WTF is Wrong With Me?!?! and FML were considered as alternate titles for this blog. Let me give you a brief overview of all the crap that has happened since we last spoke.
After coming off a 3:05 marathon on 19 miles per week, the universe was pissed at me. After all, aren’t there many slightly overweight middle-aged people out there that run twice that far, week in and week out for years and still never come near 3:05? Yep, and now Karma is going to slap me in the face for it. My stomach pain returned with a vengeance at the end of January and off I went to the doctor for the scans and tests. Some swollen glands and excess of fecal matter in the colon (which is odd since I am the most regular guy in the world). That is it. Oh except for underactive thyroid. Yep. I am not an overweight, depressed, constipated woman, but I have an underactive thyroid. Go figure.
After my uncomfortable stomach in an Olympic triathlon where the guy has the heart attack, I jump into the 116K Ride for Sight and find myself in the biggest barnburner this side of Paris. We are cooking for the first 20 miles, often well over 30mph and averaged 26mph for more than an hour and a half. I let the pace go to pee and worked my ass off to rejoin, which never happened because the pack blew up and I ended up never getting a pack, just stragglers, and then some monster hills started making the carnage even worse. Still, I was looking at the fastest bike of my career. And then there were 4K left. I am in a pace line, 2nd position, and the guy in front of me stands to stretch. He weaves left. I am there with no shoulder to use (just a 1ft drop off) and our wheels touch. I go up, then down to the ground, and two guys behind me slam right over me. I am a bloody mess, no British pun intended. My handlebars are cracked in two, my front wheel is off. When I watch the Tour on television, I am always baffled by how long it takes guys to remount the bike. The race is leaving you! But now I know. It is because falling off your bike at 21mph hurts like a mother $%^$@#! I go shower, nap, and awake to find my wrist is immobile.
After a stint in the emergency room, I am now cleaned up, bandaged, and with a negative x-ray, free to go. My wrist doesn’t return mobility for another day and is only 90% after a week but my season continues. I throw in a half marathon for fun, that is, until I find out it is the hardest one in the city, with sickly winding climbs and punishing descents. What was supposed to be an easy long run turned into a leg-melting 1:37 half, good for 1:30 on another course. Then, my face starts to itch and soon my whole mug is consumed with a flaming sensation and puffy eyes for 5 days. Back to the hospital. No cause. Non-descript allergic reaction. More medication.
I week after the half, I head to Pretoria for their marathon. I am there at 5:15am for the 6 o’clock gun but it takes 40 min to park, then I have to run 1 mile, past the start line to the registration, pick up my number, and then run back to the start. When I get there, the runners are long gone. I have missed my first race start; only really big fat people remain in sight. By several K the pack thickens until it is a swarm and I am 40 feet to the side of the road in the grass passing them all. It too, gets hilly but I get to see a herd of zebra on the run, which is pretty unique and the one shimmer of light in this tale. My time on my watch is a much-too-hard for the time 3:24 but the clock reads 3:32 as I was 8 min late starting. No chip time. I back this up with a 50 mile ride the next morning and see a lion; my dead legs rejoice.
Now it is time for the half Ironman. My test for the big dance. It sits between weekends of a marathon & 50 mi bike and the 5k race & Cape Argus ride (110K over the mountains). It will be the pinnacle of my training. Can you see where this is going? Wednesday I call in sick, exhausted and with a cold I have had for 3 weeks. Thursday I start to feel ill after dinner. On the drive home that night, I get dizzy, whip the car to the side of the road, lunge out, and vomit 4 times. Sarah drives me home and rolls me to bed. I wake 2 hours later for a bout of 7 heaves into the sink and toilet. This continues once per hour – run to the bathroom, hurl 5-7 times, limp to bed. Around 4am, the problem heads south, and Sarah wakes at 6 to me squatting on the toilet, hurling into the garbage can. The smell was less than pleasant. I don’t go to work Friday. The expulsion of everything liquid slows then dies by mid-day, but I am weak and cannot eat. 36 hours till race.
