Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.Lou Holtz
As the title suggest, I was unable to race ‘World’s’……..
There’s that old cliche: ”It’s the journey that counts, not the destination.” Indeed the last 179 days (will neither confirm or deny I had a countdown App on my iPhone, starting from my first scheduled workout in the offseason) has been quite the ‘journey.’ Moreover in the seven months between Mooloolaba (March 25) and Auckland Worlds (Oct 22) I trained more (in terms of hours) than I did for the whole of last year. This journey meant daily aqua-torture/humiliation at the hands of my swim squad, braving Canberra’s heinous winters, dodging swooping magpies (and of recent) snakes that I seem to have an ability to both find and unwittingly run-over on the bike. In the process my car was written off by an unapologetic pensioner of questionable eyesight, my road bike suffered a similar fate (of my own volition) and had a fantastic trip to Boulder.
In short the journey has been memorable, both for the experiences I’ve had (good and bad) and the growth I have seen as a person. I can quite confidently say that I’ve never worked as hard, and for such a sustained period of time for anything in my life. This atitude has transferred itself into all facets of my life, working harder and getting the best grades in my academic career. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for my social life, I have VERY patient friends!
I think what I am really trying to get at is that whilst I didn’t get the oppurtunity to race, I have no regrets. If you trully love what your doing, there isn’t the same need for outside recognition validated through race results, I am doing what I love day in day out. In saying that, this mature/philosophical approach is going out the door if I miss another race through illness :)
Anywhere, below is a recount of race-week.
This is what I found in my room the night before the race, there is not much to say except it was such a lovely gesture from the people at college.
After some undue stress caused (as usual) by my general incompetence, I was boarding my flight to Auckland, passport (recently, i.e. 10mins before I left to Canberra aiport) in hand. People who know me can attest that I am not the kindest person to the morbidly obese, but for once I was very thankful. The girl (and I mean girl, she was barely older than me) was deemed unsuitably large to sit in an exit-row seat so the stewart asked if I would swap seats, more leg room for me! Unfortunatly the extra leg-room came at the cost of being sandwiched between two older men. One who let off micro-farts at a pretty consistent frequency for the entire 3hrs, and the other who looked a bit like a pedophile, not helped by said man watching a childrens film on the inflight entertainment.
I was staying on the water, with my ‘entourage’ of mum, dad and my aunt. Arriving 5 days before my race (Wednesday with race on Monday) I had some time to get to know the course. Doing all my bike/run sessions on various sections. The bike course is both spectacular and challenging. Taking in steep hills throughout (what I am told) Aucklands prime residential real-estate and then a long 10k straight section hugging the coast. Apart from nearly being taken out by some ’Pom’ whose bike-handling left a lot to be desired and dropping my chain on a short 15% gradient climb, I escaped any race-threatening crashes (something I was paranoid about).
On Friday I swum the swim course, the rain of the previous weeks had washed into the bay and had left the water very murky and (as I would discover) unhygenic. Below is a picture of the Age-Group swim familiarisation.
Saturday and Sunday were spent trying to rest as much as possible, whilst still taking in the oppurtunity to watch the Mens Elite and Junior Mens Elite Races on the Sunday. We had a pretty good view!!
Below is the finish of the mens race.
My mum took a distinct dislike to a certain Joao Silva in the mens race. This guy is one of the better men on the circut, winning the last World Championship round in Yokohama and finishing 10th in the Olympics. Still from T1 when he put on his rain-cape (losing the front pack in the process) and from each of the eight bike laps, where he gradually fell from first chase to 3rd or 4th pack, mum took great delight at laughing at/abusing him. This trend continued on the run as his ‘distinct’ technique (i.e. running with his chest very far out) drew some more abuse from my mum. As he sprinted (against a non-existent opponent) for 30ish place mum shouted out to him something on the lines of “where was that energy in the last 9ks mummas boy.”
Sunday Lunch was spent at Wildfire restaurant. Getting a little excited with the oppurtunity to pig myself (all in the name of carbo-loading) I ordered a chicken burger. As the day progressed I was starting to feel very tired and achy, by 6pm this had become marked and I told my parents/aunt that I wouldn’t have dinner with them, opting for room service. This got worse and worse, and by 7pm I was in a fever. Sweats, aches, nausea etc.
