Year in Review...

Overall I think 2010 will be looked at as a year of missed opportunities and near misses. I think that there was a lot that went right this year and it would be difficult to capture everything that was great. Often times these reviews can be negative but I am going to try and keep things as positive as possible. For everything that did go wrong there were five things that always seemed to go right. I really think that I am one of the luckiest human beings on the planet and 2010 only added to that feeling. I’m still married to my best friend which never gets old. Mary and I have more fun than any couple that I have ever met. We have the greatest dog ever in Eko. He really is the true story of 2010. He changed our lives in such a positive way that I cannot imagine life without him. 2010 also brought a new and exciting job that brought a lot of change to our lives. I get excited every morning over my mug of coffee to go to work. I work with some incredible kids and for that I am very lucky. Obviously I know everyone reads this blog for the athletics so I’ll skip the rest of the boring every day stuff.

The year started out with great promise and optimism with the return to the boards. Workouts at Baker were going well despite the fact that I was not one hundred percent confident in the program. I think I was to willing to give in to the workouts of others. While Justin undoubtedly had an eye trained on Vermont City I needed to be more honest with myself and stick to a program that would produce a fast mile. My only real speed workout of the winter was the Wednesday before Terrier. My hamstrings tightened so badly following 1x600 in 1:27, 200 rest, and 1x400 in 58 that I could not even complete the prescribed 4x200. I spent the next two days wondering if I would even be able to run at Terrier let alone run to my 4:09 seed time. I was gimping around wreaking of Icy Hot knowing that even being able to jog on race day would be a success. Race day came and I headed down to Boston not really knowing what to expect. I have laid some eggs in big races before and was pretty determined not to let that happen again. With the aid of a pot of dark roast, a couple of Sudafed and a handful of ibuprofen I managed a 4:08 while winning the second heat. Following the race I reflected while sitting on the mats, how the hell did I do that? Najem approached and pointed out a big spike gash on my shin from the race. Najem was not worried about the cut. He was worried about the fact that I was bleeding the blackest blood either of us has ever seen. I just chalked it up to way to much dark roast!

Indoor also brought on my major mistake of 2010. In my attempt to transform myself into a marathoner I decided to drop all weight lifting from my program. I figured that I would shed a few kilos up top and be more efficient over the longer distance. I did not look at this as a gamble at all, but I feel like it really back fired. Looking at the Flotrack video of that Terrier mile my upper body seems sloppy and weak. Transpose that over a 2008 video when I ran 8:07 while doing high repetition weight work five days a week and the difference is clear. I think the strength work is what makes me more efficient. Dropping it made me more inefficient and more likely to breakdown in the waning stages of races. This breakdown was in my opinion a contributing factor to later problems.

The transition to the roads when great. Despite a blindside from a phantom cramp at the Grand Prix ten miler I ran extremely tough. It would have been pretty easy to mail it in for the day when Pat passed me at eight miles but I continued to fight and ran a great final two miles in serious pain. I still think DH Jones is a great course for me and hopefully I can be ready to run there again in 2011.

The New Bedford half went extremely well considering I trained through that week. I was a little overwhelmed at with the strength of the field and the difficulty of the final miles. I was very aggressive and ran really well through a couple of bad patches that could have really put me on the ropes. Although I finished forty-five seconds off my pr (Hartford 2007) New Bedford is significantly harder and the conditions were far from ideal. I do however question if I will return to this great race. I don’t like to be negative but NB really does take away a whole weekend.

Somewhere in the next six weeks something changed and I seriously lost faith in the journey that I was on. The lack of familiarity added an element of drudgery to my marathon training. My emotions cycled endlessly about the process. There were days when I was positive that I could run 2:20 and others when I questioned if I would make it under 2:30. There is an unquestionable lack of perspective that comes to mind when I think about this months down the line. Leading up to Vermont City things went pretty well but my lack of a performance that I could hang my hat on led to dark ideas within.

Finally Vermont City came and the experience somehow managed to match up to all the hype. The first fifteen miles of the race were pretty text book in terms of execution. All things considered even the last eleven were pretty damn good considering how badly I was falling apart. Whether or not I ever run another marathon remains to be seen but without question Vermont City left a lasting image burned into my psyche. Realizing the show was essentially over at twenty was a major blow. My reaction to that blow is what will define the experience over time. Looking two minutes up the road at Jonathan Fasulo knowing that I would have to go deeper than I ever imagined to catch him still raises goose bumps. The haunting images of my hollow stare as I approached the finish still make me cringe and well with pride. Knowing that I made it all the way even thought I was not 100% confident will always stick with me. What is and what will never be....

