Every day around this country, recreational cyclists and triathletes use local roads as training grounds, always risking the threat posed by cars and trucks. In Calgary, many of these cyclists and triathletes use the Springbank community on the western outskirts for its challenging hills, open roads and lovely mountain scenery.
Thirty-nine months ago, cycling in the area as part of her training regimen, Brenda Seasons rode cautiously downhill on narrow-shouldered 101st Street SW. Too late, she saw a blue sports car run through a stop sign and suddenly, with a sickening thud, her life changed traumatically.
The car's mirror snagged her left arm, goring skin and muscle to expose bone. She was flung into a ditch, her left leg "trashed." Bleeding, shocked, Seasons struggled to stay conscious and retain presence of mind as blood began to pool. Responding to the urging of a 911 attendant, she asked one of the motorists who had stopped, a young woman, to use her scarf as a tourniquet on her arm. That scarf, first applied mistakenly to the wrist and then carefully to the wound higher on her arm, may have saved her life.
"I knew I was hurt bad and figured if I kept my eyes open I wouldn't die," says Seasons, 50, a mother of four who lives in Springbank. "I kept thinking about the kids."
She'd been training for her fourth consecutive Subaru Ironman triathlon at the time of the collision, and in its aftermath, through multiple operations and painstaking therapy, Seasons eyed the annual event in Penticton, B.C., as her comeback goal. She filed entries the last two years despite knowing that while her body probably wouldn't be healed sufficiently to participate, she would use the event as a constant target, an ever-present incentive to get where she needed to be, both in physical fitness and state of mind.
And this Sunday, finally, she expects to toe the start line with 2,800 other chiselled athletes in the 29th edition of the Ironman on the shores of Lake Okanagan. The gruelling competition requires a 3.8-kilometre swim, a 180-km bike ride and a 42.2-km marathon.
"I'm not racing to win," Seasons says, "I'm racing to recover."
A granddaughter of the Southam newspaper chain patriarch, Brenda and her husband Chris Seasons, president of the oil-and-gas company Devon Canada, spoke for the first time publicly about the accident for this interview. Chris and their kids – twins Mackenzie and Kevin, 17, Kendall, 15, and Graham, 14 – will be cheering for her on Sunday.
Seasons picked up a passion for long-distance bike rides with her husband while living in the Netherlands years ago. She'd already become an accomplished swimmer and runner, so when their youngest child entered Grade 1, she began to combine the three sports by taking on the triathlon.
The Subaru Ironman is the ultimate triathlon, one of 10 held in North America annually. In her inaugural event, in 2005, she finished in just over 12 hours – 35th in her division and 840th overall. She was hooked.
For the 2008 edition, she streamlined her stage transitions, bought a better bike and had planned to make a trip to Italy to push her endurance, gunning for a personal-best time. But her dream was derailed on an otherwise beautiful May day, on that Springbank road.
"It's a long, fast hill so I was controlling my speed," she says. "I know drivers tend to roll through the stop sign at the intersection, so even though I have the right of way, I am always cautious there. Three cars were coming north toward me but suddenly a blue sports car jumped out from behind the trees on 17th from the east. I could see he was looking at them and didn't see me. … Oddly, I remember watching my bike sail over me and crash into pieces."
From the ditch she telephoned Chris, who was wrapping up a meeting in his office.
"Her voice was controlled and calm but I knew the situation was grave," Chris says. "She isn't the type to call about a bruised knee."
A social worker in the emergency ward of Foothills Hospital led him immediately to a private room.
"Being met like that, I was preparing to hear the worst," he says. "When he finally said she was alive but would most likely lose at the least her arm, I was oddly relieved. It's funny how you quickly work through the hierarchy of life over limb."
Within an hour of the accident, two different specialists worked to salvage her limbs. One of the surgeons, Dr. Vaughan Bowen, is also a cycling fanatic. He performed two additional surgeries on her arm and leg over the next year to repair nerves, and at every turn gave his assurance that she would compete again.
But the pace of recovery was slow. While miraculously no bones had been broken, Seasons suffered severe damage to the muscles and nerves. Today, both her leg and arm are permanently disfigured and weaker than the right-side limbs.
Beyond the physical came the emotional complications. A few weeks after release from the hospital, they went to a bike store. She stopped at the door and began shaking uncontrollably, a sign of post-traumatic stress disorder. At night she suffered nightmares, and by day a slamming car door would trigger flashbacks. When her kids walked to school, she feared a car would hit them on their quiet street. She could barely get into a car herself. Along with the three weekly trips to the physiotherapist, she visited a psychologist regularly.
"By running a stop sign, that driver robbed me of many of the pleasures in my life," Seasons says.
She set up her own regimen to get back her life. Her ultimate goal was to not just be able to function but to compete in the Ironman again. It took three months for the bruising in her butt to heal enough to sit on a bike seat and just as long for her knee to bend enough to pedal. Last week in Canmore, Alta., she leaned on her road bike and smiled as her youngest son came pedalling up. Graham is a competitive cyclist himself, and riding with him has helped push away the demons and restore her love for the bike.
"I knew she had it in her to fight to regain her mobility," Chris says. "We bought a big cruiser-style bike with a fat soft seat to get her back in the saddle. It was good for her leg and for her mind. But the running didn't start for about a year because of more surgery. And the swimming didn't start until last winter due to the skin grafts, the nerve damage and rehabilitation of frozen shoulder syndrome caused as a byproduct of the accident. To be honest, only a few months ago did she finally let down her guard and let people see the scarring on her body."
As for the emotional scars, those will take more time to heal. She won't return to the scene of the accident, nor cycle in Springbank.
Her goals have changed since May of 2008. Where she finishes in the pack in Penticton doesn't matter any more.
"Sunday isn't as much about the race as it is about the recovery," she says. "With the help of friends, specialists, my kids and Chris, I've been regaining my life. The training for the Ironman was my physical therapy and it's gone beyond all expectations. I will never have the freedom from this new fear. And, emotionally, I'm not ready to forgive the driver. But the race will help me move on."
Special to The Globe and Mail