A lot of sports have their “dirty little secrets”.  In football, it’s concussions/brain trauma.  In cycling, it’s random heart attacks from drug-affected blood.  In bowling it’s… carpal tunnel syndrome?

Well, triathlon’s “dirty little secret” is skin cancer (there are 3 basic types of skin cancer – melanoma, basal cell carcinoma, and squamous cell carcinoma… of those 3, melanoma is by far the most likely to spread, and eventually kill).  Our sport mostly consists of a bunch of white people spending a crap ton of time out in the sun.  So yeah, we’re a “high-risk population.” I know a LOT of people in the sport who have had skin cancer, and unfortunately, I’m just the latest victim (but now survivor… hell yeah!).  The last 4-5 weeks of my life have been horrid, after I received a diagnosis of melanoma, on November 10, 2014.  The whole process culminated with surgery on Dec 9, 2014.  The surgeon dug out all of the skin around the original melanoma spot, and then also removed 3 nearby lymph nodes, to check if the cancer spread.  Fortunately, as I just found out today, the cancer did not spread.  So, it appears that I’ve dodged this bullet.

Here’s the part where things get interesting…

I originally went for a dermatology appointment on Aug 27, and showed them this spot

(worth noting… I have no idea how long it was there. I only noticed it because I buzzed my hair for a race in August)

The dermatologist said it was “fine”, and sent me on my way.  But, the spot was still bugging me, so I made an appointment to get it checked out again.  I went back on November 5, and made the dermatologist remove the spot and biopsy it.  Five days later, it came back as positive for melanoma.  I was floored, and cried for the first time in a looong time.

Luckily, it’s depth was relatively shallow, indicating that we caught it early.  And the biopsy results I got back today confirmed that the cancer did not spread (although as anyone who’s had cancer can tell you, waiting for surgery, and biopsy results, is goddamned awful… )

Here’s the point:  I’ve dodged this bullet, but only because I was so friggin’ insistent that something was wrong with that spot.  I urge you to learn the “ABCD“s of melanoma, they could literally save your life.  And the other thing to look for is the “which one of these is not like the other?” concept – i.e., if there’s a mole on your body that looks different than all of your other moles, GET IT CHECKED OUT!!!  If you catch it early, melanoma is relatively easy to treat, and cure.  But if you don’t catch it early, things can get ugly…

Luckily, I was doggedly insistent that they remove the spot. Otherwise, the doctors would have left it there, and it would slowly still be boring into my head, a ticking time bomb waiting to kill me.

I’ll leave you with a couple more nuggets of advice:

1) Sunscreen is good, but clothing is better.

2) I didn’t just get this because I’m a ginger.  Out of everyone I know who has had melanoma, I’m the only ginger.  Sure, fair-skinned folks are more susceptible to it, but ANYONE can get it.  I had a friend who died in 2011 from melanoma, and he was not a ginger…  Do not make the mistake of thinking you’re “immune” to skin cancer!  (ex. Bob Marley died of melanoma. He was definitely… not a ginger)

3) The skin “never forgets”. I’ve been super-vigilant about sun protection for the last 4 years. Unfortunately, I wasn’t vigilant about sun protection from ages 16-29.  My melanoma wasn’t caused by sun exposure from 2011 – 2014. It was caused by sun exposure from 1996 – 2010.

And… just for fun, here are my surgery scars, which will serve as a reminder of this whole mess, for the rest of my life…

        

Anyways… that’s that…

Keep training hard, and resting harder,

Doug MacLean

2.4 mile swim, 116 mile bike, 26.2 mile run – 8:54:45.  18^th place.

 

Two days ago, I raced Ironman Chattanooga.  It was a great race, with a great course, and we were welcomed warmly by the entire Chattanooga community.  I can’t think of a single bad thing to say about the event.  The highlight was my homestay with Jim & Sandra Brewer. In addition to me, they also hosted Andrew Fast, Angela Naeth Duncan and Paul Duncan.
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There is a big push lately on social media to get “50 Women to Kona”, because right now, male pros are allotted 50 Kona slots, whereas female pros are allotted only 35 slots.  This is because there are 1.5-2 times as many male pros as there are female pros.  Some people think women and men should have the same number of Kona slots, and that’s perfectly fine.  I see the merits of their argument.  Unfortunately, I think there’s a much bigger argument to be made, on a larger scale*:  Chasing Kona, and going to Kona, is a complete waste of time & money for most professionals. Continue reading →

First off, let me start this with a couple of disclaimers:

You may get the impression that I “dislike” the WTC, and Ironman, by writing this article.  But that is patently false.  I love Ironman.  I have given up everything else in my life, in pursuit of winning an Ironman. Also, I derive great joy from helping the athletes I coach achieve their Ironman dreams.  You don’t do what I’ve done, for something you “hate”, or think is “bad”.  There is no drug on earth that can match the wonderful satisfaction of nailing an Ironman race.   But… that doesn’t mean I think Ironman is perfect.  It can be improved.

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(this post is a modification of an email I recently sent to a friend of mine who is a successful pro triathlete and super awesome person, when our email chain got onto the topic of “fun” vs “discipline”)

The end goal of all that we do, of course, is maximizing race day performance.  By and large, you improve your race performance by making positive adaptations in training.  At the core of these adaptations are two things:  1) workout quality, and 2) how you recover from those workouts.  Everything that happens in your life, both mentally and physically, affects those two things.
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Last weekend, I raced Ironman Texas.  I finished as the 15th pro, in 8:56:46.  What this race experience has made me reflect on the most is the idea of “confidence”, and the utility/art of goal-setting.  As such, I’ll use those topics as the centerpiece of my race report…
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Last weekend, I raced Ironman Los Cabos.  It was a crazy race week, and just about every possible pre-race mishap that could have happened, did happen.  I won’t recount it here, but my roommates Beth Shutt and Matt Curbeau did a good job covering the mishaps (Montezuma’s Revenge, a trip to the ER, a traffic accident, multiple mechanicals, etc…).  Good times, haha!
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Recently, coach Tim gave me an assignment – to record my thoughts during a workout, and send the results to him. I decided that a 5-hour bike trainer session would be a good workout for this assignment, for a couple of reasons:  1) There’s a lot of time to think during a 5-hour workout, 2) The intensity is relatively low, so it’s easy to write down notes.
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A couple of months ago, I sent out a survey to fellow professional triathletes, all of whom focus on non-drafting racing (olympic distance, half-iron distance, and iron-distance).  The purpose of the survey was simply to find out how much folks had been drug tested, and by whom, in the time period from January 2013 – September 2013.  I had 34 respondents.
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While it was easy to see that I changed bike frames in 2013 (switched from a Cervelo P3 to a Quintana Roo CD 0.1), I also made significant changes to my wheel/tire choices. Continue reading →