Race day. It’s something you work hard for and look forward to for months. It’s a day you go into with anticipation, hope, butterflies and the mental focus that all your hard work will soon pay off. It’s meant to be a time of excitement – from packet pick up to your pre-race meal to the moment the gun goes off at the start line. It is supposed to end in victory – whether the time on the clock is the time you trained for or not. It is NOT supposed to be a weekend or a day that you never return home from.

That is why I cannot, for a single second, stop thinking about Frank Guinn.

Frank was a local Atlanta triathlete who was in New Orleans to compete in the IRONMAN 70.3 New Orleans race that was held this past Sunday. On Friday, Frank, his brother-in-law Andrew and another cyclist went out for a training ride on the course when they were struck from behind by a car.

Frank was 36 years old, worked as an Atlanta firefighter and had 3 daughters – 7-year-old triplets. He was killed on his pre-race training ride. He never started his race and he never came home. His brother-in-law Andrew, also the general manager of a local running specialty store here in town remains hospitalized with critical injuries. How could something like this happen?

All I can keep thinking about is Frank’s wife and his daughters. I don’t know Frank or his family, but I can’t stop thinking about what they must be going through … and can’t even begin to imagine their heartbreak. Frank’s wife spoke at the start of the race on Sunday, less than 48 hours after his fatal training ride. What courage and strength it must have taken to do that.

I keep thinking of the entire triathlon community and how this could have been any of us. I get sad and emotional. Then I get angry. How could a vehicle have plowed into 3 men on bikes?

Today, I don’t have any answers and I don’t have any advice. I’m left feeling a bit hollow and shaken by Frank’s experience, on the very day that we also remember the Boston Marathon bombings and the 3 people – Krystle Campbell, Martin Richard and Lingzi Lu – who also never came home from the Boston Marathon.

All I know is this: 1) We must appreciate every moment of our lives and live a life we are proud of. We have to keep things in perspective and appreciate what we have. 2) We must be as careful and as vigilant as we can be – as cyclists, runners and drivers – to honor Frank and his family and to help prevent something like this from happening again.

Frank, Martin, Krystle, Lingzi. These are all names we need to remember. We need to honor them in our everyday actions. We need to honor them when we run (and ride).

We can’t live our lives in fear of what could happen. But we must live our lives with courage, grace and gratefulness, because that’s what these runners, triathletes, and spectators would have wanted.

To help the Guinn family, click here.
To help the Powell family, click here.
To make a donation to One Fund Boston, click here.