Life Without Limits, A (35 page)

Barring any mishaps? I should have known better. Maybe I should make another joke here about Muppet, but no, I really don’t feel inclined even now to make a joke about what happened next, so close did it come to ruling me out of Kona for a second year running.

It was a beautiful day in Boulder, Saturday 24 September, exactly two weeks before the race. Everything had been going so well; my spirits were high. Tom and I had been for a 5km swim in the morning. On the way back from the pool, I’d spoken to my mum and dad on the phone: ‘Everything’s great! We’re just off for a ride. See you next week in Hawaii!’

There were five of us heading out on our bikes – me, Tom, Drew Scott (Dave’s son, who was preparing for his first Kona), Curt Chesney and Sam Rix. We then met Tyler and Nikki Butterfield at the first set of lights, which swelled our number to seven.

Nikki and I were at the front, chatting away, taking the usual route out of Boulder. I know it like the back of my hand. Nikki and I were talking about her success in a recent race and the importance of bike-handling skills. I was musing about how crap mine were. I felt my weak cornering and descending had cost me time in Roth, where my bike split had been relatively disappointing.

As we were talking we approached a corner ourselves. It’s one I’ve taken hundreds of times. There was a car at the junction, so we took it at a sensible speed. I was up on the hoods (sitting upright). It was a dry day. I turned to the left.

Suddenly, I was on the floor in agony. It happened too quickly for me to be able to impose much order on the feelings and thoughts that rushed through my mind or on the chain of events that had led to this crumpled, bloody mess on the road. My first thought was ‘Kona’. Thereafter, they came thick and fast. Why am I on the floor? I’d taken out Drew’s bike, and he’d come down hard, too. And then the pain kicked in. I cried out in agony and despair. I felt sure my elbow was fractured. My hip had taken a pounding and felt much the same way. My ankle had twisted awkwardly out of my now broken pedal. Cuts and grazes don’t hurt initially, but I could see vicious wounds from my left ankle up my leg to the hip, and on my hands and elbow. My cycling shorts were torn and my shoes scuffed.

Within a few seconds I was surrounded by my biking partners and a group of onlookers. Tom had gone off ahead to ‘use the facilities’ and wasn’t there. Somebody pointed out that my front tyre was flat. It wasn’t pancake flat, and I had felt nothing on the long straight that preceded this corner, but that had to have been the cause for the crash. Taking this corner was a simple manoeuvre I’d executed countless times before and often much faster. Maybe someone with better handling skills could have righted the bike once it had started to slide, but I couldn’t. It just happened too quickly.

A mother and daughter were passing by in their car and stopped to help. The mother, a lady called Heidi, was dressed in her pyjamas. A little earlier, her daughter, Karen, had swung by unexpectedly in her new car and persuaded Heidi to come for a ride.

‘But I’m still in my pyjamas!’

‘Doesn’t matter! No one’s going to see you! You’ll be in the car!’

Little did Heidi know that not only would people see her in her pyjamas but she would end up in a book! Karen and Heidi were wonderful and drove me to hospital. Nikki escorted me, with Tom racing to meet us there once he’d returned to the scene to find out why nobody had caught up with him.

I was x-rayed extensively. Nothing was broken. ‘Are you sure?’ I asked the doctor. The pain was so intense, far worse than the injuries I’d suffered earlier in the year, both of which had been fractures. But the results were clear. I wept with relief and knew then that I was going to be racing at Kona, come what may. How I would do it, I had no idea.

I was in quite a mess. The abrasions, or ‘road rash’ as we cyclists call it, were really nasty. It wasn’t just a graze, they’d said at the hospital. The top layer of skin had been taken off. It was the equivalent of a second- or third-degree burn. They applied anaesthetic to the wounds, which was excruciating, and then they scrubbed them, before wrapping them in bandages.

I rang my parents for the second time that day. ‘You know how I said I was going for a ride . . . ?’

Their first thought must have been about another futile (and expensive) trip to Hawaii, but they never mentioned it. I was the one who brought it up.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’ll be racing.’

‘You just get yourself better,’ said Dad. ‘We can talk about that later.’

There was no way I was going to let my parents down this time, or any of the other friends and family who were making the trip. Not after last year. I was going to be on that start line, whatever it took.

