down to the swim start. Stopped for a minute to fix my wetsuit. Put my pre race gel on a table. Fixed my wetsuit. Some cnut had nicked my gel. Fcuk it. Onto the swim start. Mental. Absolutely mental. People everywhere. Went to the sub 1:10 side and found a spot one row back from the water and just waited to br let into the water for the deep water start. The siren went and all hell broke loose. Then I remembered it was a beach start. Oh well. Off we went. I gave it socks as planned. Found water and a nice draft. Given my lack of swimming over the lead up to the race and the fact I was sinning with a broken collar bone I was quite happy with how I was swimming. Wet around the buoy at the half way point and then back into the canal. Unfortunately there was only one buoy and the sun was low and bright so I couldn’t see it. I decided to stay on the feet I was on and hope they went straight. They didn’t and we went about 300-400m well off course. Over to the shore on the right side almost. Anyways we eventually got to the canal for the last 800m. It was rough but fast and eventually I was climbing out of the water. 1:09 Even with the detour on the way back in I’d come in in under my new post crash goals. Off onto the bike and the fun stuff could start. Grabbed my bike bag from it’s hook. Whipped off the wetsuit. On with the helmet and went for my bike. Grabbed my bike and jogged down to the exit of transition. I was about 3 metres from the mount line when someone ploughed into me from the side. Rather than an apology or even a grunt what I got was an almighty shove from this “robust” bloke. I fell over and landed on a wheel. All my body weight came down on my right leg. My right kneecap was the part of my right leg that hit something first. Unfortunately it was the sharp side of a bladed spoke. I managed to stand up and I looked down at the bone of my kneecap as blood spurted out. “Thanks, fucking thanks” I said to the bloke who pushed me. I wiped the blood from my leg, It came back instantly. I was standing in a puddle of my own blooed while medics and marshals quickly surrounded me. A minute or two later they shepharded me out of the way. I was sat down beside a tent while two medics faffed and took their time getting equipment to clean me up. While this was happening a TV camera was spending alot of time on me, given the spurts of blood, first time cutting an artery!!, and the mess it must have been decent TV. 5 minutes or so into my T1 I said “Come on to fuck, stick a bandage on so I can get out on the bike.” The more senio medic looked at me and said “Sorry, you’re race is over. That cut is very serious”. After everything I’d been through recently I just broke down and balled my eyes out – on camera. Lovely. Next a field ambulance (like a military ambulance) arrived and took to the medical tent when I was the first arrival of the day. Up on a bed and a nice doctor called Walter came over and cleaned the wound out and had a good poke about inside my knee. Absolute agony.
“We need to get you to hospital, your knee is very bad.” He announced much agony later.
“No, I am going out on the bike” I replied
“On that knee, you want to try and continue on that knee, with that wound??? No you must go to hospital immediately” He said
“Look I just did the swim with a broken collar bone, just bandage me up and I’ll go on the bike”
“You have a broken collar bone??”
“Yes, I was hit by a double decker bus this day three weeks ago and I broke my collar bone and got a very bad concussion”
Silence. The marshals, the medics and the doctors, say nothing, just look at me.
Walter breaks the silence with “Where are you from?”
“Ireland, Dublin” is my reply.
“Ah Dublin, Temple Bar. I will sow you up and patch you up but you MUST go to the hospital” says Walter
I say little more as he subjects me to lots more pain and then I go find my bike and hop on it and head out of T1, two hours after the race started. Nightmare. I say to myself that my swim split wasn’t bad and that I can still post a good bike and a good run even if my overal time is pants.
