Not everything went right today, but the important stuff did.

The race started right on time, and Brian Fleischmann and I were lined up right along the far left side of the deep water start. I was hoping we would start early since they had us lined up in 14 degree water over two minutes before the gun (and since I was number one I had an extra two minutes in the water at least). For all my nervousness about a deep water start I discovered there was nothing to worry about. I pulled away from the line quickly and met up with Tommy Zafaras (also coached by Victor Plata) around 150m into the swim. He’s fast, so I stuck on his feet until the second buoy. At that point I started having trouble following his line, and I decided it was time to push the pace anyway. I took the lead (thought apparently I was swimming a line that looked like a seismometer reading) and never looked back.

I was first out the water, and was surprised that the group behind me was strung out and I didn’t recognize anyone. I started off on the bike slowly, putting on my shoes and hoping somebody would catch up to work with me. I didn’t want to let up too much because I figured if people had to work to get up to me it would weed out anyone without the firepower to do so. One guy finally caught up, though when he did and I tuned on the gas he lasted less than half the lap before falling back.

From there I turned the 25 seconds I had out the water on the main group into 45 seconds by the end of the 3rd lap, then gave up 15 seconds and finished my solo 40k bike ride about 30 seconds up on a group of 11 that had been working to catch me. I ran like I was being hunted, eleven wolves drooling for the taste of victory if they could catch me. After the first lap (of 3) I had 27 seconds left.

On the sidelines Victor was encouraging me, “you look better than all of those guys! You’re not giving up any time! You won’t give up any time!!” Next to him was my college friend Brandon Basso yelling, “Ben! You look like a runner!!!”

Both helped. I put my head down and a lap later I had 35 seconds over the next runner, but I could see that Steve Sexton had made a move and was running away from the rest of his pack. At the final turn around Steve had closed the gap back to 27 seconds, but with only 1500 meters to go I was starting to think about the finish. I had to snap myself back into the race twice in that final stretch, reminding myself to focus on the moment, “C’mon Ben!” I told myself. “It’s not over yet, endure it.”

And I did. I arrived at finish chute with time to spare, strutted up to the line and grabbing the ribbon with the pride of a lion. This is my first win in an ITU race. Heck, it’s my first win at a legitimate pro race! And I did it the hard way! Solo for 51 kilometers!! I don’t know if it was guts or stupidity (maybe both) but it worked. My parents were there to watch, Victor was there to watch, Tracy and Brandon and Christine and Kelly all made it out to watch me race… it was so exciting! I love having friends and family there for me, and it’s even better when I get to give them a show.

As for the little things: my bike showed up from Reno this morning (huh?) but the only way to get it before the race was to ask my parents to pick it up. Then I sliced my finger nearly to the bone on a metal part of the case. (after being charged both ways I’m realizing this case was a mistake. I’ll have to go back to my homemade no-charge bike case v2.0 - which really doesn’t get charged.) Later on I struggled to get out urine so long that Victor and my dad had yo pack the bike (I haven’t looked inside yet…), and by the time awards were given out my dad was waving his watch at me trying to cut my speech short. I had to ask my mom to drive like road warrior to the Oakland airport in order to get me there at 4:57 for a 5:45 flight back to Denver. I checked in within a minute of the cutoff time, then found a CO2 cartridge in my backpack and was given secondary screening because I gave it to TSA rather than chancing it through the bag scanner. I still made it to the gate, though it wasn’t until I took my seat I felt like the race was finally over. Woohoo!

8:15pm - I’m pretty sure that I don’t belong here. Sitting in a hospital bed in Colorado Springs waiting for a doctor someplace to tell another doctor someplace else that I should get some test that the OTC wasn’t able to do on site that will hopefully tell me why I’ve had a fever and a raging headache for three straight days after having a fever just last week. Some of the diseases they threw out there are pretty scary to me - mono, leptospirosis, meningitis, hypochondria… (just kidding about that last one, I wish I had the mental capacity to worry myself into a fever like this).

I’m sure eventually I’ll have some …

…

9pm - OK, the phlebotomist and the nurse just came in. Hooked me up to an IV and took a bunch of blood for analysis. They’re looking for all the things I listed above (except the last). The nurse is on the phone with the Doc from the OTC telling him she can’t do an “LP” until tomorrow for some reason. I have no idea what an LP is.

…

10:30 pm - Alright, I gave four vials of blood, peed in a jug, and now I’m sitting with my computer talking to Courtenay and my Mom on video chat. The nurse keeps coming in to check on me, and I keep telling her that my headache is killing me. Now she’s going to call the doc and ask for something better than Advil. I’m not sure I really want something more than Advil, that sounds scary, but my head really hurts. Oh, and the “LP” is a “Lumbar Puncture” or what is otherwise known as a Spinal Tap (as in, “Our amps go to eleven”). I called my uncle, who is an ER doctor in Hawaii, and asked him about what they’re doing and he also thought I needed the spinal tap tonight so they can start me on antibiotics.

