Sue Reynolds gained fame for losing 200 pounds after taking up triathlon at age 65. A few years later, she stunned the sport by winning a world championship as a member of Team USA. Across the Line shares the story of Sue Reynolds’ remarkable transformation into a world champion, revealing Olympic-level training methods and elite coaching techniques. In this excerpt, Reynolds shares one warning sign of a workout that could become life threatening.
The September sun glared as I pulled out of my driveway and headed toward a neighboring town for a demanding threshold workout. The world championship in Bermuda stood just four weeks away. Armed with fitness created by two-a-day workouts and a mental toolbox, I was eager for a chance to push my body but also a little nervous about how it would react to the effort.
Bobby McGee had designed the workout for a track where lines would measure the exact distances I would run. But I wanted practice pushing myself on an open road where I didn’t have the mental boost of running past lines that appeared every quarter lap. Bobby said, “Fine, provided that you measure the distances exactly.” So, a week earlier, I’d driven to a road in a neighboring town that was not only long and flat, it was also isolated with few (if any) cars to interfere with my run. Armed with a measuring wheel and a can of spray paint, I marked the road at exactly 300, 400, and 600 meters.
Now arriving at the neighboring town ready to do the workout, I discovered the county had resurfaced the road—covering every one of my carefully painted distance marks. Thankfully, my measuring wheel and spray paint were still in the back of my car, so I simply walked along the newly paved road and re-marked the distances. Not a problem, except that I started my training later than planned.
I knew the main set was going to be tough. It was the kind of workout that you respected because you knew it had the ability to kick your butt. To prepare, I went to bed early the previous night and had a solid breakfast. I also preloaded my water and electrolytes in the morning based on the pre- and post-workout “sweat test” protocol and hydration guidelines published by Precision Fuel & Hydration.
Compared to most Indiana days, the temperature would be near normal—about 85 degrees Fahrenheit. But the lower humidity, around 50 percent, would make it quite tolerable. Even so, I shoved thin reusable plastic ice blocks into my bra to keep my core cool. (I had discovered that ice cubes in one’s bra can cause frostbite!)
I completed the warm-up Bobby wrote specifically for this workout—a couple of 5-minute easy runs, dynamic mobility drills, a few strides, and two primes. Ten minutes prior to the start, I ate a gel. My body was ready to go!
Altogether, the workout would be around six miles, including nine intervals at threshold pace—3 x 600, 3 x 400, and 3 x 300. The relatively short rest intervals would give my heart rate time to drop a little before I started the next run interval.
I approached the spray-painted line on the road marked START. As I did so, I noted cornfields as far as the eye could see on both sides of the road and heard the 13-mile-an-hour wind rustling the cornstalks. That’s good, I thought to myself. The wind will enhance sweat evaporation and keep me even cooler.
I recalled something mental performance consultant Carrie Cheadle once said: “It is not hard. It is not a challenge. It is an opportunity to show what you are made of.” Yes. This workout was simply an opportunity to show Bobby, Jim Vance, Jeff Troesch, and myself what I was made of.
I took a few calming breaths as I gazed down the long road—the way I always do before a race or hard workout. Then I clicked start on my Garmin and eased into the first interval, careful not to push too hard, which is so easy to do when still feeling fresh.
The first three intervals, all 600s, were hard but satisfying—right at threshold, even a little faster than I’d expected. The middle three intervals were more of the same—all controlled effort, keeping the timing of the rests precise so my body could get the adaptation Bobby was after.
Each rep felt a little harder, as it should. Mental strategies began floating up from the toolbox without my beckoning them. I focused on my senses—hearing the buzz of insects, smelling the rich farm soil that framed the road. I started counting telephone poles, ran through my series of form cues, and found myself in the zone. As the discomfort sharpened, I managed. I felt pleased with my execution.
I knew the last three intervals would be especially hard but trusted that the shorter distance, only 300 meters, would make them more manageable. But the first interval of that set was especially tough. I managed to hit and hold the target watts, but found myself staggering slightly with eyes closed during the rest. That was not unusual for me in a really hard workout. I figured I was resting my muscles . . . or maybe I was being a drama queen.
I didn’t know it then, but my heart rate never came down after that first interval of the third set—a quiet warning my body was offering up, and I missed it. I was not in the habit of checking my heart rate during rests.
