Sarah Reinertsen back at Kona (Weekend Motivation)

http://www.triclubsandiego.org/stories/1778181.html

Born with her left leg shorter than the right, Sarah Reinertsen absorbed painful taunts growing up on Long Island, New York. At age 7, her family opted to have her left leg amputated above the knee so that she might walk more naturally with a prosthesis. But that first prosthetic was archaic and wooden, the foot made of rubber.

“It was clunky and made a huge noise when I walked,” recalls Reinertsen, now 30. “I couldn’t really run. I had to do this hop, skip thing.”

And so some cruel boys mocked her and poked fun at her limping gait, saying stuff like, “Yo mama got you a leg at the grocery store,” or “Yo mama got you a leg with a kickstand on it.” But that’s immature, ruthless kids. Now imagine an adult—a doctor no less—saying things that to this day move Reinertsen to tears.

“All the kids in my neighborhood did soccer, so I wanted to try too,” says Reinertsen. “All the kids would play, scrimmage or do drills on the main field.”

Here, Reinertsen’s voice cracks, tears welling in her eyes.

“The coach would give me a soccer ball and he’d make me go kick the ball against the side of the wall by myself.”

To compensate for a deficiency in one area, we are often given extraordinary gifts in another. For the five-foot, 97-pound Reinertsen, those blessings are wrapped in her heart, spirit and resolve.

“She was never a fluffy girl,” says Reinertsen’s mother, Solveig Fuentes. “She was a little bit more on the edge.”

After being fitted with an advanced prosthetic, Reinertsen began running in Special Olympic track meets. By 12, she set the world record for female above-the-knee amputees in the 100 meters. Today, she holds the women’s above-the-knee amputee world record in the 100, 200, 400, half-marathon and marathon. Her athletic résumé includes seven marathons.

She moved to San Diego in April 2003 and jumped into the triathlon scene. Although she kept falling off her bike the first week, she finished a sprint-distance race barely a month later.

Then she made history on triathlon’s brightest stage last October, becoming the first female amputee athlete wearing a prosthesis to compete at the Ironman Triathlon World Championship in Hawaii.

Alas, that chapter did not end happily. NBC’s Emmy-award winning coverage of the race featured Reinertsen. The footage of her pedaling into the bike-run transition proved gripping.

After showing early finishers celebrating, NBC panned to Reinertsen.

“Does Sarah Reinertsen get to have a moment like them?” said announcer Al Trautwig. “She’s been breaking disabled barriers her entire life. But there’s a limit here. Finish this 112 miles by 5:30 or it’s no dream come true.”

Reinertsen would miss the deadline by 15 minutes. “Sarah Reinertsen arriving at the transition,” said Trautwig as Reinertsen pedaled in. “… To be told she is 15 minutes too late. That her race is over, and that she can’t be an Ironman today.”

On camera, Reinertsen is overcome with emotion, weeping uncontrollably.

“She was broken,” says Tabi King from the Challenged Athletes Foundation and a friend of Reinertsen’s who witnessed her struggle on the bike. “She was completely broken.”

Twelve months later, Reinertsen returns to Kona, intent on taking care of unfinished business. She is wiser this year, winding down her third triathlon season. A year ago, she admits she was a bit naïve about the challenge.

“I went into last year not really entertaining the idea of not finishing,” says Reinertsen. “I’m confident that no matter what, I’ll get there this year. But I’ve been haunted a little bit and that doubt can creep in.”

She handled the 2.4-mile swim just fine in 2004, coming out of Kailua Bay in an hour, 35 minutes. The first 20 miles of the bike were good too.

“The winds did pick up early,” she recalls. “But you just think, ‘Doo-ta-do, you’re in Hawaii. It’s going to be windy. No big thing.’”

On the climb to Hawi, however, doubt began creeping in. To compound the pressure, she miscalculated the bike deadline, thinking she had to be in by 5 p.m.

“I had a little blond moment,” she jokes.

The Big Island’s capricious winds did not help. What she hoped would be a tailwind on the descent from Hawi shifted into a crosswind. She probably could have handled the heat, humidity and wind but when coupled with a debilitating digestive problem, the stress mounted. Of her sometimes plodding pace, she recalls, “I felt like the sand moving through an hourglass.”

By Mile 70, she started throwing up.

“Between miles 75-85, things got a little blurry,” she says. “It’s so crazy. I’m watching the clock, I’m watching the sun. Time is going by and I’m feeling worse. I’m feeing more beaten down and hot and tired. I felt like I’m not catching a break.”

With nine minutes to go before the deadline, King phoned into Ironmanlive, reporting on Reinertsen’s position. She was nine miles from the finish.

“All I could hear [on the other end of the phone] was the big gasp,” remembers King.

For the little woman with the big heart, there would be no run this day.

Yet Reinertsen persevered, refusing to take the easy way out and take a support vehicle home.

“At the end of the day, the Queen K wasn’t going to break her down,” says King. “She’s passing these runners [who were into the marathon] and they all turn to her, stop what they’re doing and clap for her. They’re blown away that this girl got thrown for a loss on the bike but wouldn’t quit. She could have jumped into a van at any moment, but she refused to be beaten. And she wasn’t beaten. She didn’t make the cutoff time, but she fought so hard. She couldn’t have fought any harder.”

Reinertsen, as you can sense, is a woman with some grit. She was not coddled as a child. When the family went camping Sarah lugged her own backpack and fetched water like her younger brother. She played tennis and skied. The family didn’t sell their two-story home for a ranch-style model.

“We wanted her to experience life like any other child,” says Fuentes. “I think it built character in her.”

Reinertsen will speak her mind too. When interviewed for a profile on Nightline, she said, “Honestly, I have looked at [able-bodied] people and thought, ‘What a waste of two legs. You have them and don’t even use them.’”

She took some heat for her candid comments.

Reinertsen works as a marketing manager for Ossur, a leading innovator of high-quality prosthetics. She said some co-workers told her, “Now we know what you really think of us.”

“I can’t put myself in that place of anger [toward able-bodied people who rarely exercise],” says Reinertsen. “I think it’s their loss. I feel doing all this crazy fun stuff, with the whole triathlon community beside me, that it’s the real juice in life. It’s where we feel alive.”

Others said they were moved by Reinertsen’s story and pointed comments—enough to change their lifestyle. The editor of the Nightline piece quit smoking and began exercising. The producer of the piece started going to the gym and hired a trainer. She met a stranger in San Francisco who said he saw the story and was moved to hit the gym the next day. Says Reinertsen of her influence, “That’s kind of cool.”

Something else really cool would be for Reinertsen to complete her Big Island mission. Her training is going well. She finished the Honu Half in 7 hours, 49 minutes in June. She trained 18 hours a week in her base phase for Kona. When she changed jobs, taking the position at Ossur, she moved 85 miles north of San Diego to Portola Hills. Fitting the town name, Reinertsen intentionally bought a condo at the top of a hill to maximize workouts.

“It’s kind of fun to end every bike ride or run with a kick in the ass up the hill,” she says.

As you might imagine, last year’s heartbreak has spurred Reinertsen.

“That frustration is what drives me,” she says.

No doubt, the NBC cameras will be focused on Reinertsen. And maybe, just maybe, the telecast will prove educational for a certain someone.

As Trautwig said on the 2004 telecast, “There is an audience of millions watching this. And you really hope it includes one soccer coach from way back when.”