…

11:20 pm - The nurse just came back with morphine. Never been so glad I had my computer handy so I could check the status of morphine on the DRO (Drug Reference Online - otherwise known as the banned substance list for those of us that get random out-of-competition testing). It’s legal out of competition, but not in. I’m still not keen on it. Also, they’re going to do the spinal tap right now.

…

12am - That was really really scary. I asked a ton of questions. Apparently they do this procedure a lot, but when the doc came in wearing some radiation suit (he was a radiologist because they use an X-Ray machine to pinpoint where the needle needs to go) and he had bright white hair, slender build and a German sounding name (Van Wagoner), I was absolutely certain that I was part of a mad scientist’s experiment.

First they turned me on my stomach. Wait. No. First they made me sign a form saying that there were all kinds of risks, but there was no other option. Then I turned on my stomach - which hurt like crazy because my neck is so stiff - and then they wiped down my back three times with iodine, then came the first big needle of lidocaine, a local anesthetic. A moment later, a second, bigger needle of lidocaine. The first one hurt a lot, the second hurt almost as bad, and then I saw the 5 inch long, thick as the momma earth worm in the compost heap, shiny, scare-the-crap-out-of-me needle.

Now, I’m a watcher. When I was little I had really bad acne and I had to take this terrible drug called Accutane. It was so harsh that I had to have blood draws every few weeks to make sure the drug wasn’t going to kill me (ah, what we do for vanity). I got so used to having needles stuck in my arm, that I actually started to like it. The way it goes in and then the blood starts squirting into the tube… The point is, I don’t mind needles at all, and if anything I derive some strange enjoyment of being poked and prodded. This was different.

There is nothing about a spinal tap that is not scary - even if they rename it to “Lumbar Puncture”. The giant needle goes in, then he taps it to get it into the spine, then he taps again, then the x-ray machine comes back over while the needle is standing straight out of the spine, then a bit more tapping, then the doctor’s hands are both way over away from me grabbing other stuff while this giant needle is protruding from my spine. And the whole time I’m laying there face down, afraid to move, afraid to breathe, afraid to do anything that could mess up the procedure (I read the list of awful things that could happen! It said DEATH!!!), and meanwhile I’m running out of oxygen, about to pass out, trying to will my back muscles not to spasm as the pressure in my spine telegraphs its way into my hips and upper back and slowly starts to cause a few twitches throughout my back, and then into my abdominal muscles. The words I had read on the waiver are flashing in front of my eyes, “Nausea, Headache, Fainting… DEATH”.

He finishes drawing the first vial and asks me if I’d like to see what spinal fluid looks like. I’m thinking “can’t it wait?!” in the primal part of my brain, but the more academic side is first to the vocal chords and I hear myself muttering, “Yes, of course.”

It was completely clear. Like water. I thought it would at least be viscous like glycerin, or maybe a bit opaque, but it pretty much looks like water. I relaxed and began to think, “at least that’s ove…”

“Okay, we’re going to do three more vials like that one.” I froze. I was so scared, and so uncomfortable it seemed like that big needle had been in there for way too long already. How could the prep have been so quick, but the actual “tap” be more like a crescendo.

I held my breath, then breathed shallow, then held it again and finally it was over. The needle came out with a jerk and a pop and before I knew it I was back on the gurney being pushed back to my private room here in the hospital.

Now I’m on antibiotics and tomorrow I’ll have a better idea of what’s causing all this illness. But for now, I’m going to take advantage of this moment of opiate-induced painlessness (first time since Sunday afternoon without a headache) and try to catch some Z’s.

I’m sitting in a coffee shop in Boulder right now with Courtenay Brown, Rory Seiter, and Mojdeh Hamidi. We’ve been spending the last couple of hours interrupting each other and getting stuff sort of done while at The Laughing Goat on Pearl Street. “Getting stuff done” consists of Rory interviewing me for the Checkmate Triathlon Team website (my side project that will be awesome once Rory and I figure out all the logistics of starting a team from scratch without start-up capital), Courtenay writing a blog, figuring out which graduate school she’ll go to and providing input to Rory and me (she started a women’s pro cycling team a few years back and has some great perspective), and Mojdeh generally being pleasant company.

What’s interesting is how we all got here. I met Rory when I was designing underwater robots in Honolulu and he was finishing up his degree in Environmental Management. I met Courtenay online through her ex-boyfriend, and Mojdeh and Rory met when he made an unexpected pit-stop in Boulder during a 2008 world tour. Last year Courtenay gave up her independent lifestyle in Lake Tahoe and moved in with me at my parents’ house in Seattle after dating me long distance for two months. Rory and Mojdeh had only been dating a couple months when they left Boulder to travel around New Zealand together for four months, and the trip went so well that they ended up spending all of 2009 living out of a van and dragging a trailer of triathlon swag to races for the USA Triathlon Endurance Mobile Tour. Sitting in a coffee shop figuring out what we’ll do next is much more exciting with this particular group than it might be with your average coffee shop dweller.

Courtenay and I went into a bike shop in Waialua last week (Sugar Mill Bikes)  to fix a sliced tire. The proprietor of the shop told us about a private road he likes to ride through the cane fields of Oahu’s North Shore. So the next day we rode to a locked gate with the intent of riding up a cane haul road – mostly dirt, rough roads – to get away from the dangerous holiday traffic.