I wake Saturday morning feeling better but not whole. I leave and make the 6 hour drive to the race. The day is spent in the car or in bed as I sip liquids and test whole foods. I sleep well – it is the first time in a day and a half – and rise early for the race. Wait, I am feeling ok! Not great, and only some drinks, a banana and a piece of bread but I am moving. It is freezing out, windy, but no wetsuits are allowed. The gun goes off and thankfully the water is far warmer than the air. However, there are numerous boats anchored in the way and only 2 buoys for the entire 1900m swim so sighting is a little difficult. I figure with my food poisoning I can't afford to gamble so I start in the back of the pack, something I have never done. I trade getting swam over when up front for getting stuck behind a wall of slow people so nothing has worked for my swim start yet. But I focus on rotation and draft as much as possible in the swells and soon I am heading for home. I limp out of the water and split my watch – 26:03?!??! Can that be right? I shaved 6 minutes off my half Iron swim…maybe the course is short. Whatever, time to hit the bike.
My first lap is difficult but I don’t hammer. It is very hilly and I am keeping pace with everyone I have caught and no one is going past. Lap two goes the same, yet I shave a minute. This is going well. The wind is strong in my face and it starts to rain. Yet, I am on pace for a 2:30 bike on and very hard course and I have kept it chill thus far. Now I need to shine. I start to focus on my pedaling and glance left to the historical site where Nelson Mandela was captured. And like his quest, mine is about to be interrupted.
Wham! The thud of my body is quickly followed by the scraping of metal on road. I skid for a moment and then begin to roll. Maybe my tire blew. Or maybe it was a perfect storm of the headwind, the rain, and the sweat-sunscreen concoction dripping into my eyes. It was probably just a momentary lapse of focus and down I went. After the sirens stop whaling in my brain, I hobble back 10m to lift my bike from the road. I take note of the yard sale I have created and pick up all the loose items. My original thought as the pain starts to settle in is that my race is done. But I finally stand up and start to change my blown tire. After all, I need this race to get in some good distance. My bike pump doesn’t work – did I break it in the crash or does this POS that I have never used in all the time I have had it fail me now for fun? Some air goes in but not enough to ride on. Surely I will pinch flat on a tire like this. But no matter. My helmet is cracked and my sunglasses – picture this – are still on my head but both lenses have been knocked out. I am bleeding from no less than 10 places and the cuts are starting to stiffen. I want to finish but I think best to head back.
My slow wheel of shame gets me into the parking lot just as my front wheel grinds into my fork. Something is clearly wrong. I fling the bike in the car and walk to first aid for a cleaning. I figure I had better not waste the day so I go for an hour run, blood dripping, but at a respectable clip. It isn’t a total loss. I know my swim and bike would have been solid, and I can judge by my legs on my run that my fueling was decent and I could have had a good day. But it was not to be. A long drive home stiffens my scabs, a shower makes them scream, and I have a scant few hours to see if my bike is terminal before it loads a plane to Cape Town for next weekend’s race. Lucky to be alive, I am asking Karma if we are even yet. My left side of my body is more scab than skin.
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After coming off a 3:05 marathon on 19 miles per week, the universe was pissed at me. After all, aren’t there many slightly overweight middle-aged people out there that run twice that far, week in and week out for years and still never come near 3:05? Yep, and now Karma is going to slap me in the face for it. My stomach pain returned with a vengeance at the end of January and off I went to the doctor for the scans and tests. Some swollen glands and excess of fecal matter in the colon (which is odd since I am the most regular guy in the world). That is it. Oh except for underactive thyroid. Yep. I am not an overweight, depressed, constipated woman, but I have an underactive thyroid. Go figure.
After my uncomfortable stomach in an Olympic triathlon where the guy has the heart attack, I jump into the 116K Ride for Sight and find myself in the biggest barnburner this side of Paris. We are cooking for the first 20 miles, often well over 30mph and averaged 26mph for more than an hour and a half. I let the pace go to pee and worked my ass off to rejoin, which never happened because the pack blew up and I ended up never getting a pack, just stragglers, and then some monster hills started making the carnage even worse. Still, I was looking at the fastest bike of my career. And then there were 4K left. I am in a pace line, 2nd position, and the guy in front of me stands to stretch. He weaves left. I am there with no shoulder to use (just a 1ft drop off) and our wheels touch. I go up, then down to the ground, and two guys behind me slam right over me. I am a bloody mess, no British pun intended. My handlebars are cracked in two, my front wheel is off. When I watch the Tour on television, I am always baffled by how long it takes guys to remount the bike. The race is leaving you! But now I know. It is because falling off your bike at 21mph hurts like a mother $%^$@#! I go shower, nap, and awake to find my wrist is immobile.