(Warning….gets a little graphic)
Then the vommitting started, I haven’t vomitted since 2007 so wasn’t used to that horrible sensation. Missing all appropiate targets, I directed my first wave (containing lunch) on the bathroom floor. In the heat of the moment I decided that the floor was already a mucky swamp of vomit I might as well continue directing the rest of the first few to the floor. Think of vomitting like a set of waves, you have to wait a few minutes and then a set of 5-7 comes all at once. Once round one had subsided, I realised my error and went about cleaning the floor. I felt slightly better, and decided to have a lemonade. Silly move! For the next 30mins I cleaned up the bathroom floor, interrupted every 5-10minutes to let out another wave of vomits. By now the contents of breakfast, lunch and all other calorie consumption ingested had been extracted and I was hitting bile.
Once mum had rushed back (about 45mins after the first wave) I was really in the wars. Displaying flu-like symptoms, severly dehydrated and unable to ingest anything without vomitting it up. I couldn’t even suck on ice without vomitting up that liquid. Not even restricting my stomach of all forms of calories worked, I was still vomitting up and at frequent intervals, getting very close (conservative estimate) of cracking the half-century over the space of 3-4hrs. It was horrible!! The though of actually racing had been been shelved hours ago, the wake-up call cancelled. Frankly I didn’t care about racing, I just wanted to stop feeling so ill!!
I woke up the next morning at 8:30 (roughly the same time as my race started). It was pretty deverstating to see people who I was meant to race run by. Feeling better, albeit very weak, dehydrated, dizzy and 3kgs lighter, I went down with the family to watch the competitors. Unwittingly I was standing behind my coach for a good ten minutes before I realised he was there (just as about I was to go and try and find him).
In some peverse way I am glad I didn’t get better too quickly, I physically couldn’t have raced on Monday nor Tuesday, probably even Wednesday. I went without eating for nearly 48hrs. It was horrible!! It wasn’t until Friday I was able to get in any form of exercise, by Saturday I was fine and punched out an hour in the pool and a long-ish run. This week was meant to be very light anyway, not this light though! Still I will be hitting the next phase of my training on Monday (29/10) near full health.
I must say it was a highlight watching some of the Age-groupers on course. From the young wannabe-pro’s, the middle-aged adonis’ but most notably some of the older compeitors. There were people out there in the 70s who were pushing themselves to the limit. Moreover they were loving every second of it, lapping up all the support and adulation from a vocal crowd number tens of thousands. On that point, I met a 76yo Kiwi on the Saturday who was an avid runner. But with his knees getting a little beat up he was scaling down from the 5k to the 200m as his main event. He ran a sub 30s two weeks before!!
As usual there were some interesting sights out there. Highlights being a few people wearing their suits back-to-front (the Kiwi’s were the worst offenders). You would think that having your name on the back, the padding being non-existent where it usually would be, let alone how unconmftorably the suit would be should’ve alerted these people to their mistake.
All in all it was exteremely dissapointing not to race. There is no point speculating on where I would’ve come, it is both disrepectful to the people who got themselves to the start line and it achieves nothing. I was in good form, the best form of my life, I am sure I could’ve raced well. The course suited my strength on the bike, and I would’ve loved to have shown my improved swim. Still there will be more oppuruntities this season. Unfortunately the same cant be said for the after-party, its been 73 days (since my 21st) on ZERO alcohol/nights out. Looks like my drought continues ;)
I still had an enjoyable week with the family and fellow tri-tragics. Any excuse to get away from Canberra ;)
I would like to thank my family, freinds, coach and training partners (both at Ginniderra Marlins and EnduranceTeam) for their patience, support and guidance over the last six months.
I’m looking forward to the domestic season. Whilst World’s was an important race, it was never my A+ race nor my key focus over winter. That has been to improve my skills over short-course draft-legal racing. This manifested itself in the never-ending swim block and very little (ie twice a week average) bike mileage. I’m looking forward to racing in the Gatorade series, in a field which will be considerably stronger than I would’ve faced at worlds. Swimming is being toned down to more ‘normal’ levels, soon I will be starting a 100-120k week run block.
Again thanks for everyone’s support and kindness both before, and especially in the days following Worlds. One thing this blog has achieved, is that it has allowed my friends an insight into why I am such a myth at college and (when I make an infrequent apearance) I am scantily clad (lycra, or skimpy running shorts) and generally tired.
Let’s hope this is the last DNS/DNF race report I have to write this season!!
"You’re on the road to success when you realize that failure is only a detour."
