Christine Jeffrey returns to racing

THE BIG FISH IS BACK & HEADED TO MEXICO

On September 24, 2011 Canadian elite Christine “Big Fish” Jeffrey finished sixth at the XTERRA USA Championship, cementing her 3rd place position in the XTERRA U.S. Pro Series final standings (behind only Melanie McQuaid and Shonny Vanlandingham).

On September 25th, while on a fun mountain bike ride with friends in Park City, she crashed hard.  The resulting injuries, an elbow fracture, torn tricep tendon, and ensuing infected cut, kept her out of XTERRA Worlds.

A few months and several dozen rehab sessions later she went down again, “totally pilled it up on one of the easiest sections of trail, lots of cuts and bruises, chipped bottom tooth and a really sore shoulder,” she wrote on her blog.  Turns out that sore shoulder was a broken shoulder “cracked humeral head to be exact” with a torn posterior Labrum that required surgery and four anchors to put back together.

Not quite the end-of-season or “off-season” Jeffrey had dreamed of, but at last, all that is in the past.

Next weekend, August 4, the Big Fish (she was a four-year All-American swimmer at Arizona State University) will make her 2012 debut at the XTERRA Mexico Championship in Tapalpa.

“It’s time to get back to racing,” said Jeffrey, a landscape architect by trade based in Tucson, Arizona. “I just hope I can remember what it’s all about.  My fitness is good, bike and run are at 100%, and I’m swimming at about 90-95% so we’ll see.”