Onwards!

So, a few weeks ago something pretty shitty happened to me. I was driving back from the T3 endurance training camp in Lake Placid when my tri bike was taken. The details are sad, painful and even a bit embarrassing for me recount. I left it unattended for a few minutes when I stopped at a gas station to get a Red Bull for my drive home. No it wasn’t locked. Yes, I feel incredibly stupid about that. What can I say? I grew up in the area and honestly never dreamt anything like this could happen.

The hours and days that followed were a whirlwind of [pretty terrible] emotions. There was a brief glimmer of hope where my bike was maybe spotted along the highway but when I and others drove to the location, it was gone. I drove slowly around the area it went missing again and again, ultimately giving myself a flat tire on my car from driving on whatever debris was on the highway shoulder.  And still…. nothing.

After filing a police report, I waited for hours in that same parking lot, stranded in part by my car’s flat tire but also sort of just paralyzed by the situation.

Do I drive back to Boston? What if shows up? Maybe someone has it and is just looking for the owner!

Occasionally I’d look back at my bike rack with torn straps that had once held my most prized possession and my heart would sink further. 150 miles from home in Boston; 6 weeks out from the race I’d been training for for nearly a year….and no bike. Overwhelmed, heartbroken, and exhausted, I called my Mom and started crying.

Not to belabor/sound dramatic about how shitty this felt because I’m sure some of you may be thinking, “Kay, it was just a bike…Keep it in perspective!”

And of course that’s true. But this bike was really special to me. For one, it was a really nice bike! I worked really, really hard to buy the original frameset and perhaps even harder to get the components upgraded only a month prior to it going missing. It spent most of the year in my basement on a trainer where I’d spent hundreds of hours training on it. It was the bike that I planned to ride 112 miles through the Adirondacks during Ironman Lake Placid next month. I know it’s silly to say… but I loved it.

So alright, alright! What’s the silver lining? Well, here it is: YOU ALL! The support from my friends, family and the online community was… incredible to say the least. The Facebook post I made soon after it went missing went essentially viral (by my standards at least). I had COUNTLESS people reach out and offer to lend me a bike or help in anyway they could.  People I had never met before were sending me Facebook and Instagram messages offering to help incredibly generous ways.

And each time someone reached out I was so incredibly touched and the world, that had gotten so heavy over the past few days, became just a little bit lighter.

There’s not a single day that I don’t remind myself how privileged I am to be able do this sport. Not just the obvious fact that I could afford such a nice bike to begin with, but also that I’m able-bodied enough to put it to good use; that I grew up in area where I could start going for solo runs and bike rides in high school, that I learned to swim at a very young age (okay yes, and haven’t improved that much since then). Most of all, I’ve always known how incredibly lucky I am to have friends and family who support me through something kind of crazy like training for an Ironman.

And these past few weeks have just solidified all of that. Friends and complete strangers offered to lend me their (also very expensive) bikes so I could still race Lake Placid on a tri bike. COUNTLESS people checked in regularly to see if there was any news and if there was anything they could do to help.

So what do you make of that? Well, my take is this: It’s the shitty things and people that seem get a lot of attention. Whether it be a rotten bike thief, or a horrible world leader who separates families at our nation’s border….

There are so many really, really kind, amazing people out there still. Like, at least 20,000,000 of them in fact. There’s also this thing called insurance, which I’m really glad I have. I got fitted today for a new bike and I’m hoping to get on it in the next week or two… just in time to start my taper for Lake Placid.

THANK YOU SO MUCH friends, families, strangers who I’ve never met for all of your support and kind words these past few weeks. I can’t tell you how much it’s meant to me.

P.S.

A few of you asked if I set up a crowd funding account. I did not but would love for you to consider to donating to this way better cause instead.