Thirteen years ago I was a newly declared professional triathlete, full of ambition and naïveté at the same time. I had just concluded a very successful age-group career that promised so much as I made the step up to the highest ranks of the sport. Triathlon had just been given a new designation as an Olympic sport for the Sydney Games in four years and my sights were firmly set on getting there.

World Cups were the path toward qualification and to start my quest I picked as my first international race a World Cup in Gamagori, Japan. With my strong swimming background, I assumed that my competitors wouldn’t know what hit them as I left them in my wake, stayed off the front with maybe a couple others on the bike, and then finish it off with a good run. Silly rabbit!!! Beat up on the swim, second pack on the bike, crashed bikes flying over my head, and a third-from-last finish. It brought me crashing back down to earth very quickly with the realization that this would not be an easy endeavor after all.

Flash forward to the present. Experience and wisdom have granted me some triumphant highs and devastating lows during the thirteen seasons that I have been on the World Cup circuit. New elites come and go frequently; in them I see flashes of myself as I was back then and realize how far I have come. My plan at the beginning of 2009 had been to do four different races before the end of April and decide which distance was going to be my focus for the year. Since wisdom doesn’t increase high-end speed as you get to be my age, I had a feeling I would probably not be doing draft-legal Olympic distance. As fate would have it, an Achilles injury in March forced my run training to be minimal and haphazard so my path led me to ITU racing as it was the only thing my achilles could handle. The last race in ITU’s World Championship Series was a race in Yokohama, Japan at the end of August. Japan is probably my favorite overseas destination so I was excited for it and my enthusiasm was contracted by my best friend Francesca who decided she would fly over to watch and then spend a couple days after exploring Tokyo with me.  It would be a great trip.

Francesca arrived the day after I did to experience her first taste of both the familiar and unfamiliar in Japan. My pre-race prep had been going very well since I had arrived and I was feeling very strong. A top-15 in the race would put me back onto funding from USAT and cafeteria privileges to supplement my own cooking at home so I knew I would have to be on top of my game. Our swim venue was in the harbor and surrounded by oil booms to protect us from what was floating on the surface, including jelly fish. The bike course was full of turns and rather flat making it a tactical ride. The run would be flat and fast on the same course.  All in all, it looked like a fun time.  In fact, I was already having a fun time seeing all my friends from the circuit.  In all the years I have been doing this, part of the enjoyment has been the camaraderie between all of us as we see each other so many times over the course of the year.  Our mutual respect and friendship even exists in the heat of the race, making us happy for each other’s success.

The woman raced on Saturday and then the men raced the next day. They only allowed us to ride the bike course just before our race as it was usually bustling with the typical Japanese traffic. I had picked a fresh Zipp 404/808 wheelset specifically for this race and they felt like they were gliding ver the pavement, boosting my confidence going in. I got race number 22 which put me a little to the right side of the pontoon for the swim start. As the horn released us, I dove in and did a couple dolphin kicks which put my shoulders just a head of the pack. This allowed me to get a good view of where the lead pack of swimmers was going so I could pick up a good draft in the right direction.  Despite the jostling, I managed to stay near the front of the pack in tandem with Jarrod Shoemaker so that we exited the swim together. This turned out to be fortuitous for us both as exiting transition on our bikes we found a little gap had opened up on us. Together with Danil Sapounov of Kazakstan, we closed the gap by the end of the first lap to rejoin the front of the race.

The Blue RC-8 I was riding was performing so well and I was feeling so sharp that near the end of the second lap, I found myself in the position to maybe have a go at the first prime. In all the years of racing I had never won one and decided to make a move with two turns to go, diving into the corner at high speed and braving the slightly cobbled road surface. I didn’t look back as I hit the second corner and then gave it ten really fast pedal strokes. Only then did I risk a glance back to see if my competition had answered but the Swiss guy who did was too far back to steal it away from me.  Yahoo!

The rest of the ride was spent near the front with Jarrod except when he got caught up behind a crash and I drifted back in the pack to see if I could give him a hand. Luckily he was close enough to get back on and we finished the bike near the front, ready for a hot run. The race was in morning as the heat index was really high here in Yokohama during the day. It was going to be a run of attrition, with the smartest athletes keeping it throttled back just a hair so that they wouldn’t melt. I started off at a reasonable pace which felt pretty easy, with only a little stiffness in my Achilles bothering me. I started off in the 20s and slowly started to pass people as they overheated and had to back off. Things were really turning in my favor as we hit the two laps to go mark with me starting to turn the screw a bit and my competitors feeling the heat as I moved my way up to 11th.

