On a crisp, December morning just after Christmas in 2002, I finished my workout and went home to shower and get dressed for my day of work.   School was out on break, it was the midpoint of my senior year of High School and I was the wrestling captain, we were getting ready for a meet next week.  The last I remember, I was driving home for lunch, I woke up two weeks later…

 

     My car was t-boned by a drunk driver who ran a red light; I fell almost immediately into a coma.  My brain stem was hurt pretty badly and my brain was accumulating fluid, I had a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).  That was the first day of the rest of my life.

 

    Upon waking from the coma, I had to re-learn everything, how to walk and talk, essentially how to think in this new body.  Before the accident, I ran track and wrestled, I was an athlete.  Now I wasn’t sure if I would ever do those things again.

 

That is not an option.

 

     After I was hit, it took exactly 3 months to walk out of the hospital.  I still had high school classes to finish and less than one semester to do that, but I did manage to do that and graduate with my class in spring ’03. 

Going to outpatient therapy 5 days a week, I was still determined to return to my previous state of fitness and was working out regularly, getting stronger, but I was embarrassed of how silly I looked whenever I tried to run, forget about jumping.  The outpatient therapy program I was in was one of the best in the country, and it just happened to be in my backyard.  This rehabilitation center was a comprehensive brain injury center with a focus on returning its patients to full time school or work.  I reconciled myself to the idea that I would never run again, but I could lift weights and stay fit and that way of thinking held me for about 7 years.                

 

     This new body of mine was unfamiliar, I am right-handed and I was so lucky that the part of my brain that controls right-side motor function was affected.  Running was very awkward; I had to learn to write with my left hand, and simple tasks like throwing a baseball (I have played baseball since the age of five) seemed like a lost cause. I have to consciously use my right hand and leg so as not to default and only use my left side, something I still struggle with.   All wrapped up in my TBI was the loss of strength in my right side and the atrophy of the muscles; my right side is still weaker than my left, but I always work it almost twice as hard.  

 

      Meanwhile, I attended the University of Arizona still a half-athlete in my mind and worked out as hard as I could without running.  After graduating from the U of A, I was inspired to start running again.  I’m not sure exactly how the inspiration came, I had input from some good friends who were runners and was tired of the general malaise I found myself in.  I started running around my block and increasing my distance gradually, as soon as I didn’t care how I looked when I ran, I was able to just focus on the act of running and it was as if a door was opened to an almost-forgotten land.  Running.

 

     I ran everywhere I could run, at anytime.  I prefer running alongside the road, in the city, something about watching all of that humanity zoom by and listening to the city sounds really invigorates me.  I was inspired to take it to the next level when my good friend told mentioned in passing that she registered for a 5k when I was visiting her in California. 

“You mean you can just sign up?” I said, she affirmed and showed me her number.  A race number… I want one.   I wasn’t even aware that it was so easy to run in races, but I did some research when I returned home and followed suit, it was then that I became a race number collector.  My first race was a 4-mile run, and I completed it easily, even competed and got recognized as 4th in my age group.  I couldn’t get enough of this long dormant competitive feeling, I ran a few more races, pinned a few more numbers on my wall and then it was time to make a goal.

 

     In May of 2011, I ran my first half-marathon, the Whiskey Row in Prescott, AZ.  After my 2:08 performance, I made it my intention to run a full marathon in January.  The running was taking off, I ran four more races before my January marathon, and after a time of 5:06:00, I made another goal, a 5-year plan.  In 5 years I will run/bike/swim an Ironman.

 

     Now that takes some training, 26.2 miles, 112 miles on the bike and a 2.4-mile swim.  Enter my training partner… CrossFit.  I started training at CrossFit Northwest Tucson January of last year and CrossFit has made my goal seem more attainable after every WOD.  My first workout, the baseline, brought me back to a familiar feeling, physical exhaustion.  CrossFit’s constantly varied, functional movements were kind of like a wrestling practice, only in CrossFit, your time seems to be maximized.  I have felt the same way after some WODs that I felt after a three-hour wrestling practice.  I completed the baseline with jumping pull-ups and I’m proud to say that now I have strict pull-ups, my time at first was almost twice that of my re-test time a couple of months later. That is the way CrossFit has been defined to me, gains.  The same year that I started CrossFit, I rode the Tour de Tucson, a 111-mile bike race and rode it the next year as well.  With the running and biking down, that leaves my most difficult triathlon event, swimming.  Not only am I learning to swim in a “new body,” I wasn’t even a good swimmer in my old body! 

 

     I am in my second year of CrossFit, and have done more than all of my 11 years post-accident, but pre-CrossFit, combined.  I have made many physical gains, accomplishments and reached milestones.  In the following column, I will write a monthly (semi-monthly) post documenting my WOD’s and other athletic activities as I work toward the ultimate goal of an Ironman Triathlon.  I will not only write about my gains and PR’s, but my disappointments and times that seem hopeless.   Or in other words, documenting my journey from coma man to Ironman…