My Garmin Edge 705 actually showed where the cane haul roads go, so it was easy to pick an entry point and plan a route. Just as we were hopping the gate (which we assumed was to keep motor vehicles out) a big van pulled up and a big Hawaiian guy started yelling at us, threatening us with a $500 fine if we didn’t leave right away. So we rode a few miles down and entered a cane haul road that didn’t have any locked gate across it. We rode for miles up past farmlands – some abandoned, some with coffee, some with pineapples. We did see about a dozen cars, and a couple farmers, but they just waved and smiled, so we were pretty sure we weren’t bothering anyone. The roads were certainly not ideal for a road bike, but focusing on bike handling was a welcome change from focusing on not getting killed on the narrow highway.

Eventually we did reach a big “no trespassing” sign, which is where we turned around, but my Edge 705 claimed that the road would continue up the hill, wind through a few valleys, and eventually come back down the hill and exit where we were yelled at earlier in the ride. We decided that we should find a way onto those roads, and the very next day we did. I took video of that experience, and Courtenay edited it (because she has the fancy MacBook Pro). It was an awesome ride, and we even found a newly paved road through the hills with zero cars on it. It was among the most adventurous rides I’ve had, but I’ll let the video do the talking:

We headed to the North Shore of Oahu just before Christmas. I was hoping for a week in the “country” with some nice cycling and running through the woods, but by December 26th I was nearly in tears with frustration over poor training opportunities. It seemed to me that, contrary to what one would expect, the kelly-green bumper stickers pleading “keep the country country” and the black and white ones claiming “HE>I” were sure signs of people who would gladly commit vehicular homicide just to chase cyclists off their precious, traffic-ridden, pothole-speckled, shoulder-less highway. The park and cane haul roads I used to run on when I was living at my uncle’s house are now cluttered with “no trespassing” signs and some jerk in a big van drives around threatening people with $500 fines if they pass the gates. And lastly, the pool was closed for lap swim for the entire four day weekend while the ocean was plagued with 40ft waves. For a guy who likes to train all day, life sucked.

[above: My K-Swiss Keahou’s started off sparkling clean before this run…]

In my last post, I mentioned a run… I spent Christmas Day with my cousin 11 miles down the road from Sunset Beach and decided to ignore a few “no trespassing” signs (which became increasingly threatening - “trespassers will be prosecuted” to “Explosives, stay away”, to “if you come in, we’ll shoot you.” – but who would kill me on Christmas?). Shortly after that last sign the road curved into thick Hawaiian jungle with flora so thick I could only see 10 meters max in any direction. All around me were the sounds of a living forest: birds, bugs, wild pigs, and all the delicate rustling of millions of plants dancing in the breeze.

I found a dirt bike trail that wound its way up the side of a mountain, and I figured it would be nice to get away from civilization and let myself relax for a bit. It was a Christmas present to myself. I ran up, and up, and up, and then up some more – stopping at every opening in the thick green jungle to admire the breathtaking views. My Garmin 310xt told me that I was around 1000 ft above sea level, climbing up a ridge into the Hauula Forest Reserve. At one point I was on a portion of the ridge with cliffs on both sides and no trees nearby when a helicopter came right towards me. “Oh man, if they sent a helicopter I must be in really deep trouble,” I thought. It went right over the top of me, then turned around and came right back to me before flying off into the distance. Figuring that if they were looking for me I was already screwed, I kept climbing, unsure of how far the ridge would take me. I was covered in mud from scrambling up dirt cliffs, and slipping down a few gnarly sections of “trail”, and my legs were scratched from pushing through some knee high shrubs, but for the most part it looked like someone had actually cleaned the trail quite recently. Just when I thought there was no possible way for a dirt bike to get through the technical section behind me I saw fresh motorcycle tracks cut into the red dirt. I kept running, and scrambling upwards until the trail suddenly disappeared. A few more strides and I found out why – there was a 200ft vertical drop directly in front of me and on both sides. The next ridge over had a path that kept going into the forest, but there was no way to get to the next ridge without going all the way back down. I was 3.5 miles in, and it had taken me 45 hard minutes to get there – this would have to be the end of my journey.

The helicopter must have been an island tour, because I never saw a single person during my run. Also, on the way out I was determined to find a route to the forest that didn’t involve disobeying so many signs. I took a few random turns, and used the GPS “bread-crumb” feature of my Garmin Forerunner 310xt to make sure I was headed in the right direction (a few times I got completely turned around – it’s really hard to find your way through thick rain-forest like that). Eventually I succeeded. I ended up coming out of a the trail right behind a Mormon church just a couple miles down from my cousin’s house. I immediately downloaded the route to Garmin Connect to show my cousin, then spent a while trying figure out how to embed the Google map into my blog. Apparently that feature will be in the February update of Garmin Connect, which is probably good because posting a map of where I was trespassing onto the internet is not necessarily a great idea.

With this little adventure under my belt, I headed back to the North Shore with a new determination to find my way off the beaten path – those adventures will be the subject of my next few posts.