"Ed Seems to Be OK, but..."

I've been starting off a lot of conversations with that preamble lately, because when you tell someone that your husband was hit by a car on a recent bike ride, they tend to think the worst. If I'd gotten the news from a third party rather than from Ed himself, I certainly would have. As it is, we've both spent the last few days wondering how we managed to get so lucky.

On Saturday, I'd set my phone to vibrate and was monitoring it, something I don't usually do when
hanging around with friends. I was waiting for Ed to let me know he was on his way and expected to hear an update at any time. Finally, as expected, a buzz indicated a text from him. I did not, however, expect the text to inform me that he'd been hit by a car. He didn't answer when I called him, but called me himself a minute or two later. He said that he thought he was fine but that his bike had been damaged. The driver had stuck around, thank goodness, and there were plenty of people with him. To my surprise, he'd even accepted a ride home from one of them and insisted that I didn't need to come get him, despite my insistence that I was on the way. He had to hang up to give a statement to the police and be checked out by paramedics, but he called me back a few times when he had spare moments and I eventually got the full story.

It was clear and sunny at 1:00 P.M. on Saturday and Ed was riding south on 73rd St. in Niwot, a small town north of Boulder, and the end of a three-hour bike ride. Ahead, he saw a sedan stop at a stop sign at an upcoming intersection. Ed did not have a stop sign and so kept riding, figuring the driver saw him and would wait at the stop sign. He hadn't, and he didn't. After pausing at the sign, the car pulled onto 73rd, right in front of Ed, who slammed into the passenger side of the car, handlebars first. The lens of Ed's camera phone was broken in the crash, so he wasn't able to take any pictures (the police did), but he said he left a big dent in the side of the car from the first point of impact, then a smaller one next to it as his bike rotated around and hit that, too. He's not sure exactly how he fell--it happened too fast--but he ended up lying on the pavement on his back. (Technically Ed hit the car and not the other way around, but saying that makes it sound as though Ed was at fault, which he was not.)

For Christmas, I gave Ed a small camera that mounts under his bike seat. The idea is that if he's hit from behind or harassed by a motorist, which cyclists sometimes are, he'll have footage of the incident. Saturday was the first time since he received the camera that Ed didn't have it with him; it had been charging upstairs, and he considered going to get it but decided to just get going instead. The camera wouldn't have captured all the action in this accident, but Ed was sorry he didn't have it anyway. It would have recorded the 25-foot streak of rubber being laid out behind him as he braked, and a very long, drawn-out expletive that he apparently hollered as he hurtled toward the car.

It may have captured the following expletives, too, with which Ed colored the air as he lay on his back, waiting to determine what damage had been done. He'd passed a group of cyclists a few minutes before the accident, and they were on the scene almost immediately, as were several drivers who witnessed the crash. (One of these drove him home.) Ed said he was pretty sure someone had called 911 before he'd even hit the ground. He said he lay, swearing a blue streak, in the middle of a circle of concerned citizens all asking over and over if he was OK. He felt sure that if they'd stop asking him for a second and let him do a quick self-assessment that he would have the answer.

Eventually, he got to his feet. The driver, who'd been taking his son home from a Little League game, said he simply didn't see Ed (which is easy to do when you're not paying attention). He was, Ed says, apologetic and assumed all the fault for the accident. The police agreed. Everyone gave statements and Ed got some paperwork that he will use to obtain his own copy of the report. The driver was cited for failure to yield. Ed declined to be taken to the ER at the time. He's been talking with lawyers and insurance agents to understand how compensation will work. He needs to get a scan done to be sure that his back is OK--even though it feels fine just now, sometimes a back injury takes a while to manifest itself--and our local bike shop has declared his poor bike unsafe to ride, so he'll need a replacement. Fortunately for us, the driver's insurance will cover all of these expenses.

In addition to sympathy from Ed's fellow athletes around Boulder and beyond, stories about their own accidents have been flooding in. It's really amazing that so many people we know are still alive. More amazing still is that Ed's heroic bike seems to have absorbed the brunt of the impact. It's frame is cracked and the handlebars ended up at a wonky angle, having been wrenched sideways from the impact. I'll reserve full gratitude until his scan comes back clean, of course, but so far it seems as though he may walk away from this unscathed. It certainly helps that he was able to brake a bit before hitting the car, but he was still going about 21 MPH when he did.

The data from his GPS watch, which was not damaged in the accident, is quite interesting. The pin on the map shows where the crash happened. (He appears to finish the ride at the same place he started, but that's because he forgot to turn the watch off and it captured his car ride home.)

