Iron Legs

Race number one! The Iron Legs Quadrathlon at the Kimberley ski resort, just 30 minutes from Cranbrook. The race consists of a downhill ski or snowboard, 7.5 X-country ski, 4.8km run (all downhill) and a 6.2km bike (all uphill) I did this race a few years ago, the winter after Avery was born, and had a great time, but haven`t participated since then.
Since having kids, I haven`t been pursuing many outdoor winter activities, with the exception of maybe one or two X-country ski outings.
To disrupt family life as little as possible, I use early mornings, and since I don`t like the idea of heading into the wintery forest in the dark early mornings by myself (totally chicken actually) I stay inside and bike, run or swim! Needless to say, my husband loves to joke about how slow I am snowboarding down the hill.....seems as the volunteer at the transition is sure everybody must be down, but Shawn convinces them that ``no, my wife hasn`t come down yet`
My X-country ski is not much better, I was on 25 year old classic skis, on a icy course, and no matter how hard I worked, it seemed my bad form and poor ski fitness wasn`t getting me very far! We were almost near the end of the course (thank goodness) and I was dying to start running, when, I did something totally dumb, not sure exactly what I did, but it involved trying to pull up on my ski pole, kick back with my ski and me slipping and gauging my left eye with the handle of my ski pole!!
This hurt more than anything I have ever done, I didn`t know what I had done, I just doubled over clutching my eye, didn`t know if it was open or closed, just knew I couldn`t see anything! I am SO glad that another racer Danielle was right with me during the ski and stopped with me when this happened.
She was so awesome, although she scared the hell out of me, she looked at me and assured me not to panic and that I was going to be OK..... I thought, oh my god, is my eyeball hanging out! Through my other eye I could see blood on my glove and I was scared!
With just a few minutes until the end of the ski portion, Danielle guided my to the end and made sure I was taken care of before putting on her shoes and starting the run, as I was driven to the first aid station back at the resort...booo...
I am OK, there was a big gash above my eye, (a suspected mild concussion) a general lousy feeling for a few days and just today (almost a week later) my eyeball itself (which still hurts) is hurting less!
Hopefully a better turn out next year (as it is such a nice event), they felt sorry for me and still called me up and gave me flowers because only 3 girls did the individual race.
Oh....and I don`t think I would have caught the other girl anyways, as I think she was too fast, but wish I could have tried!!
I couldn't figure out how to make this picture bigger, Danielle is on the left, Yeah Danielle, way to go!!