Seven days before the crash, Justin Riele walked away from a decade-long career in tech to race triathlon professionally. Seven days later, he was on the pavement in San Diego, wondering what was next. This is what going all in looks like.
As the pain set in, I knew it was over.
My first bike crash ever. It felt pretty much how I had always imagined it would feel watching crashes on the Tour de France. A flat tire, rim on pavement, and boom, it’s over. Shoulder first, then head. Crack. I could hear the helmet split as my ears rang like sirens. I’m on the ground, adrenaline pumping through my body. At 30 miles an hour in aero with your front rim on pavement, you really don’t stand a chance.
A few seconds go by. Ok, I’m conscious… I crashed. Ugh, I can’t move my arm. My race is over. One more minute goes by, and the pain sets in.
Is my season over?
One week ago, I made the hardest decision of my life to quit my job as Sr. Director of Marketing at a big tech company. I’ve spent 10 years building my full-time corporate career across three companies and a lot of promotions. Stability, identity, something I was good at. And I decided to walk away from all of it to go all in on my dream of racing professional triathlon at the highest level. LAST WEEK I made that decision. Now I’m on the ground in the season opener, and I can’t move. What an idiot, I thought to myself.
Tears start streaming down my face onto my bloody, shredded racing kit as I sat on the tarmac alongside the mechanic who had called 911. I watched the rest of the field ride by one by one in envy. The emotional pain was sharper than the physical, realizing my season plan to try to win 70.3 Peru and qualify for Kona at Ironman Brasil were both out the window, wondering if I’d even race at all the rest of this season. I still can’t move my arm, but at least I can see, speak, and think clearly.
The next hours in the ER were a blur. Fentanyl and Dilaudid were dripping through my veins as the X-rays confirmed a fractured scapula and clavicle. We drove from San Diego to Las Vegas for surgery the next morning to fix the broken clavicle, and then I flew right back home to San Francisco that same day before the nerve block wore off from surgery, and the pain set in.
The Pain Set In
Monday morning was not the start to my new career that I had planned. Nor my wife’s plan, who had to take care of me all week. “I hate triathlon if it does this to you,” she said. Honestly, I think we both felt that way. Sport can be brutal.
What hit me the hardest wasn’t just the crash. It was how quickly everything changed. One week earlier, I was on cloud nine, a newly minted “full-time pro” who had just walked away from a decade-long career to chase this dream. A week later, I’m on the couch in a sling, completely dependent, unable to even move my arm.
I had pictured the first week of this new life so many times. This wasn’t it. It felt like I had lost control of the entire journey before it even really began.
I gave myself three days to feel sorry for myself. The timing was brutal. One week after going all in, to have this happen at the front of the biggest American half Ironman of the year. I questioned everything. My old boss even called and asked if I needed my job back, after I had just told him no amount of money could keep me from pursuing this. Now I was sitting there wondering what the hell I was thinking.
Those three days were heavy, but I think they were necessary. Any real setback, whether it is an injury, a bad race, anything that takes something away from you…you have to actually feel it. You need to block out the time and space to grieve it, instead of trying to skip ahead. But at some point, you have to make a decision. You can’t sit in that place forever.
You Can't Sit In That Place Forever
On day four, something shifted. It wasn’t dramatic, but it was clear. I didn’t have control over the crash, but I had full control over what happened next.
I couldn’t do much physically, but I could control my mindset. I started to focus on gratitude. I could be grateful that I didn’t have a head injury, that the surgery went well, that I now had the ability to pour myself 100% into recovery instead of trying to juggle it with a full-time job. I’ve always been an optimist, and in moments like this you kind of have to be. “Better than a leg stress fracture, it’s just my shoulder.” I kept telling myself I could be back to cycling and running in a few weeks. Whether that was fully rational or not didn’t really matter. It gave me something to move toward.
I made a plan to control what I could control and do everything possible to accelerate recovery. My job now is recovery.
My Job Is Now Recovery
Every morning starts with Vitamin D/K2, both drops and a capsule from SwissRx to hit my daily targets. Mid-morning, a high protein shake with Amacx 2:1 Recovery mix, plus collagen, and Foundation. I’m ensuring I hit at least 175 grams of protein daily. In the evenings, triple magnesium, calcium, Dream Shot, tart cherry from Cheribundi and Amacx, and casein protein.
Nutrition is such a critical part of this process, and I’ve continued to maintain a very high-carb fueling approach every single day. I track my weight to make sure I’m not in any caloric deficit while training through the recovery process because my body needs fuel to heal broken bones. This is not the time to be under-fueled. If anything, it’s the opposite.
Sleep has been just as important. Daily naps plus 9 to 10 hours every night. If nutrition is one lever, sleep is the other, and those two things make up 99% of the recovery process.
On day five, I was on the trainer in the sling. That became the mindset - find a small win every day. That part actually isn’t that different from a great training block. Sometimes progress is big, sometimes it’s barely noticeable, but it compounds.
For me, it was being able to run in a sling on day 15. Getting into the pool for the first time to kick on my back with my arms by my side on day 19. Being able to put my arm on the handlebar for the first time on day 23. And now, putting my TT bike back on the trainer and slowly working my shoulder in and out of the aero bars for a minute at a time as I try to regain range of motion. These are small things, but they’ve become everything and give me purpose.
My first week back was five days completely off, then two days of 90 minutes of light spinning. But week two, I was able to ride 20 hours on the trainer on the gravel bike, which has a more upright position, in the sling, with one arm. It was pretty savage and honestly pretty lonely. But it had to be done. I’m not willing to let the goals I have this year disappear because of this setback. At the same time, you can’t just bulldoze your way through an injury like this. There’s a fine line between pushing to maintain or even build fitness and respecting what your body needs to actually heal. For a pro athlete, it’s a constant balancing act.
Week three post-surgery, I was able to ride another 15 hours indoors, run 38 miles, and get back into the pool. Another 20-plus-hour training week banked. Progress isn’t linear, but it’s happening.
I’m 25 days post-surgery today, and I still don’t know exactly what the future holds for this season. There are a few big milestones ahead. I need to be able to lift my arm above my shoulder on my own, get full range of motion back, then start loading it, and eventually get back to swimming. I need to get back on the bike outside again and see if there’s any lingering fear of crashing. I don’t think there will be, but I won’t know until I’m there.
What I do know is that this is what going all in actually looks like. It’s not the highlight reel or the big announcements or the perfect race days. It’s the part where things go wrong immediately, where you question everything, where you have to rebuild from almost nothing.
The season is still young. I don’t know exactly how it’s going to play out, but I do know that I’m not done. Not even close. Maybe this is just an unexpected “internship” before the real version of this career begins.