Right at the halfway mark it happened; my right calf suddenly seized up solid as a rock and I stumbled to a halt, grasping the barricades and repeatedly saying “no, no, no”. I tried to stretch it, I tried to knead it, I pleaded with it but it wouldn’t cooperate. I helplessly watched all the men I had just passed pass me by, some trying to encourage me to continue. With a faint hope I set out trying to run again but it was really more of a hobble. Along the sidelines I saw some of the women who had raced the day before and I looked to them with eyes asking what I should do. They didn’t have an answer for me so I struggled on.  Race officials asked me if I wanted to pull out and I told them I would finish the lap. At the far turn around I saw USA Triathlon’s medical support crew and we conferred on the side of the road while the race passed me by. They told me to walk it in to transition and so I did, arriving just as they were awarding the top three finishers of the race.

Devastated hardly describes how I felt. I will not lie to say I shed a few tears behind my Rudys as I realized how something so firmly in my grasp had slipped away. I knew this was an injury that would keep me from running for at least a month or two which would essentially kill the rest of season. But I was lucky; I had just had a great race where I showed myself and everyone watching that I still had it which gave me some comfort and Francesca was there too to lend her support which helped me deal with it. On top of that, there were three days after the race that we were going to use to explore Tokyo. It allowed me to forget triathlon and training completely as we immersed ourselves in the adventure.

Day one was spent deciphering the subway map so we could get from Yokohama to the Tokyo Prince Hotel in the middle of Tokyo. From there, we again navigated the metro so we could wander through the clouds of incense at the temple at Asakusa and then be overwhelmed by the crowds and size of the train station at Shinjuku. In between we came upon the headquarters for Bandai Productions, which airs all those cool Japanese anime and cartoons that I enjoyed when I was a kid and as an adult.  From there we rode down to hopefully see the wildly dressed teens at Harajuku but they all seemed to have gone home for dinner. Instead, we explored the coolest toy store we had ever seen, which to Francesca’s delight, had a whole floor devoted to “Hello Kitty”. Our long day ended with dinner and a smoothie at the Starbucks which overlooks the crazy five-way intersection at Shibuya station.

Day Two was obviously going to be a fun one as we were going to hit the fish market and Tokyo Disney.  But to see the action at the market, we had to drag our tired feet out of bed at 5AM so we could see the tuna auction. A quick train ride later we were walking into the chaotic bedlam of speeding carts, shouting fishmongers, and whining band saws which make up the fish market. Every creature that swims in the sea was being sold and set to be distributed throughout Japan. The tuna were enormous; long knives (swords) and band saws were used to quarter them. In the end we just dodged carts and took pictures (no flashes, please!) Then it was off to catch another train, make a connection, and arrive at the Disneyland resort station 20 minutes away. Before I arrived in Japan, I had discovered there are actually two parks on complex: Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea.  We chose to go to DisneySea as it was completely new and unique to the Disney chain. We arrived just as it opened at 9AM and proceeded to spend the next twelve hours exploring the ocean themed sections of the park. Unlike Hong Kong, the Japanese love their thrill rides and love to dress up in all things Disney, especially if they were in a group so they could all match. We even managed to see our elusive Harajuku girls. Sampling everything, we saw every show and even rode the “wet” ride. By day’s end, we were both happy and exhausted.

On our last day, we had time for only the Imperial Palace before we had to catch the noon airport limousine bus to Narita. My ankle was swollen and very stiff but it could manage an easy walk through the beautiful Japanese gardens on the east side of the grounds. We even saw carp and turtles fighting over fish pellets that the workers left for them in the moat surrounding the complex. But our time there was short and we took our last train back to the hotel, now feeling like we kind of knew how to navigate the system. Our bus ride seemed to fly by and Francesca and I parted ways at her terminal since we were departing out of opposite sides of the airport. This visit had seen both the highs and lows that race travel can bring; the adventure of being with friends in an exotic place and performing so well versus the disappointment of being so close to success. My season and my ITU career is probably over but I ended it with the best trip possible.