The next nine weeks of the year were a sort of black hole for my fitness. That structural breakdown because of my inefficient upper body left me with a tattered achilles. Medically it was tendonitis and I was an hour away from committing to a month in the dreaded boot of shame. In a very calculated move I decided to roll the dice and start training while there was still some slight pain. Knowing from Mary’s experience the past two years I knew that if it was bad that I would learn sooner rather than later. Obviously the achilles injury was terrible and it ruined a seven month training block. Heading into VCM I was leading the USATF GP by one point over Fyffe and had a nice little gap on Ely. Winning the GP was a huge goal for me this year so to see it slip away with half the season in the bag was tough. There were however some silver linings to the injury that will shape my future. I really got into swimming which has been the only thing that ever held me back from becoming serious triathlete. I can honestly say that I started looking forward to two mile swims at Wilson Pond. I became more and more efficient with each passing week and even started to convince myself that I could be competitive during swim legs. I rode my mountain bike to its limits every chance I got which really helped my power. I could not believe how well I was climbing by the end of the summer.

Obviously one of the biggest days of the year was my triathlon debut at Give Peace a Tri. I fell in love with the sport that day and despite shaky fitness managed a solid finish. I can’t wait to tear that race to shreds next summer with some real work behind me. I really think that I will be five to seven minutes faster next year, I can’t wait. The momentum from Give Peace a Tri led into The Circle Tri a month later in Ashland. There was so much energy and excitement that morning. Starting in the third wave was a crazy shot of adrenaline. Passing waves of swimmers before that instant when I emerged from the water was brilliant. That instant of looking up and assessing the situation while simultaneously putting the swim in the past is indescribable. Tearing the race apart on the bike with the knowledge that my best leg closed the race gave me the shivers. Wheeling the run almost three minutes faster than anyone else convinced me that I could be unstoppable. The Circle Triathlon cemented my decision to make triathlon my primary focus for 2011.

The fall was going amazingly well until Thanksgiving break. I was on the cusp of real fitness with my running. I was being very conservative following the achilles injury and had not logged a week over seventy miles. I had just completed my third track workout since the injury and had run 24:53 the previous Sunday in Fitchburg. Things were really starting to look up in the running department with each passing day. To put it simply I was also killing it on the bike. My body somehow naturally adapted to the time trial bike. We were a great team before the accident. Veterans Day afternoon following a ten mile morning run was a true sign of things to come. I absolutely exploded my moderately hilly twenty mile Keene loop with a 24.3 mph average. Things were heading exactly where I wanted them to go heading into the winter. I had my sights set on running fast again during indoor then setting my sights on Triathlon.

Obviously that all ended in the blink of an eye when an eighty-one year old women made a bad decision on West Street in Keene. This was unquestionably the most terrifying experience of my life so far. Thankfully nothing broke except my brand new bike. In the five weeks since the accident I have come to realize just how lucky I was. There are so many horror stories about accidents like this ending in an instant. I have struggled in the aftermath with the idea of getting back to work. Lacking perspective again hindering my judgement about what a typical recovery should be. Last week my doctor tried to add perspective that made my current reality not seem so bad. He told me that for ninety-nine percent of his patients that this would be a year long healing process. He came right out and told me that I am the only person he knows that could have walked away from this crash. (He really said walked away despite the three hours in the ER) With that in mind a month did not sound all that bad. I have forced myself to find a few silver linings and they sound pretty good heading into the new year. I am one hundred percent well rested for the first time in years. No activity, very few late nights, great. I have gotten to see Rob League my chiropractor pretty much every other day since the accident. I have also been able to address some nutritional issues so when I do begin serious training, I will be ready to rock. Clearly the accident sucked and it cost me five weeks but I’m hear! I’m still alive...

Heading into 2011 I think things are pretty straight forward. More than anything I want to live and train healthy! The past two years I have missed between twenty-four and thirty weeks due to injury! That is unacceptable but it shows how positive and resilient the human spirt can be in times of trouble. I’m not one hundred percent ready to roll out the rest of the 2011 goals yet. I want to make sure my body is going to be ready to cash the check that my mouth is about to write. Right now I just want to get back into that familiar rhythm of beating the hell out of myself on a daily basis to continue the evolution of this athlete.

Mark

ps 2011 is also going to bring a new ride. The Felt B14 is one of the fastest TT bikes on the road.