The next day I didn’t feel too bad. I walked to Dave’s house to see Drew. The poor guy had broken the navicular bone in his wrist. He was racing in his first ironman in two weeks – at Kona, the scene of his father’s greatest triumphs – and here he was, nursing an injury.

The day after that, though, was when it hit me like a truck. I woke up feeling very nauseous. I was going to go for a swim that morning. Tom took one look at me and told me to go back to bed. I did nothing that day, and my leg started to swell up and turn bright red. By the next morning there was a red vein-like line branching out from my knee to my groin, a sure sign of infection. I went to Flatirons for a swim and managed two lengths. It was excruciating. The sensation was the same as when my broken arm had become infected the year before – a deep, throbbing, pounding pain. I had to be lifted out of the pool, whereupon I sat by the side in tears. I couldn’t walk, so they got me some crutches, and I hobbled inside to lie on a sofa. They covered me with a blanket because I was overcome with fever and chills, hot and cold. Eventually, Tom and Dave carried me out to the car. There were eleven days to go . . .

The antibiotics I was prescribed worked well. The infection had spread throughout my leg, but the next day I was well enough to do a two-hour session on the turbo. Over those few days, I was on a rollercoaster of fear and hope. There were times when I felt much better (‘Tom, I’m fine! I’ll be racing!’) and others when I despaired (‘Tom, my body’s a wreck. How on earth . . . ?’). His reply was unfailingly supportive. My fitness hadn’t gone anywhere; my strength hadn’t gone anywhere. I’d done all the hard work. I should appreciate the extra rest. We would get me to that start line.

Tom was preparing for the biggest race of his life, his first Kona, and now he was having to look after me as well as himself. Preparing for any race is an emotionally tense time. You’re on edge, and butterflies flutter in the pit of your stomach. For me to throw this spanner in the works made me feel insanely guilty. I’d taken Drew down with me physically; now there was the danger that my crash might affect Tom’s race as well.

I was meant to fly to Kona the Wednesday after the crash, but my leg was pussy and swollen, and I couldn’t move my elbow properly, so couldn’t carry anything. I changed my flight to Friday, then again to Saturday – better to stay in Boulder near the army of wonderful professionals treating my various ailments than to head off to humid Hawaii. By Saturday, the infection had gone and I flew, but my wounds weren’t healing. This was troubling everybody, and I received conflicting advice. To cover or not to cover? For the most part I opted for the former and kept it moist.

But the road rash was the least of my worries. The skin pain I could handle. It smarts like crazy when the sweat or the piss dribbles into the wounds, but it is a superficial pain. Far worse had been the night sweats and the fever of my infection, and the bruising to the hip and elbow. The hip, in particular, was becoming a problem because I was compensating for it with an altered gait, which was transferring discomfort to my right leg. For the most part though, I was able to run and bike. It was my swim training that was severely compromised.

As the plane came in to land at Kona Airport, I looked out over the volcano. I could see the Queen K. snaking its way through the lava fields and I felt the excitement rise up in me. For a split-second, I forgot my injuries and was moved by that naked instinct for the race. Even when I remembered my condition, I thought, ‘I still have a week to get ready for this. Then bring it on!’

It was a beautiful day in Hawaii. Arriving felt just as special as it had ever done – that special smell, that unique feel about the place. John and Linda greeted me in the traditional fashion, placing a lei around my neck. Then it was back to theirs for a delicious ahi tuna steak, another tradition, with Tom.

At this point I felt very relaxed, but true to current form that changed very suddenly. My leg was starting to swell up again due to the flight and the road rash was causing me pain. That evening I was building my bike in the garage of the condominium. A journalist appeared at the door and asked if she could take my photograph. I was by then suffering a turn for the worse and felt as if my personal space was being invaded. I said no. She was decidedly unimpressed with my reply, but she left. Suddenly, everything seemed wrong, and I broke down in tears again. Somehow, for a moment, it felt as if the very fabric of my beloved Hawaii had become corrupted, as if even this perfect haven of positive energy was turning against me. The doubts and fears flared up again, the questions crowded in – how was I going to do this? I lost my temper with Tom for no reason and threw myself on the bed to cry. That was the way it was in the fortnight between my injury and the race – the days were peppered with wicked little about-turns in my state of mind.

