For almost 15 weeks now, I have been moving through my Ironman Training without too much excitement and pain (very thankful for that).  However, everything changed last week as my 3 lovely, little boys got out of school All of a sudden, I am doing a lot more working out at “odd hours” of the day (i.e. 5:30am and 9:00pm) as opposed to cramming in all the training while they are at school.  But so be it.  Only 5 weeks to go!  YEAH!

Well, on Sunday, I raced out the door at 6:20am to get going on my 3+hour bike ride for the day. Decided to start with a few hills (have some really great ones close to home) and then I headed over the the New Berlin trail, out to Waukesha, and onto the Glacial Drumlin Trail.  At the 1.75 hour mark, I turned around and headed back home, the exact way I had ventured out.  Unfortunately, the ride home was NOT as uneventful as the ride out.

There’s a little window of time in Waukesha where you are on the roads (and off the trails) in between the Glacial Drumlin and New Berlin trails.  I encountered an area with a four-way stop….so I unclipped, stopped, looked around, and started to proceed thru the intersection, reclipping my feet as I progressed forward.  About 2 seconds later, I was on the ground, bike on top of me, with a tremendous pain in my butt.

At around 8am on a Sunday morning, a car came, out of no where, and did a very poor stop at the intersection (if any stop at all) and continued to turn right, through the intersection, into my path!!!! AGH!!! I had about 1 second to slam on my brakes, come to a complete stop with my toes clipped in, and fall gracefully to the ground.

The car continued on it’s merry way (not sure male/female) and the kind woman behind him/her, got out to ask if I was ok.  Thankfully, I was mostly ok.  I got back on my bike (after unclipping to get up) and began my 1+ hour journey back home.

Well, today, I have a GINORMOUS bruise/hematoma/painful area on my hip/rump area (the spot that absorbed the majority of the fall). I also have a big swollen spot on my inner forearm where my bike bars came down hard on my arm). Have a bit of a bruise on my inner knee, but nothing else too bad to speak of. My bike appears to be mostly ok too…since ALL of it landed on top of me.  Could not swim today and could not bike.  However, I did manage to run 10 miles w/o too much pain.  Will be interesting to see how things looks tomorrow.

The best laid plans are never executed without any blips and bumps.  In my mind, I am trying to think about this incident as preparation for things to expect on challenge day as nothing ever goes 100% according to plan.  We’ll just have to wait and see.  And I am very thankful that nothing more serious happened as many others have suffered torn ligaments, broken bones, and death during episodes like this.

Hoping that I can get my big bruised butt back on the bike later this week….and my arms back into the pool by tomorrow or Wed.   And if you happen to see me at the pool this week/next, please hold your comments about the HUGE black and blue marks that will be covering my bottom.

Just think to yourself, “That is her little (well, kind of BIG) bump in the road.”

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