1%

Prologue...

During the 2002 Vuelta Michael Barry crashed on a tricky decent of of a nameless Spainsh mountain. As the shock and terrible familiarity of the crash set in a race motorcycle rode past and clipped Barry's body as it writhed in pain on the hot Spanish tarmac. Somehow Barry became entangled in the workings of the motorcycle and was dragged some seventy meters before the accident was "done." Barry was obviously hurt as his wounds were far more severe than the typical superficial wounds that a cyclist would obtain during a race crash. Despite the flow of the most awful deep maroon blood Barry searched the road for the remains of Trek Madone. Barry found his obviated full carbon beauty lifeless on the pavement as the team car pulled up to provide medical service and advance Barry to whatever remote Spanish hospital was within closest proximity. Just then something remarkable happened. Barry asked for a new bike off the team car to rejoin the peleton which was already a few kilometers up the road. Against every shred of sanity Barry remounted a fresh Madone and pulled himself inside out to finish the days stage. Barry would abandon the race the following morning but he stayed true to cycling lore and was not left behind. The picture of Barry being administered medical care while in the saddle is in my opinion one of the most profound images in the history of cycling. Never give in, never surrender.

"What if I say I'm not like the other, what if I say I'm not just another one of your plays your the pretender, What if I'll say I'll never surrender.

Foo Fighters...

Without question odd and chaotic chemical reactions occur with mind-numbing speed as shock sets in following an accident. Once the first wave of adrenaline wore off I found myself wanting to let go. I had urge to sleep. Somehow calculating that if I just could nod off for a bit that everything would be alright. Just as I could feel truly deep sleep creeping dangerously close I reestablished control. This was not a good time for autopilot. This was a bad time to pass command to the little men running the backup system. I needed to be there one hundred percent in control. How long would I have slept? Thinking back on that instant I think of Jurassic Park for some odd reason. Sam Jackson cooks up a wild plan that if they shut all the power down for a second that they could reboot the entire park. I think I just needed to be shut down for that second and have the master fuse re primed and flipped. Obviously I'm psyched that I did not have to deal with the raptors as this was all happening but it worked. As the medics packaged my up on West Street I tried to stop them. I did my best to assure them that if they just gave me a few more minutes that I was pretty sure that I would be able to get up and walk away. These were the looks that you got at a fine dinner party when someone makes an off color joke about a sick family member. While they did there best to humor my response the answer was assuredly, no.

While descending the Col du Petit-Saint-Bernare on during stage sixteen of the 2009 Tour De France Jens Voigt suffered a terrifying crash. Voigt slid to a stop face down at fifty mph. The race radios began chirping with the horror of the crash and the mounting fears that the legendary German would perish from his injuries. Team Saxo Bank was devastated and with the thought of loosing one of the sports toughest men. Voigt made his living as a breakaway specialist and long distance roller. Dog earring pages in race books and patiently waiting for the right break to form on the given day was the Voigt m.o. The next three hours would be a lecture in cycling tactics as Voigt had an uncanny ability to know the exact moment to tighten the screw to whittle the breakaway. Inevitably Voigt would work his magic into the final kilometer and put on a display that would make a champion pursuiter proud. Voigt's strength made him an ideal teammate for a grand tour contender. Voigt was a fixture on the front of the peleton logging dizzily mad amounts of hours setting the pace to set up the late day fireworks on the major summit finishes. Voigt is without question a legend. Luckily for the sport Voigt's injuries were pesky for such a hardened man and he would return within two months.

During the 2008 indoor track season Erik Kress was feeling clever and started calling me a one percenter. Erik would go on at length about how Myself and Mary were in the top one percent when it came to what we could do with our bodies. Erik was there in January of 2009 on a Sunday run when suddenly it felt like someone struck me in the lower back with a fifteen pound sledge hammer. I fell to the cold New Hampshire ground and writhed in nauseating pain. Erik was shocked and began calculating how we were going to make it back to his house. I convinced Erik that I was fine and that I would be able to "man-up" for another twenty-minutes. I stammered to my feet and ignored Erik's request to walk and got back into my stride. Ten strides down the road the hammer struck again and I was back on the pavement. Erik seemed sick and disgusted with my obvious stubbornness and unwillingness to cash in the run. Following the second round of debilitating pain, I walked a few paces before adjusting my stride and closing out the remaining miles of the run. What both of us did not know or could not have known was that my sacrum had just broken and that I was now playing a game of runners roulette with every stride. Somewhere at the control panel someone was throwing the override switch. Maybe there isn't a switch and my control panel is just really good at ignoring flashing lights and pretending that they will just go away. Check engine? Gas cap must be loose... ABS light? I'll just go easy on the breaks... Fantastic strategies to ruin a automobile can also apparently ruin bodies. 1%.