Over the coming days people started arriving from the UK – my cousins, Rob and Tim with their partners, and on Monday my parents. Mum and Dad brought out some morale-boosting items. I had about thirty-five handwritten messages of support from the children at Feltwell Primary School. Georgie had driven to meet my parents at the Travelodge in Heathrow to hand over a cushion that she’d made for me. On the front it read, ‘Go, Girl!’, and on the back, ‘road rash rocks’. And, of course, Mum had brought me a pot of Marmite.

Training-wise things were OK on the road, although my hip was still very painful and the raised levels of sweat in Hawaii made my flesh wounds sting horribly. My swim training, however, had been virtually non-existent. My elbow was by now feeling better, but there was no power in that arm.

On the Monday, I went for a 4km swim, my first hard session in the water since the crash. Towards the end my pectoral muscle was hurting badly, and it continued to deteriorate over the course of the day. I went for a ride that afternoon. It felt as if someone was stabbing me with a needle just above the left breast and into the underarm. Deep breathing was excruciating, as was riding on the hoods. Fortunately, that day Dr Mike Leahy arrived, whom I owe more than I could ever repay. He is an ironman athlete himself and has pioneered a technique called Active Release Therapy. Since the accident, one of the upper ribs, although not broken, had become misaligned. Mike treated it, and now started to work on what he said was a damaged pectoral muscle. I went to bed that night in huge discomfort. I couldn’t lie on my left side anyway, because of the abrasions, but now I couldn’t roll over at all.

The next day I was on the treadmill, which was fine as long as I didn’t breathe too deeply. Then I went for a swim. I managed a kilometre, by which time I was crying into my goggles. The pain was unbearable. Tom lifted me out of the pool. I was convinced I’d broken my rib. Every breath hurt and I couldn’t move my arm properly. I was in agony. That was to be my last swim before the race, which was now only four days away.

I called Mike, and he told me to go straight to hospital. He thought it was muscular, but he didn’t want to keep treating it if it turned out to be a fracture. I drove to ER and was met there by John and Linda (I kept this latest development from anybody else, including my friends and family who had flown so far to watch me race). I was seen by Dr Richard McDowell, whose wife, Lesley, has won her age group at Kona eleven times. His first concern was actually my leg, which was still swollen from the flight.

‘It shouldn’t be like that,’ he said. ‘I need to test for a pulmonary embolism.’

I spent the next six hours in hospital, undergoing x-rays, CT scans and tests. I felt confident it wasn’t a pulmonary embolism, and the CT scans and ECG came back clear. However, there had been significant damage done to my pec and intercostal muscles. I was not allowed to swim before the race – not that I would have been able to, even if I’d wanted. They also undid my bandages to check my wounds. John and Dr McDowell recoiled at the smell when the bandages were removed. My wounds were scraped clean, scrubbed and redressed. I was prescribed a new course of antibiotics.

The final few days were hard and beset by doubt. The road rash wasn’t healing. I spent another hour in hospital on the Wednesday with Hawaii’s leading wound specialist, who redressed my lesions once again. But road rash was the least of my worries. The pectoral injury was the biggest concern, followed by the hip. The elbow, however, was a lot better. I never doubted I would race, once the results of those first x-rays had made clear there was no break, and Mike reinforced that. Each day my condition was improving with his help and that of my acupuncturist, Allison. It was going to hurt, but by Saturday I would be able to race. To have medical professionals like that around me in the build-up was so important and a privilege that I appreciate is not available to most athletes at Kona. The added confidence their treatment and words inspired played a huge role in getting me to the start line, as did the endless support of Tom and Dave.

Would I be able to win? That was the question I was reluctant to confront. If I could just get through the swim and come out of it not doubled up in pain, then I reckoned I could contend, but there were so many unknowns. I hadn’t been in the ocean at all. I wouldn’t be swimming again until race day. I just had no idea how I was going to fare. And then there are all the other discomforts that unfold over an ironman at the best of times. Given my condition, how much more painful were they going to be? I just hoped that my mind would stay strong enough to cope. Because if it didn’t it would be time to confront the biggest fear of all – the fear of losing an ironman.