Down I Go

Dave and I have made it to the last week of training for our sprint triathlon. We race next Saturday and will celebrate our survival by taking a vacation to the Bahamas.

Our training has gone really well. Dave continues to shed pounds and buy increasingly smaller clothes. I continue to remain the same weight and wear the same size clothes. Sometimes being a woman really stinks! On the bright side, I have lost several inches off my waist and I can tell that I am in much better shape than I have been for a long time. We have managed our training with no big setbacks and are both feeling fairly well prepared for the race.

Of course, since the race is only days away, it would be a really bad time to get sick or injured. So, being me, I chose this last week to start being ridiculously clumsy. On Tuesday, I dropped a folding chair on my Achilles tendon while setting up for cub scouts. A friend asked me how I could drop something on the back of my ankle, and I have to admit, it takes special skill. As I was setting up chairs, I pulled one from the stack against the wall, turned around to unfold it, and the next chair in the stack fell and hit me right on the back of my ankle. It turned all sorts of colors, swelled up, and really ruined my running plans for the week. Luckily, it seems to be on the mend. Here is what it looks like after 5 days:

Still a bit swollen and really ugly, but not painful any more

Thanks to my ankle injury, I took a couple of days off from training. Once I could stand to wear shoes on Friday, I decided to try a bike ride. I felt great and decided to do my full 9 mile ride and even contemplated a short jog afterwards. I was making pretty good time when I got to mile 8 and came upon a stop light. Cars were stopped in all directions, so I thought the light was about to turn green. As I coasted up to the intersection, it was taking way too long to change. I was almost stopped when I tried to remove my foot from the strap on my pedal and couldn't get it out before I tipped over, landing on my right side on the road. Then the light turned green. I scrambled to my feet (trying to get out of the way of traffic) and jumped back on my bike. A block or two later, I started noticing pain in various places -- mostly my knee and my hand, which were both bleeding. I slowly made my way home. Once at home, I was better able to examine my injuries. In addition to my already bruised ankle, I now have a badly bruised hand, two big bruises on my knee, and two big bruises on my thigh (one is seat shaped).

My lovely purple hand makes holding things difficult

I really hope I've gotten all the clumsiness out of my system so that all these bruises will have time to heal before the race. If anyone wants to cheer us on, come out to the South County Pool in Riverton next Saturday around 8:30 AM to see us finish.