Yesterday I had a bike crash. I was hurt bad. Went home in a taxi and limped up the stairs. My knee was busted. I knew that there won’t be any running this Sunday.

Last night, turning from one side to another in my bed was a mission. I remember all 14 times I tried. I can’t bend my knee but the worst is any rotation along the femur bone axis. Hurts.

Needless to say, I woke up to a worse swelling and it was locked up even more than yesterday. But for some reason, I seem to be completely impervious to this.

Two things stand out as very abnormal:

One: The accident itself could have been life changing. I remember the first thought was me mentally scanning my ribs to see if I had broken any. I could have fallen to the other side of the road and got crushed by a car. I could have been going a bit faster as hit that pole harder. But what was closer is the possibility of hitting my face on that pole, smashing my knee cap, splitting my tibia or crushing the family jewels. The hit was so close to either of those areas that this isn’t an exaggeration. I was extremely lucky and for some reason, I had it all brushed off even before I stood up. It’s incredible.

Two: The other thing, equally perplexing, is my inability to acknowledge that this could be a race-ending injury. I have this unfounded certainty, for some reason, that I will be back to training within a week. A week off the bike and run 6 weeks before the race is not a joke. But this seems to be best case for now.

I guess the automatic wiring in my head that I talked about before is so ingrained now. Perhaps I’m just in shock or denial or I’m just delusional. But I’m not stuck on the heavy consequences of what happened. Like this could be it. Usually, I would already be planning the next ironman event that I can participate in instead. But I haven’t had this thought.

(until now. I just checked. It’s Nov 17th in Arizona or it’s March, in New Zealand. New fucking Zealand. Love New Zealand, but Yikes…)

For some reason, I’m cool all day. I got like 20% agitated now because I know what 3-4 extra months of IM training look like. This is not just in terms of workout pain, I seem to have gotten the hang of that. But it’s more in the sense of the social solitude that will come along with it. I can’t really start to socialize with this much training volume. I just don’t have energy for it. But for some reason, I’m ok with it. Profoundly. This is spooky.

One life lesson I earned prior to beginning this challenge was everything I do needs to be done at maintainable level of effort. I always said throughout all the training blocs that I should, at all times, be okay to keep doing this until the day I die. I have abused that at times. But if you look at the last year in 1 month increments, I think it was all maintainable, apart from those crazy first two months of savage swims and hill climbs.

Even if I have to postpone to Arizona or new Zealand, I’m fine. I dread having to call my friends who are flying in to support me to tell them that I won’t race. I hate having to do the logistics with the visas and the traveling. But I’m fine.

I don’t know what’s happening to me! Have I grown? Am I a better person? All I keep thinking of is that if I race in March, I will be able to do a proper training bloc with swimming and biking and running which I have never did until now because of how things turned out. I’m thinking that I would get a chance to play a flat course and actually have a good finishing time instead of worrying about the cutoffs.

Am I just relieved that I might not have to do this? This would explain so much but there’s nothing in me that supports this theory. Yes, I’m dreading the swim because I haven’t had the proper training. Yes I know that increasing swimming volume sharply as I intend to do might hurt my shoulder and be another thing I have to worry about on race day. I know all this and I’m still just… calm.

How strange.