I made it through the second interval of that set by focusing on my cadence and willing my legs to maintain their rhythm. Your body is a machine, I told myself. Keep the parts moving. I was driven by the desire to hit my last two intervals at the same wattage as the first interval. Do not slow down, I commanded myself.
I staggered more noticeably during the final rest interval. I also lost focus—walking well past the spray-painted line on the road—making my rest interval twice as long as it was supposed to be. Throughout that extended rest time, my heart rate did not drop. Again, I continued, unaware.
Just one more interval, I said to myself. I thought of my white Honda CRV parked a half mile away at the other end of the road. Just run to the car, I told myself, not sure I could make the distance. Then you can rest. I took off running . . .
My eyes open. Pure blue sky. People drift into my field of view wearing medical garb. Someone says, “It’s okay. We’re at the hospital.”
Everyone is hurrying. I think they are running. I am on a cart and overhead the ceiling of a long hallway is a blur. The cart stops. I hear someone say, “A passerby found her lying in the road.” The cart starts moving again. The motion of the walls whizzing past makes me dizzy. I close my eyes. My brain is fuzzy. I realize I am being rushed down the halls of a hospital—just like on TV. This is so interesting, I think to myself.
The cart stops moving again. I open my eyes for a second. I see a small room and a bunch of people all around me, maybe eight. Each seems to have a specific job to do. They seem to be connecting things to me everywhere—to my legs, my chest, my fingers. Others are adjusting knobs on machines. No one is paying attention to me. The efficiency of their coordination impresses me. I close my eyes again. It’s less scary that way.
They seem to be talking to me. I open my eyes.
“Can you tell us what happened?” they ask.
“Um . . . I fell off my bike,” I explain.
The woman who is talking glances at the person next to her. Then, turning the me, she says slowly, “There was no bike at the scene.”
“Yes, there was,” I insist. My brain struggles to figure out how to convince her that I fell off my bike. “Look at the bottom of my shoes,” I say. “There are cleats on them.”
She looks at my shoes. “You have on running shoes,” she says slowly and quietly, then sneaks another look at the woman next to her.
They ask more questions. “What day of the week is it?” I recognize this as the standard question that medical personnel ask when they are looking for brain trauma and I start to answer quickly.
“It’s . . . um . . . um . . . ” I feel the same embarrassment that I used to feel in school when the teacher called on me in class and I didn’t know the answer. “It’s . . . um . . .” Finally, I admit in astonishment, “I don’t know.”
She tries another question: “What year is it?” Okay, this is an easy question, I think to myself.
Again, I start to answer the question quickly, “It’s . . . um . . . I don’t know.” The medical team continues to scurry around me and again, no one is really paying attention to me. They are all too busy. “Is it okay if I close my eyes?” I ask one of them. She says yes.
With my eyes closed, I assess the situation. I am in the hospital and I don’t know what year it is. I must have brain trauma. But that’s okay. My brother had brain trauma after he crashed his bike, and after months of therapy, he’s functioning normally. Both of my hips hurt like crazy. I figure I have two broken hips and try not to move. That’s okay, I tell myself. People recover from broken hips.
I listen to the discussions that are happening around me. There seems to be concern about how long I was unconscious. People keep asking each other repeatedly about the time the 911 call was received. But no one knows how long I was lying in the middle of the road unconscious before the passerby found me. They can’t ask me because I don’t even know the day of the week. Then the labs start coming back.
“Her troponin is really high,” someone notes. They think that I might have had a heart attack. In the back of my mind, I vaguely remember Bobby telling me that when training hard, athletes break down muscle, which increases their troponin and can look like a heart attack. I’m aware that in my late-sixties and with excess skin from my weight loss, I probably don’t look like an athlete who would train hard enough to have an elevated troponin rate. In my own thoughts, I rule out heart attack—but rightfully, the medical team does not.
They talk amongst themselves some more as I lie there with my eyes firmly closed. I hear bits and pieces of their conversation. They think I’m in kidney failure. That’s okay, I say to myself. I’ll just do dialysis.
When they say that my liver is not doing well, I start to get concerned. That makes four organs—brain, heart, kidney, liver. I now think all of my major organs are shutting down. I am in the process of dying.
“Am I going to be okay?” I ask the person who is nearest to me. The sound of my voice surprises me. I sound like a little girl.
“Yes, you’ll be fine,” she says.
