Cary Long Course Duathlon Race Report: Part One

My first race of the season was quite an adventure that involved a trip to Duke Urgent Care center for some stitches.  I’ve decided to break this race report into three blog posts.  Part one is about how I whacked myself upside the head.  Part two has all the details of the race.  Part three is about my trip to the Urgent care center.

Splitting my Head:

I was super excited to be doing my first race of the season.   On my way to the race site, I remembered that I hadn’t had any coffee yet.  I love coffee. I need my morning coffee!  As I drove toward Cary, I was keeping an eye out for a gas station.   I had given up hope of finding one as I turned onto Green Hope School Road, which led into more rural territory.  But…to my great delight, there was a gas station right around that corner! I parked my car and noticed the sign said “Organic Fair Trade” coffee. I thought, yay, not just crappy convenient store coffee, but I found GOOD coffee. I was psyched!

After getting a large coffee, I was excited to get back on the road.  In my excitment, I rushed to open my car door; and I smacked it hard against my head.   I was stunned in pain for a brief moment.  Then I was angry at myself for such stupidity.    I went back into the store and filled a napkin with ice.   I put that up to my head, thinking to reduce any swelling.  I removed the ice pack and saw blood on the napkin.  Oh crap, I thought, this is going to be worse than just a goose-egg bump on my noggin.    I found a ziploc baggie in my car, and went back into the store to fill it with ice.  Then went back out to my car.

Finally, I looked in the mirror.  Holy shit, the cut was deep and wide and I knew it was going to leave a bad scar on my forehead.   I was only 10 minutes from the race site, so I held the ice bag up on my forehead, and continued driving on my way.  My plan was to go straight to the medical tent and ask them if I should race or go to the emergency room.     There was very little blood, the initial pain was gone, and I felt fine.  My primary concern was how quickly I needed to get the wound taken care of to minimize the scarring.

I  didn’t see any obvious medical tent when I arrived.  So, I went to the packet pickup tent.   Luckily, there was no line.  I got my packet and asked where the med tent was, pointing to the gash on my forehead.  They said they were still setting up their medical tent way over on the other side of the site.   I guess most injuries happen DURING a race, not before!   They told me to go talk to Brent, the race director.

As I turned around, a couple of guys noticed the gash on my head and one of them said he was a sports medicine trainer, or something like that.  He said I was definitely going to need stitches.   I asked him what the window of time to get stiches was, and he said 12 hours.   He thought that if I could get someone to put butterfly tape over the wound to hold it together, I’d be okay to race.

I went over to the finish line area,  and found Brent, who is also a sports medicine trainer.   His advice was the same. He added that he was concerned it might start bleeding as my heart rate rose, so suggested I find an elastic band to wrap around my head to add gentle compression.  He found his kit and asked some high school athletic trainers to patch me up.

After that, I went and set up all my race gear.   I met a bloggy peep named $Bill who took my picture and another bloggy peep named Mike who I’d seen at Beach2Battleship.  Always so nice to meet friends at the races.   I was feeling great, full of energy and excitement to race.  I forgot all about my head wound.