THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 01, 2016

Several weeks ago I received a package in the mail. With the delight of a kid at Christmas, I tore the box open, and found a gift I had given myself: A Road ID bracelet.

As you can see from the photo, it cryptically lists my contact and medical information, and has a red medical badge. I now wear this bracelet so if I am in a serious accident, first responders will have a clue as to who I am, how to treat me and whom to contact.

I acquired my Road ID bracelet because in the past year I had to begin taking a blood thinner when it was discovered that I am prone to blot clots. I could bleed out in a serious accident if first responders do not take immediate action.

When I left Illinois several months back, I and my running buddies were engaged in a continuing discussion about whether at least one of us ought to be carrying a cell phone on our training runs. Being old school runners, carrying anything at all on our runs was abnormal for us. As I was the only marathoner in the group (the others were focused on 5K and 10K racing), only I would carry anything, that being gel and sometimes salt tablets for my long runs. Otherwise, when we ran together three to four times a week, we all carried nothing. No one wanted to bring along a phone. And, yet, doing so probably was a good idea for reasons of safety, starting with runner Jerry's recent rewiring with a heart defibrillator after he had collapsed at the start of a road race due to arterial blockage.

Most runners who carry phones are doing so for music or are using a running app to track splits and distance, but there is a comfort that it is there to be used if medical or safety issues arise.

Yet, I can only think of very few instances when having a cell phone at hand would have been really useful for me for medical or safety reasons in training situations.

One that comes to mind was when I was riding my bike in a rural area early one pre-cell-phone weekend morning. Right after a stand of trees on a farm lot, a large dog barking madly came charging at me. I was so startled that I jerked up on my handle bars and torqued my bike around, crashing into the road with the bike landing on top of me. After taking the biker's first obligatory step - checking to be sure the bike was not harmed - and noting that the dog had stopped politely at the edge of the lot and was no longer barking, I assessed my condition and found that I had ground the side of one leg into the rough pavement. I was bleeding. A lot. I staunched the bleeding until it slowed. No one came by the help me. I eventually struggled back on to my bike, said good bye to the nice doggie, and slowly rode the 10 miles back home, my leg oozing blood from my torn bike shorts as I pedaled. As I waited at a stop light near my house, a driver pulled up next to me and asked with great concern, "Are you all right?" I assured him that I was, and rode on. I have no idea why he thought a battered and scraped up bike rider with a bloody leg would not be OK!

Most of the other times I have had close encounters with disaster while running, biking and swimming have been in races with many people around or while training with other athletes. The most salient example is when, unbeknownst to me because I was unconscious after I crashed on a downhill in Ironman Canada, competitors who spotted me laying in the road had alerted medical personnel and gotten me the first responders and ambulance that I badly needed.

I remain old school and don't want to carry anything non-essential when I train and race. That's one reason why most of my workouts these days are with others. Assuming they don't see more value in me dead than alive, I am entrusting myself to their good sense, just as they are to mine.

Nonetheless, now when I get on my bike I slip my phone into my jersey pocket. And I have carried it a few times lately on long solo trail runs. I get it that females who run early in the morning or in the evening want a phone with them. It just makes sense to do what's needed to be safe out there.