One Steel Plate Closer to an Ironwoman!!

The 5 week holiday of a life time started off awesome with chilling in Bali for 2 weeks, eat, sleep, surf repeat… and the scheduled run and strength session. I could not completely forget about my ultimate addiction. There was also the occasional wedding chore that needed to be organised but everything was running smoothly.

Pic 1: Enjoying some Bintang’s on the beach.

After copious Mie Goreng’s and a night at Sky Garden (Bali’s seediest/most awesome bar) we were off to Langkawi for my cousins wedding. As per usual Luke and I quickly found the most extreme and dodgy thing to do in Langkawi and we signed up for solo parasailing, taking off and landing on the beach where the only thing stopping you from missing the beach and hitting a tree or fence is the instructions been shouted from Malaysian locals, which were at the best of times questionable.

Pic 2: My 2 second safety briefing before I was flying 50m above the ocean.

The night’s entertainment involved a romantic dinner on the beach watching couples going parasailing together and absolutely stacking it! The next day we convinced my weary sister, dad and cousin to go parasailing and after everyone landed safely we all hired jet skis and flew around narrowly missing each other. With 2 hours till my cousins wedding it seemed like the perfect time to go for a quick ride on the banana boat with my cousin and sister. This is where things started to deviate from plan, after falling of the banana boat a few times and thinking I would rather be at the pool bar having a few cocktails, we came flying off the Banana Boat and someone fell full force into my shoulder. I took a few deep breaths and tried swinging my arm around as advised by the local riding the Jet Ski I realised this wasn’t a normal stack. After being pulled onto the Jet Ski by my life jacket and making it to shore I went into shock and nearly passed out.

Sorry but I haven’t mentioned that this was 6 days out from my own wedding in Bali. On shore I was told multiple times by the locals that I was ok and to get up. However when I felt my collarbone, which was protruding significantly, as you can see from the x-ray below, I decided it was probably best to go to the hospital. After a taxi to the hospital, a shot of Voltarol in my butt (as Langkawi is a Muslim state so no painkillers are allowed), an x-ray that clearly showed a severely broken collar bone and being advise by the surgeon that surgery would most likely lead to lose of movement in my arm we decided it was best to leave Langkawi.

Pic 3: As you can see I never do anything in half measures!

This is when my luck kicked in again, in KL we found an excellent surgeon that fixed me up with a plate and 8 screws and I was able to make my wedding in Bali, sling and all. Although missing a couple of nights of pre-wedding parties, which Luke and my family did a good job of celebrating on our behalf, I had the best day of my life with loved ones from all over the world.

Pic 4: Happiest day of my life, closely followed by winning my age group at Mandurah 70.3 half Ironman.

So now I’m back in Perth after our 2 week honeymoon in Japan snowboarding, marriage negotiations tally thus far - Luke 1 Kerry 0, and I have sat down with Mike Gee, my coach, to discuss my future training and racing. I have had to pull out of Busselton 70.3 Half Ironman but will now be competing in Cairns Half Ironman in June for the lead up to 70.3 Half Ironman Worlds in Austria!! I will also be looking at competing in a Full Ironman at the end of this year or early next year because let’s be honest the challenge is still out there!! And now I guess I am technically one step closer to really transforming into an Ironwoman ;-)

Pic 5: Hopefully the first and last efforts to literally become an Ironwoman.

On a very exciting note I have signed up with my first sponsor 32Gi who will be fuelling me for the intense preparations for the World Champs. As I truly believe in their products I have no doubt my body will be running smoothly, given I stay off the banana boats :-) ! Cheers to the future!!