I don’t believe her. I feel dizzy and want to pass out, but I don’t know what will happen if I give in to the feeling. Will I simply lose consciousness, or will I die? I ask the person nearest me, “Is it okay if I pass out?” She says yes. But again, I don’t believe her. Maybe she is giving me permission to die. I fight the urge to lose consciousness. Recalling TV shows where a victim is on the brink of death and someone says, “Keep them talking,” I figure I can help the medical team by making myself talk. And so, with my eyes closed, I talk and talk and talk. . . nonstop.
Suddenly, the room is totally quiet. I open my eyes and find that I am alone. Completely alone. Why? Am I dead? I don’t feel dead.
The room has a window—but not one that goes to the outside. It looks like the type of window in an interrogation room, where detectives observe suspects. Oh, I think to myself, this is some sort of cognitive test. I imagine the medical team on the other side of the window. The babbling that I have been doing to keep myself from dying turns to meaningful talk. I try to convince those who are looking through the one-way glass that I am intelligent. “I am in the hospital,” I say aloud. “There were people in this room,” I continue, “but now they are gone.” I’m hoping this will help me pass their test.
A gentleman comes in the room. I ask him where everyone went. “Oh . . . they had other patients to help,” he said.
The man says he is taking me to a machine that will scan my brain and explains that this is a normal procedure when someone comes in with a head injury. Evidently, if there’s a brain injury, they have a small window of time to identify the problem. He explains that since they don’t know how long I was unconscious, they want to do the test stat. He says again, “We do this for all patients who have head injuries.” Somehow, I believe him and feel reassured.
When I get back to the ER, a new woman comes in and tells me that my husband, Brian, is on his way. But I don’t want to see him. I think about how afraid he will feel, and that breaks my heart. I don’t want him to be scared.
A short while later, Brian arrives and asks me what happened. “I have no clue,” I tell him.
“I got a text from your Garmin watch,” he says. The text said there had been an “incident” and provided my geographic coordinates. I didn’t remember setting up my Garmin watch to alert my husband, but evidently, I had done so and when my forward motion stopped suddenly at the same time that my elevation dropped, my Garmin watch sent a text to Brian. As soon as he received the alert, he started calling my cell phone. The medical team in the ambulance picked up and told him where they were taking me.
Eventually, a doctor comes in to talk to us. She says my blood work indicates that I might have had a heart attack, but her biggest concern is that my kidneys are not functioning properly. She wants to admit me to the hospital for a few days to see if my kidneys will recover on their own and to run a bunch of tests to rule out various causes for my sudden loss of consciousness. That is fine with me. I want to return to training, but not if I have a medical condition that makes it unsafe. I welcome the tests.
The doctor leaves and my husband steps out to move his car into the overnight parking lot. While they are gone, a clerical person comes in and begins asking questions so she can fill out the standard intake papers. The first question is, “What is your first name?”
Finally, a question I can answer. “Sue,” I say with great relief.
Then she says, “What is your last name?”
“Um . . .” I can’t remember my last name!
“That’s okay,” she says kindly. “I’ll ask your husband when he gets back.” She goes on to ask which pharmacy I’d like to have medications delivered to.
Relieved that I know the answer to that question, I say, “The CVS on Third Street.”
She looks up, confused. Slowly, she replies, “There is no CVS on Third Street.”
“Yes, there is,” I assure her. “You know, the CVS across from the mall.”
She looks at me again and says hesitantly, “There . . . is no CVS across from the mall.”
Panic sets in.
“Where am I?” I demand. “You’re at the Bartholomew County Regional Hospital in Columbus, Indiana,” she replies.
What!?? How in the world did I get to Columbus? That’s 40 miles from my house. I thought I had passed out on State Road 446 near my house in Bloomington. I thought I was at the Indiana University Hospital in Bloomington.
A nurse comes into the room after the clerical person leaves. I ask her where they found me. She tells me the 911 call had come in from a location five miles east of the Columbus hospital. That makes no sense. What was my body doing there?
Explore Across the Line
In Across the Line, Sue Reynolds shares a story-driven case study of her transformation into a world champion triathlete.
Reynolds gained fame for losing 200 pounds after taking up triathlon at age 65. In this sequel to her debut bestseller, Reynolds shares her single-minded pursuit of performance, revealing Olympic-level training methods, elite coaching techniques, Overtraining Syndrome, and the dark side of personal ambition.
How good can you be? How hard can you push? Across the Line reveals truths about human limits and shares lessons on balancing joy and the pursuit of excellence.