On the graph below the map, the yellow, pink, and green lines and dark gray section show speed, elevation, etc., which all come to a screeching halt at the moment of impact. The red line shows Ed's heart rate, which surges right after he hits the car when he must have been flooded with adrenaline. I think it's fascinating to see the crash mapped out like this.

There is no map of how this felt for both of us, however. Because I heard about the accident from Ed himself, I learned the news and was reassured about its implications simultaneously. Ed eventually did come to meet my friends and me that Saturday, and he was walking around and acting so normally that I was further comforted. Later, though, we split up when I went straight home and Ed went to collect Mischa from the kennel where we'd dropped her off to play for the day. I pulled up to an empty house and sat in the driveway for a moment, the gravity of the possible, and more likely, outcomes of the crash suddenly slamming into me. I always feel a little anxious when Ed is out on his bike, and this ride ended with the kind of news I've always worried I'd hear. It seemed to have turned out OK, but how easily it might not have. I could be pulling up to an empty house under very different circumstances. Ed and Mischa arrived a few minutes later, of course, but the feeling of unease remained, accompanied by a fierce surge of love. I try, as often as I can, to be aware of how lucky I am to have Ed in my life. His accident has been a loud reminder of how important that awareness is.

Making Mischa Mind

Mischa was generally well behaved as far as dogs go when we first got her. But though she didn't chew our things or have accidents in the house (as long as we took her out regularly) she pulled on the leash when we walked her, chased the cats, barked at people, and didn't know any fun tricks. She also tended to lose all control when she saw another dog, lunging desperately toward it with frantic friendliness. This did not bode well for Ed's dreams of letting her run alongside us off leash someday.

We discovered Jamie, owner of a company called Training Wheels, through a kennel that had no room to board Mischa. The man on the phone said that she boards dogs at her home, and, desperate to find a place for Mischa to stay during a weekend when we'd be away, I called her. All three of us loved her, and we were delighted when she mentioned that she offers in-home training sessions. When we got her, Mischa was too old for puppy training classes (her lack of composure around other dogs made us suspect she wouldn't be all that attentive anyway), and an in-home session seemed like just the thing to help Mischa become accustomed to the cats.

Showing off "down" (though she did this when I said "sit"...)

Ed and I both did a lot of reading and research on dog training before getting Mischa, but despite all of that we wouldn't have made a fraction of the progress we have now without Jamie's help. She came about once a week for four or five weeks in a row, and now we call her on an as-needed basis. In between sessions, she gives us homework and we practice with Mischa, who, as it turns out, is quite sharp. With Jamie's help, Mischa knows how to come, sit, lie down, and go into her crate at bedtime. She makes eye contact with us when we say her name (very important, because if we can't get her attention we can't get her to do anything - more on that later), and can even resist taking treats off the floor when she's not supposed to, provided we are watching and she knows she will get one in exchange for good behavior, that is. She still pulls occasionally on the leash, but this has gotten much, much better. Currently, we are working on two additional skills: ringing a bell hung from the doorknob when she needs to go out, and going to her "spot," her bed downstairs, when we tell her to. 

Pressing the metal tab in the middle makes the click.

Jamie and I both have the same educational philosophy, as it turns out. We both believe that learners internalize lessons best when they figure things out for themselves, with as little guidance from the instructor as possible. For dogs, this is called shaping. It takes a little longer initially, but Jamie feels that dogs retain what they learn much better when they work out what they're supposed to do instead of being shown how or forced into it. Key to this is using a clicker, something I initially thought was silly and have now come to view as indispensable. The clicker, as you may have guessed, makes a clicking sound when it is pressed. First, we taught Mischa to associate the clicking sound with food by giving her a treat each time we clicked. Now, each time she does something we like during a training session, she gets a click for immediate feedback, which is great because sometimes it takes a second to dig a treat out. 

To teach Mischa to lie on her bed when she hears "go to your spot," Jamie positioned herself on the other side of the bed from Mischa with treats and the clicker. Mischa, of course, came toward her in hopes of getting a treat, and each time Mischa's paws hit the bed, Jamie clicked and rewarded her with a treat. First, Mischa had to get only her front paws on the bed for a click. Once she had that down, Jamie upped the ante by withholding clicks/treats until Mischa had all four paws on the bed. Then Jamie moved, standing on the same side of the bed as Mischa but very near the it with the clicker in hand. Mischa knows that when she sees a person watching her expectantly with the clicker and treats, she will be rewarded if she does the right thing. She just has to figure out what that is. She tried everything she could think of to get the treat: sitting, lying down, making eye contact, whining. Finally, she sat on the bed accidentally and Jamie clicked and gave her a bunch of treats. This happened again and agin - the hesitation and random attempts until Mischa accidentally came into contact with the bed - until suddenly she started to make the connection between the first drill and the second one. She started to go to the bed more and more regularly. When she'd gotten that down, Jamie withheld treats until Mischa sat on the bed. Then she had to lie on it.