After a stint in the emergency room, I am now cleaned up, bandaged, and with a negative x-ray, free to go. My wrist doesn’t return mobility for another day and is only 90% after a week but my season continues. I throw in a half marathon for fun, that is, until I find out it is the hardest one in the city, with sickly winding climbs and punishing descents. What was supposed to be an easy long run turned into a leg-melting 1:37 half, good for 1:30 on another course. Then, my face starts to itch and soon my whole mug is consumed with a flaming sensation and puffy eyes for 5 days. Back to the hospital. No cause. Non-descript allergic reaction. More medication.
 |
| Raccoon Eyes from an allergic reaction |
Now it is time for the half Ironman. My test for the big dance. It sits between weekends of a marathon & 50 mi bike and the 5k race & Cape Argus ride (110K over the mountains). It will be the pinnacle of my training. Can you see where this is going? Wednesday I call in sick, exhausted and with a cold I have had for 3 weeks. Thursday I start to feel ill after dinner. On the drive home that night, I get dizzy, whip the car to the side of the road, lunge out, and vomit 4 times. Sarah drives me home and rolls me to bed. I wake 2 hours later for a bout of 7 heaves into the sink and toilet. This continues once per hour – run to the bathroom, hurl 5-7 times, limp to bed. Around 4am, the problem heads south, and Sarah wakes at 6 to me squatting on the toilet, hurling into the garbage can. The smell was less than pleasant. I don’t go to work Friday. The expulsion of everything liquid slows then dies by mid-day, but I am weak and cannot eat. 36 hours till race.
I wake Saturday morning feeling better but not whole. I leave and make the 6 hour drive to the race. The day is spent in the car or in bed as I sip liquids and test whole foods. I sleep well – it is the first time in a day and a half – and rise early for the race. Wait, I am feeling ok! Not great, and only some drinks, a banana and a piece of bread but I am moving. It is freezing out, windy, but no wetsuits are allowed. The gun goes off and thankfully the water is far warmer than the air. However, there are numerous boats anchored in the way and only 2 buoys for the entire 1900m swim so sighting is a little difficult. I figure with my food poisoning I can't afford to gamble so I start in the back of the pack, something I have never done. I trade getting swam over when up front for getting stuck behind a wall of slow people so nothing has worked for my swim start yet. But I focus on rotation and draft as much as possible in the swells and soon I am heading for home. I limp out of the water and split my watch – 26:03?!??! Can that be right? I shaved 6 minutes off my half Iron swim…maybe the course is short. Whatever, time to hit the bike.
My first lap is difficult but I don’t hammer. It is very hilly and I am keeping pace with everyone I have caught and no one is going past. Lap two goes the same, yet I shave a minute. This is going well. The wind is strong in my face and it starts to rain. Yet, I am on pace for a 2:30 bike on and very hard course and I have kept it chill thus far. Now I need to shine. I start to focus on my pedaling and glance left to the historical site where Nelson Mandela was captured. And like his quest, mine is about to be interrupted.
Wham! The thud of my body is quickly followed by the scraping of metal on road. I skid for a moment and then begin to roll. Maybe my tire blew. Or maybe it was a perfect storm of the headwind, the rain, and the sweat-sunscreen concoction dripping into my eyes. It was probably just a momentary lapse of focus and down I went. After the sirens stop whaling in my brain, I hobble back 10m to lift my bike from the road. I take note of the yard sale I have created and pick up all the loose items. My original thought as the pain starts to settle in is that my race is done. But I finally stand up and start to change my blown tire. After all, I need this race to get in some good distance. My bike pump doesn’t work – did I break it in the crash or does this POS that I have never used in all the time I have had it fail me now for fun? Some air goes in but not enough to ride on. Surely I will pinch flat on a tire like this. But no matter. My helmet is cracked and my sunglasses – picture this – are still on my head but both lenses have been knocked out. I am bleeding from no less than 10 places and the cuts are starting to stiffen. I want to finish but I think best to head back.
My slow wheel of shame gets me into the parking lot just as my front wheel grinds into my fork. Something is clearly wrong. I fling the bike in the car and walk to first aid for a cleaning. I figure I had better not waste the day so I go for an hour run, blood dripping, but at a respectable clip. It isn’t a total loss. I know my swim and bike would have been solid, and I can judge by my legs on my run that my fueling was decent and I could have had a good day. But it was not to be. A long drive home stiffens my scabs, a shower makes them scream, and I have a scant few hours to see if my bike is terminal before it loads a plane to Cape Town for next weekend’s race. Lucky to be alive, I am asking Karma if we are even yet. My left side of my body is more scab than skin.
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| Post-race wounds captured |
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