The reason I got into triathlons is not what you might expect. I was having dinner with my good friend Christopher, ordered a nice bottle of wine and got into a big discussion as to what is a harder event to complete; an Olympic distance triathlon or a full marathon. I had recently done a Marathon and he had recently done a triathlon, so we were both pretty adamant about our opinion. Long story short I ended up signing up right then an there for the next Olympic distance triathlon in Miami, which was 3 months out, just to prove him wrong.

Melis, Christopher and me. Taken right after finishing the Olympic Triathlon we bet on

We were very lucky that we had no idea of how to train for the race, so we stumbled upon an awesome coach and team that then became, as I affectionately call them, my 6-8am clandestine family. Our coach Boris is one of those individuals that has an amazing energy and ability to get the best out of you and then some. Since the very first day in the pool, two months out from the race, he told me “Listen, you have potential, if you do everything I tell you from here until the race, you will come in first” when my only expectation was to be able to finish alive. Fast-forward two months of waking up before the sunrise, hard work and commitment and sure enough as Boris said, I came in first in my age group, I could not believe it. That is when my Triathlon journey started, I won’t bore you with all the details here, but in a year of working with Boris and team Altius, I was able to qualify for US Nationals Championships and then against all expectations I even earned a place in the Triathlon World Championships.

What I am about to explain is perfectly portrayed by ultramarathoner and ex-Navy SEAL David Goggins:

“I’m not training for a race. I’m training for life. When something tragic happens in life I don’t fall apart, I’m training my mind, my body, my spirit so its all one. So I can handle everything that life is going to throw at me, because the live I’ve lived, throws a whole bunch at you, and if you are not physically and mentally prepared for that, then you are going to crumble and you are good for nobody. We all have greatness, just got to find the courage, hard work, and discipline to be great. That’s what it’s all about”

Screenshot from Whoop on the morning of the accident. I don’t think I’ve had a higher recovery score

When the accident happened I was in the best shape my body had seen. I had been training and doing triathlons consistently for a little over a year. I had just taken a whole week off, as the racing season had ended, so I was effectively tapered. If I could have prepared physically for the accident, I don’t think I could have done it better. I use a device that tracks your body’s physiological state to determine your recovery based on hear rate variability, its called Whoop (Learn more at www.whoop.com). Turns out that the day of the accident my body was 97% recovered, or as they say “primed to take on strain”.

The doctors say being so fit could have been one of the deciding factors I was able to a) survive the crash and b) recover so well and so quickly. In these sorts of collisions when a speeding object goes from 30mph to 0mph in less than a second, the body absorbs a ton of energy. It is first absorbed by the muscles and joints and then ultimately by the bones, often times resulting in a fracture. Granted I did have fractures, none of them were mortal (the cervical fracture was less than a millimeter away from severing my spinal cord). I could have had many more fractures without such toned up muscles. My recovery has also been way faster than expected since my body was conditioned and accustomed to get beat down every week and recover fairly quickly for the next race. All that is the physical explanation. Now comes the most important factor.

In triathlon you not only train your body but you also train your mind. It teaches you discipline (like waking up at 5.30am everday to go train) and endurance. I remember one day in training when we were doing sprints up the bridge coach Boris said “Today is about learning to take the body up to a level of sufferance, and then learning to maintain and tolerate that sufferance”. It was those sort of lessons, coupled over the course of a year, that trained my mind to endure pain and convince the body to continue despite the mounting desire to stop.

As David Goggins put it, I thought I was just training for the next race, but in reality I had prepared myself physically and mentally for whatever life through at me (A flaming Ducati in this case). Moral of the story, stupid bets over too much wine can save your life.

This post is dedicated to coach Boris and the Altius family. Love you guys, you make me stronger.