In her spotted spot

This morning, Ed and I started adding the command to the behavior, and Ed moved farther and farther from the bed. Mischa was doing great until he was giving the command from out of the room, and then it got a little too hard. So, as we have learned to do, we made it much easier (Ed came back into the room and stood nearer to the bed) so that Mischa would succeed and we could end the session on a high note. Jamie says this is important, and I can understand why.

It will be wonderful when Mischa has learned to go to her "spot" on command. She is often anxious when she sees people on the sidewalk outside and drives us nuts with her barking. This will be a way for us to communicate to her that everything is OK and to remove her from the scary sight simultaneously. It will also be useful when she goes after one of the cats, though it's going to take a lot of repetition to get her to follow the command when she is excited or nervous. Fortunately, Mischa loves training and we find it fun as well. 

The tricky thing about huskies, of course, is that they have pretty selective attention spans. Currently, Mischa sometimes prefers, particularly when we are outside, to pay attention to everything but us, meaning that she doesn't do anything we ask her to because she genuinely can't hear us. I've tried giving the leash little yanks, calling her name, poking her shoulder, and squatting down so that I am in her field of vision, and she ignores me and looks right over my shoulder. Ed and I aren't sure whether she'll gradually learn that she's supposed to listen to us or whether this is so ingrained in her because of her breed that we're fighting a losing battle. I suppose we'll find out. In the meantime, though, we'll keep plugging away.

Training Update

It's difficult to believe that I've already completed four weeks of my training plan! It feels as though I've just started, which is probably a good sign.

As with most changes, there are things I like a lot and things that aren't so great about this new lifestyle, but I'm very, very happy overall and have no plans to stop.

I'm very much enjoying the variety of the plan. Simply doing long and/or slow jogs nearly every day gets old fast, so it's great to have a variety of speedwork in the mix. I do regular interval runs and tempo runs, but there are also other workouts thrown in that I've never done before. For example, last week I ran four miles with four 30-second sprints thrown in, then a three-minute tempo segment toward the end. It's tough to get bored with all of this stuff on the to-do list. I'm sure I must be getting faster, so I suppose that should go on the list of positives, but I don't have a way to measure, really. My most recent long run certainly felt easier than the one before it, and I went considerably faster, but there are so many possible explanations (better sleep, better hydration, more complete recovery from the nasty cold I had two weeks ago, etc.) that I'm hesitant to say that better fitness is definitely the cause.

While I was able to anticipate some downsides to following the plan, like time expenditure, several frustrations have surprised me. One is that the cumulative effect of all of these workouts is more draining than I'd expected. I've never run so many days in a row, so hard before (I ran every day in high school, but it felt easier then, possibly because the workouts were easier, or--ahem--I was half the age I am now...). Even though I have an "easy" run every other day to break up the hard, fast, or long ones, a slow five- or six-mile run is not as rejuvenating as a day off would be. It's great that I'm building so much endurance from all of this, but I'm still getting used to having tired legs nearly all the time.

I've had my Garmin GPS watch for about five years and thought I understood pretty well how to operate it, but figuring out how to use my watch to measure all of this has been more difficult than I imagined it would be. In the past, when I did simpler workouts, hitting "start" and "stop" was about as complicated as my watch use got. Now I want to collect all kinds of data about speed sets in the middle of runs, and I want to see that data while I'm running so that I can reconfigure my efforts as necessary. Analyzing everything after I get home to my computer won't cut it. The Garmin and Training Peaks websites are both quite complicated--at least, I think so; Ed doesn't--and I'm still learning how to use my watch to collect the information that I need in the most seamless way possible.

And I am already tired of all of the clean-up that this requires. I generate far more laundry than before, and I take about twice as many showers as I used to. There was a time when I enjoyed taking showers, but I'm starting to feel like Sisyphus.

One challenge I did foresee was working in runs with friends. Most of the women I run with aren't particularly competitive, and I have to do even my slower, long runs a little faster than most of them want to go. The best solution I've come up with so far is to show up for runs that involve hangout time after. I start with my friends, take off and do my own workout, then join back up with them at a coffee shop or restaurant to chat afterward. It's actually very motivating when I have a very tough slog because it gives me something to look forward to.

Jeff and I plan to go over my progress at the end of this week and make adjustments if necessary. I'm interested to hear what he will say about my work thus far.