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Oceanside 70.3 IRONMAN Race Recap

April 12, 2018 by Rob Leave a Comment

Nearly 1,000 days ago – 945 to be exact – I was ready to do my first 70.3 IRONMAN in Santa Cruz. And as the story unfolded, I crashed and life took a wild turn.

Saturday, April 7, 2018 I crossed the finish line at IRONMAN 70.3 Oceanside and completed the goal I set almost 3 years ago.

Race recap: A series of unfortunate events

swim

As before I was hurt, swimming was my biggest hurdle. About every 3-5 minutes of 65 minutes I had this thought process: ‘I may not make the cutoff. They’re going to have to assist me out of the water midway through. I worked this hard to just get pulled in the first hour. That’ll be a shit story to tell.’

But every time I stopped to look around, no one was pulling me out of the water. None of the lifeguards looked concerned about me, so I had to keep going.

THEN, at the last 150 yards, my goggle strap came loose. Then they just straight up came off. And I had to swim ‘blind’. And I probably swam better than the prior 1.1 miles. I finished the swim 5 minutes under the swim cutoff time.

But I knew once I was out of the water, I’d make it the rest of the way – or so I thought…

bike

The first two hours of the bike I averaged just under my goal of 15 mph and I felt fine. Then came 70% of the 2,700 ft of climbing in the next 12 or so miles. Climbing in a TT handcycle is a slow grind. Think 1.2 – 2.5 miles per hour on a ±6% grade. All you can do is find a groove and just not stop. If you stop, you’re all but stuck.

Some people were walking their bikes up the hill and I thought, ‘How nice. If only I had that option…’ It reminded me of riding in the SF Bay Area where climbing is a must and how I had gotten strong in a relative short amount of time before my injury.

After the 3 intense hills I couldn’t find strength to muster my target of 15 mph on the last 10 miles of relative flats.

As a result, I missed the official bike cut-off by 12 minutes and officially I got a DNF on the race. DNF stands for ‘Did Not Finish’. I did however complete the whole course under the full race cutoff time. It’s somewhat of a technical rules thing – I still got to complete the run/push, cross the finish line and all that. No other Open Handcycle Division person made it under the bike cutoff – out of 2 of us.

run

The run was great because it’s 2 loops of a beachfront course with people cheering the whole way. I was long on the run against my goal because of some short, steep hills and narrow course having to navigate my racing wheelchair around other racers on a beach strand.

Crossing the finish line was amazing. I did it. Holy balls. I did it.

Support

As always, it was amazing to have friends there.

Big shout out to Hugh and Rossi! My coach, Matt Hurley of PurplePatch Fitness, had two childhood friends there to cheer and they were my ‘handlers’ for the event. They killed it helping me in transition as well as before and after the race.

And the Freeman family! My college buddy Justin and his wife and kids hosted me for the weekend and made the journey so easy and enjoyable. It was great to get to know Sarah and the kids in the midst of all this. If you’re ever in North San Diego, I highly recommend the Freeman Bed &Breakfast!!
(Uh, for the record, they’re not really a B&B).

If who you have around you is the highest measure of who you are, then I am a better person than I could possibly humble-brag to be.

Operation Rebound

Challenged Athlete Foundation is sponsor of this 70.3 IRONMAN because it’s in their backyard, but more importantly because they support injured veterans through their Operation Rebound initiative. The course goes through Camp Pendleton and military is everywhere as Oceanside is a military town.

I was just a civilian racing alongside some vets with incredible stories of comeback and triumph. It was incredible to be surrounded by heros. It was incredible to be side by side with people who had similar injuries and similar mindsets to not only survive by thrive regardless of it all.

As I say when I speak to groups, “You are not alone. Someone has had your problem before.”

we’re not meant to be alone

If there’s one axiom that I can apply to this experience for you to contemplate, it’s the idea that we were not meant to be alone.

Many times in the week or two leading up to the race, and definitely the 48 hours prior to the race, any time I was alone and had the chance to get up in my head I started getting nervous and anxious. It started having physical effects in the rest of my body.

But the very moment Justin brought me coffee in the morning; the moment I could have a chat with my coach; the moment I was surrounded by other challenged athletes, it just all went away. Anxiety turned into excitement. I put in the work and now it was time to go cross the finish line.

I am a fan of surrounding yourself by great people. I highly recommend it.

if I’m still breathing, then I’m still gonna keep moving

January 4, 2018 by Rob

To kick off the new year I got to speak with a morning news program in the Philippines. I met them at the TFCU event back in October and they asked me to come on right after the New Year.

It was great encouragement to me that people notice and find my story of interest and inspiration. That’s is really the intent of all of this; to present my journey as an example of how you can create your life regardless of what challenges life presents you with.