The bike was always going to be a little like Christmas for me after the bus crash, I didn’t know what I would get. Would my IM heart rate and perceived effort yield the same wattage or close to as it did pre bus crash or would it be off by 20-30 watts like it was in the lead up to the race. I pushed the T1 incident out of my mind and tried to focus. 5km later I had my answer, I was cruising at, and a little above, the pre crash wattages. I found it hard to focus. The incident in T1 and the 50 minutes were playing on my mind. My right leg was starting to hurt too. By 10km my right leg was total agony, every pedal stroke felt like total agony. My stomach would turn and I’d want to vomit from the pain. Luckly I was used to this from my broken collar bone so I simply roared at myself – “Suck it up you pansy and HTFU”. I did my best and started revising down goal times, heart rates and wattages. At about 20km the pain got worse and spread. Now it wasn’t just my knee but my whole right leg. I was struggling badly not to puke from pain. “HTFU David” A little latter and I’d accepted that I was cycling at 80 watts and onlt using my left leg and had been since 5km or so and I was being passed by fat women on the hills. I started to think that I might not be able to finish and I have to admit I cried. I balled my eyes out. I’m crying, my leg is bandaged up and bleeding, I’d lost alot of blood and I’ve just accepted that I may not be physically able to finish and a marshal comes up besides me and points at the 18 stone cyclist in front of me and tells me to stop drafting. I look at him and if looks could kill he was dead and buried. I slow up and let the bloke ride away from me. I’m in total agony and really want to drop out, I want to just stop on the side of the road and lie down. The pain has hit me like a sledge hammer. Its quickly followed by the emotions that come with realising that I may not finish. I ride on. I try to work out times and to see could I physically finish. I figure out my max speed and realise that I probably won’t make the bike cut off. Then I realise that I’m still slowing that I can’t push my body any further. A spectator thinks I’ve bonked and tries to help me up a hill my pushing me. I realise I’m done, I can’t physically finish the 180km. Stupidly I ride on and do another few km before I realise that I’m not going to make it back to transition (another 40km) I basicallt fell off the bike with 56km done beside an ambulance, and beg “please, take me to hospital”. With that my IM dream was over. I was carted off to hospital and they took great care of me, the details and the drama don’t really matter. All that mattered and all I really remember was the emotional pain of DNFing the most important race I’ve ever entered, of all the hours and hours of work wasted, of the sacrafices and the huge pain of getting over the bus crash all wasted because of someones bad manners. I was released from hospital with a number of return appointments made and got back to my worrying wife in time to see my friend and travelling companion finish in 9:02 after smashing the Irish record. I was delighted for him, but they weren’t tears of joy I cried.
I did my best over there to not ruin the celebrations that were going on around me. Everyone else had worked hard and raced well and wanted to celebrate, just because my race hadn’t gone to plan didn’t mean I could ruin things for others by being a complete misery guts and feeling sorry for myself the whole time. It was difficult but I did my best and to be fair everyone around me was massively supportive and very good to me.
I had to return to the hospital over there and I had been given a bag of syringes to inject myself with on a daily basis which was a little bizarre and my leg was completely immobolised. Not an ideal way to spend the rest of my time in Austria, nor my holiday to Venice with my wife. She deserves a medal.
Two weeks on. My bike is still in the bike box. I still can’t walk more than a few metres. Stairs are out and I can’t sleep because of the pain from my right leg. This is now five weeks of stomach churning pain. I’m sick of it. But I am more sickened that all the hard work and training is for completely nothing. I’d love to be able to get a race or two done in Ireland, Kenmare and Dublin, but given my state its more likely I’ll win the lotto. So my end of season break may be coming a little earlier than planned. Time to recover and recover properly. My leg is in bits and I’m still not healed from the bus incident, in fact I’m back in hospital for that this week. Fantastic, more hospitals. Oh well – best to make sure that I get better properly. I’ll need to be fully healed to start my training for IM Austria 2010. The morning after the race, I dragged Dolan out of bed, hungover and still on cloud nine and made him drive me to the race site so I could enter for next year. (Update: I did in fact drag Dolan out of bed every day after the race regardless of his hangover or how late the night before was as someone had to drive me to hospital and my leg was wrecked.).I went to Austria this year with the goal of pushing my body and mind to its limits and then a little further, and I did. I suffered more pain that I imagined between the leg and the shoulder and I went on until I dropped. Next year I will be back and I will push myself and suffer as much if not more than this year but the intention is to avoid hospital and finish the race. A simple goal for IM Austria 2010 – “Don’t get hospitalised”.