Voigt had another high speed crash during this years tour while on the decent of the Col de Peyresourde. While Lance Armstrong was up the road doing his best Voigt impression leading the break, Jens was crashing at nearly fifty mph. Voigt's crash war eerily similar and his injuries were nearly as severe but this time he did not loose consciousness. With both Saxo Bank cars up the road and a destroyed bike it appeared that the Tour would be loosing one of its great strongmen for the second straight year. Voigt refused a ride and wanted desperately to get back into the race. Voigt borrowed a tiny yellow bike with toe-clips and straps from a bystander for the decent where he would be able to meet up with the team car. 1%

Underneath this smile lies everything, all my hopes and anger, pride and shame.

Make myself a pact, shut doors on the past for today, I'm free.

I'll not loose my faith, it's an inside job today...

How I choose to feel is how I am...

Pearl Jam...

I choose life, carpe diem. I want to get back on the horse so bad and just blow the doors off of everything. I want to burn ridiculously fast final intervals and laugh as lactic acid burns in my forehead. I want to destroy training rides and howl with life as I produce massive amounts of watts rolling back into Keene. I want to take on the life of a peregrine falcon and take out the opposition at full flight. I want to sit idle in my resting hours with the knowledge that any of this is possible at any second. I choose to feel the pain that speed inevitably brings.I choose never to surrender in the face of a challenge that forces me against the ropes. I choose to live my life on the outside edge of the 1%. I choose life, forever life.

Mark

Recovery...

So as I'm sure the majority of the blogosphere knows I was hit by a car last week while training on my brand new time trial bike. Without getting into to much detail about the accident I will say that I have never been so scared in my life. Seeing a car pull out in front of you when your fifteen feet away traveling at twenty-five to thirty mph is absolutely terrifying. If you do the math on the situation I was traveling at approximately 13.4 meters per second so essentially it was impossible for me to avoid disaster. A little part of me is surprised that my fingers are not bent into the brake levers, I was squeezing that hard! In the great match up of man vs. automobile the man always looses, or so everyone is telling me. Miraculously my helmet did an amazing job and absorbed the blow of my head hitting the driver side window. The next two to three minutes were the most frightening moments of my life. I physically could not draw a breath into my lungs and my entire right side was burning with a white hot pain that seemed to be piercing all the way to the cellular level. As bystanders immobilized and covered my body to counteract the shock that we creeping in the image that filled my eyes was beyond surreal. A green 2001 Buick with a massive dent oddly similar to the shape of my body, a Felt S22 time-trial bike in three pieces strewn across the pavement like so many carelessly disregarded roadside dumps, and then under the car some fifty feet further up the road my Briko cycling glasses. An ominous reminder that it could have been my whole body that far up the road. Through the amazing EMTs of the Keene Fire Department I was at the ER in no time being poked and prodded by an assortment of doctors, nurses, radiologists, and lab techs. Mary and Erik sat by my bedside while we waited for my test results to come back. The popular bet was that I had some broken ribs with an outside shot at a cracked femur. As I anxiously awaited the results my mind swam in terror. Having rehabilitated a broken femur before I was aware that there possibly was a very long road ahead. Finally the doctor reentered the suite with a glum look on his face. My mind was in overdrive as surges of morphine tried to reestablish order in the millions of synapses wildly firing their excruciating message. I was prepared for the worse when suddenly a wry smile came across the Doctor's face. "We've gotta get you doing more speed work, somehow you weren't going fast enough to break anything!" Erik would later say that the doctor clearly did not know who he was dealing with. Relief quickly spread as the doctor and nurse began to caution me about the days to come. Warning me that the next week was going to be terrible and that things were going to get worse before they got better. Unfortunately they were both right and despite massive amounts of pain meds I have been living a cruel shadow life the past week. As things stand now I am beginning to see some improvement. The range of motion in my neck has returned to near normalcy leaving me to deal with the unyielding pain of my severely bruised ribs and thigh. The time table for my return to training is foggier than a San Fransisco morning run but hope is creeping higher with each passing day. Obviously a new bike is on the horizon and I will have to start at square one again just as legitimate competitive fitness was beginning to blossom. But the good news is that I'm still here eager to begin this new journey.

Mark