Watch on!

“If I’m still breathing, then I’m still gonna keep moving.”

Be inspired by the life story of paratriathlete Rob Balucas, who shares how he went from living his American dream, dealing with a cycling accident, and then pushing himself to triumph again.

—
Catch us weekdays 5:30 to 8 a.m. Manila / 1:30 to 4 p.m. PT
Watch online: tfc.tv/show/details/4247/early-edition
Like us on Facebook: fb.com/ANCearlyedition

one two step

December 21, 2017 by Rob

Earlier this year ReWalk Robotics offered to work through the appeals process of my insurance to a ReWalk exsoskeleton of my own. A few months ago I got approved!

I’ve been walking in it for about 6 weeks now; and got on the news the other night.

By January I should be taking it home. It won’t replace my wheelchair. But as a therapy method, it has a ton of benefits like they mention in the piece.

behind the scenes

What Do You Decide?

November 22, 2017 by Rob

A few months ago, my good friend and inspiration-extraordinaire Romeo Marquez Jr. called me up and asked me if I would speak at an event called TFCU Speaks. TFCU stands for The Filipino Channel University; TFCU is a starting up a TED Talk-like channel on YouTube aimed at Filipino-American college students.

I jumped at the chance and this was the result of my first real official speech. Being my own worst critic, there’s a ton of things I want to do better next time. But here’s version 1.0 of my 18-minute speech:

There was also a Q&A with the panel afterwards that had some great answers:

Here’s the full 22-min Q&A:

The Martian

November 3, 2017 by Rob

Two years ago today I was discharged home from rehab, concluding a two-month hospital stay between Marin General, UCSF and Santa Clara Valley Rehab.

It was the first time in my life I went overnight in a hospital and I ended up doing 58 nights.

Tonight, I’m watching the movie The Martian again.

My first field trip from the hospital .. that wasn’t to another hospital … was for a group of us in the Rehab unit to go see a movie. And we went to see The Martian. It’s a big-budget film directed by Ridley Scott and based on the book by Andy Weir.

If you have seen it, you can probably imagine a million parallels between Matt Damon’s character (Mark Watney) trying to survive Mars and our journey learning to live in wheelchairs. And there are a million parallels.

The guy next to me was a big guy with tattoos and a bald head who hurt himself on the job and was a bigger smart ass than me, but also a big teddy bear on the inside – as big bald smart asses tend to be. In our circumstances, the teddy bear tends to be a little more evident too.

Nevertheless, there were moments in the theater when I was kinda shielding my face from him because I was tearing up.

Spoiler alert

Tearing up moments like the moment Mark Watney in the movie says, ‘I’m not going to die here’ after freaking out for a while when he realizes he’s stranded on Mars. Then he gets busy figuring out how to survive as long as possible.

Then there’s every moment of crisis that comes after he’s had a triumph of engineering and has a great quip about his genius.

Then there’s having to handle shit 💩. Literally. (Fellow SCI and caretakers know what I’m talking about.)

But most especially, at the end, he says to a group of students:

“At some point, everything’s gonna go south on you and you’re going to say, this is it. This is how I end. Now you can either accept that, or you can get to work. That’s all it is.

You just begin. You do the math. You solve one problem and you solve the next one, and then the next. And If you solve enough problems, you get to come home.”

idle time

In that moment, in the middle of rehab, learning to sit up on my own, get in and out of my wheelchair by myself, do a wheelie (albeit barely), wheel myself up an incline, building up the strength to do so, learning how to manually pee and poop, basically how to live life in an entirely new way … in that moment, that story and those words were incredibly powerful.

In the movie, he’s alone on Mars for 560 sols total (Sols = Martian Days). So, he has ups and downs and a boatload of time to be idle.

In rehab, we had a required minimum 3 hours/day of workout. Even with meals and other activities, there feels like a boatload of time throughout the day to just be in pain and wonder about things:

Will I ever be able to get out of bed without help?

Will this freaking pain ever go away?

Will I be on all these medications forever, taking a cup full of pills?

Will I ever stand on my own again?

Will I ever walk again?

Where am I going to live?

Can I live on my own?

How am I going to drive?

Will I be able to work?

How am I going to pay for all this?

Who’s going to want to be with a guy in a wheelchair?

And on

and on.

the recipe

There couldn’t have been a more serendipitous moment for me to watch this story and hear these words.

“You just begin. You do the math. You solve one problem and you solve the next one, and then the next. And If you solve enough problems, you get to come home.”

That’s been the answer to every question.

Get crafty. Get help. Stay humble. Keep your head up. Keep your head in the game. Keep moving. Keep looking for answers. Find another way.

It’s not only a recipe for learning to live from a wheelchair.

It’s a recipe for living.