The Custom Coach Speaks

Last year I went to watch Beaches to Battleship and watch some friends race. It was my first trip to Wilmington. I really enjoyed the race and the venue so I planned a return trip this year.

Over the spring a had a call from one of my high school buddies Craig Clemens, we caught up on the last 20 years that had passed. During our conversation Craig learned of my occupation and he passed along that his brother Chris was now racing Triathlons and Chris had a couple of Half Ironmans planned for this year. So, I was not surprised when Chris dropped me an email but very glad he did. Chris and I also caught up and then our thoughts turned to Triathlon…Ironman in particular. Chris was looking for a race but, with M-dot races filling a year in advance his choices were limited. I suggested B2B and offered to be his personal sherpa if he made the trip. Chris liked the idea, signed up and over the next several months we exchanged emails on training fueling etc.

I grew up in the small town of Cape Girardeau Mo, population 30,000…when the college was in session. I played football and wrestled. Coach Clemens (Chris and Craig’s dad) was my offensive line coach and head wrestling coach. Needless to say I spent a lot of time with the whole Clemens family. In 1985 Chris and I found a summer job at a sawmill in Southern Illinois about 60miles from Cape. Our job was to compact shaving into plastic bags and then seal and stack them. The shaving are a byproduct from the plainer. when boards are plained smooth the resulting shavings were blown across the mill into an over head bin, our bin. We would run the compactor and bail them into bags. The only stoppage of our progress was when the overhead shavings became compacted in the bin. The result would be that after all the loose shavings fell into our machine there would form a void where all of the shavings above that level were clinging to each other and would not fall down. The fix was for Chris or I to climb into the bin with a long 3×3 (board) and stir the pile until it collapsed. We would then return to the main level and start again.

Chris picked me up at my house and we headed to the mill. The day was no different from any other day and after arriving we got to work . An hour or so in, the shavings quit flowing so we climbed into the bin to give them a stir. The bin is shaped like a 10×10 square funnel. Once entering the bin I noticed that the shaving were piled very high along one wall and that the bin was full. Chris had the board to stir and we walked in. As we stepped onto the shavings I felt them shift, It made me nervous so I cautioned Chris as I stepped onto the lip of the wall, a small 4 inch strip of metal where the sides were folded into the top. Chris seemed confident and started to stir. At that moment a large hole in the shavings opened and before either of us could move Chris was engulfed. He slid directly under the large mound and was gone. The only thing left was the board he used to stir. I quickly grabbed the board, through it across the last place I saw Chris and straddled it incase the hole opened again. I figured it would act like a big snow shoe. As I dug I could hear muffled screams for help and to “get me out of here!” With in seconds I found his hand and we locked wrists. I started to pull with every fiber of my being but he did not budge. I was loosing all concept of time but after what i’m guessing was just a minute or so he stopped yelling. I heard one last moan as if to say he had given up. To this day that was the most awful sound I have heard. At that moment I was hoping for superhuman strength to kick in but nothing! I still could not move him, his grip went limp and his hand turned blue. I knew there was not much time left so I decided to run for help. Before I left I placed my hat over Chris’s hand so I could find the spot when I returned. I was afraid the shavings would shift while I was gone, covering his hand again, this did happen. I’m not sure how long it took but I found the mill foreman and franticly explained that Chris had been buried. The foreman was on the phone at the time and passed the message along to who ever he was talking to. He grabbed a shovel and we ran to the bin. By the time we got there (1min?) men were heading to us from every direction. We climbed into the bin and the foreman and another man started digging for all they were worth. With in another minute or so they had uncovered Chris to his shoulders. I heard them say “he has a pulse!” they strapped an oxygen mask on Chris and by the time he was carried out an ambulance was waiting. We loaded him in, it screamed off and everyone left. Except me. I stood there totally perplexed at what to do next. Should I go back to work? Should I go home? To say I was in shock would be an understatement. I got in Chris’s car and decided to go home. Not a good Idea for me to be driving but luckily I made it without getting myself in a wreck. I had gotten a message to Kay, Chris’s mom but in the pre-cellphone era no one else had a clue what had happen. Upon arriving home I was pacing like a caged animal, I called a friend of my family and she drove me to the hospital to check on Chris. When I arrived he was in surgery. While buried he had inhaled chips of wood into his lungs and the surgeons were in the process of removing them. By this point everything was starting to sink in and I was rattled…big time! I refused to leave until they let me see him, I needed to see him breathing and I needed to see with my own eyes that he was alive! They did and a calmness came over me.

With in a few days Chris was back at home and resting, I went by to see him and he looked good, just extremely tired. I felt relieved and thought well that’s that but little did anyone know the real struggle was yet to come. I don’t have a medical degree but my understanding about what happened next is; due to the stress of the accident, all the protective coating around the nerves in Chris’s spine had been burned off and they started shorting out against each other. I may be way off with this description but the result was the same as a stroke. Chris after seeming fine for a week lost his ability to walk on his own and he lost his fine motor skills.

At 17 years old your not supposed to face your own mortality, up until then we were both bullet proof or so we thought. Immediately after the accident I was getting a lot of attention. People calling me hero and saying I had saved Chris’s life. To this day I am uncomfortable with either of those monikers. I would like to think that any one who saw their friend get buried would act the same way as I did. All I knew was, I was glad he was alive and I did not want to talk about it any more. I just wanted to go back to life as normal so, that is what I did. I never spoke of what happened again. As I was dealing with what happened by not dealing, Chris was learning to walk and as I checked out I never gave a thought to how this would effect the rest of his life. Over the next year Chris seemed to recover fast and the only lasting physical effect I could see was a trimer in his hand when he wrote. I have kept up with his brother Craig and the family but we all went on to live ours lives in different States. That’s when I got an email from Chris.

It explained what he was up to, now a teacher married with 2 kids living in TN and doing triathlons but there was something else. The accident. Chris wrote how he had been presenting his story since college for special ed students suffering from head injuries. Only in his story I am the one who falls in the shavings and it is he who has to watch all the events that unfold. By the end of the story he makes an admission that it was really he who was in the accident and flips the characters back. As I read his email Amanda asked, “what is he talking about.” and that is the first time I realized that I had not told this story to anyone and it struck me that this had impacted us both.

Friday November 6, 2009 I drove to Wilmington Nc to see a friend. I met Chris and his family at the Hilton. We grabbed our bikes and went for a spin and we talked, for the first time in 25 years we talked about what happened at the mill. It was interesting to understand how that day had effected each of us and to get the other persons point of view.

The following morning I picked Chris up dropped him at the swim and watched his day unfold. It is always inspiring to watch athletes struggle both physically and mentally and to over come pain and extreme fatigue to finish a race, that I believe changes your life. It was even more rewarding to see my friend and someone I will always be tied to through a chain of events that changed our lives so many years ago. Now we share a new experience.

Congratulation Chris Clemens You are an Ironman!