On Life with One Hand by Keiron McCammon
Back in the summer I did a promo photo shoot for TouchBionics on their i-Limb hand. I hadn’t seen the resulting video and then stumbled across it on YouTube the other day. Thought I’d post it for all to see, a bit of fun.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpS7Lq7lfAk?rel=0]
For Halloween this year I simply took the glove of my i-Limb hand, put on a leather biker jacket and pants, added a pair of sunglasses and voila, Terminator!
This photo was taken at a friends party (they go all out decorating their house). Just after this photo was taken someone came walking past and as I spoke they turned around and said to their partner, “hey, this one speaks”, before she realized I wasn’t a manikin but a real person. So I guess it must have been pretty convincing.
Next year I’ll have to get into the gym so I also have the muscles to match the costume.
The alarm went off at 4:30am on Saturday, a quick shower to get the blood flowing and time to go meet everyone and cycle down to the race in the dark to set up in the transition area…thus started the big day.
Come 8:30am I was diving into the rather chilly waters of Pacific Grove surrounded by 100+ other nutters in the TNT men’s wave, Kerry followed in the first of the TNT women’s waves at 8:45am.
42min later I exited the water after swimming 1.5km and headed to the transition area to get my bike for the 40km ride.
It took me 1hr 26min to complete the ride and head back into the transition area to change for the run, my least favourite part of the event…2 down, 1 to go.
The 10km run was the hardest part, but, 1hr 3min later I was crossing the finish line with Mike Bishopp (a fellow Brit) waving the Union Jack flag high in the air.
In total it took me 3hr 23min 41sec to complete the race, beating my personal goal of 3hr 30min. Kerry finished in 3hr 55min 34sec, beating her goal of 4hrs. It was an amazing day, what an incredible sense of achievement!
Between the 2 of us we raised over $11,000 for LLS. To everyone who donated, thank you, thank you, thank you. Whilst it’s been a long 3.5 months of training, it has been just so much fun being part of the East Bay TNT tri team and in a strange kind of way the race itself was actually quite enjoyable…maybe that means I’m now addicted to triathlons.
We’re into the closing stretch, there’s only 3 weeks until our triathlon at Pacific Grove on 13th September. The second half of the training program has continued to build the intensity level and I’ve now completed two 30 mile cycle rides (takes about 2 hrs), four one mile open water swims (takes about 45 mins) and this weekend we completed a 7 mile run, our longest yet (which took about an hour and a half). So all in all I feel I should be in a good position to complete the race in under four hours, especially since one of the 30 mile rides was at 6,000 feet in Tahoe!
(The photo is off Kerry and I with R2, one of the coaches, at Aquatic Park in San Francisco after our open water swim and run).
And after our seven mile run on Saturday Kerry and I were up at 5:30am on Sunday to head down to Monterey to check out the triathlon course at Pacific Grove and go for a swim in the sea to practice crawling through the kelp, of which there is a lot…much more than I was expecting (see the photo). Then it was all change and off we went for a cycle ride around the bike course, cycling about twenty miles. By the time we got back home we just crashed and slept for a few hours…this training lark is quite tiring you know!
On the fund-raising side I have been very fortunate to exceed my minimum amount by quite a bit, thank you to all those that have donated so far and in particular to those that have donated $100 or more: Sean, Martin; Julie; Prashant; Oda; Rich (and team at Diablo P&O); Bernhard; Joe (and team at eLeaseReturns); Tim; Kristi; Scott; Robert; Ivan; Ephraim (and team at OMG); Maya; John; Barry and Jugdeep….you guys rock, thank you so much. Also, Hearst (Kaboodle’s parent company) generously donated $5,000 as a corporate sponsorship…big thanks to Ken, Scott, Scott & Ed for making this happen.
For those who would still like to donate to this great cause there is still time, the deadline is the 28th August and since I have exceeded my minimum it would be great if you could donate to Kerry instead and help her reach her $3,300 goal…she needs about $1,000 more and I’m sure all you generous folks can help her! Here’s her fundraising page: http://pages.teamintraining.org/sf/pactri08/kez.
