Not Quite Back...

I'm not one who tends to wear physical ailments on her sleeve. Mainly because I have a premise that random people in our lives aren't interested in hearing about other peoples daily physical issues and as a society we spend way too much time discussing them. Who wants to hear an athlete or elderly person regularly disclose their litany of prevailing physical maladies?

I have aches and pains just like every other person out there who pushes their body, but instead of talking about them I act on them. Attending to them is about doing what I can to mute their existence. So that is why my posts last week left out the fact that I’ve been struggling with a heart issue recently and have been spending some time in addition to training trying to get that sorted out.

This problem has not been fully tended to but I still got the ok to race this past weekend. So I did with a dismal lack of results. I was quite fit going into this race and should have solidly been able to do this supremely tough course. Instead I was left with extreme fatigue in the swim and dizziness and a ‘strange’ feeling in my chest causing an inability to recover from any kind of hard effort (even a short hill).

As fit athletes we should be able to push up a tough section or fast effort, back off that effort and feel our body and heart rate recover to be able to do it again and again and again. The fitter one is the more we can ride this line of effort/ recovery on the move and the easier it becomes. My training showed me I was fully ready for this sort of abuse until I overtrained a bit a couple of weeks ago and my heart started acting up (this is not new, I have had some history with this years past). For the past two week I have not been recovering, daily or in training.

As athletes do, I started the race thinking that perhaps the gun going off would somehow make it go away, but it didn’t. I pushed though a miserable swim (lovely swim, miserable for me) and it went from bad to worse on the bike until I decided that with dizziness and a feeling that there was an anvil on my moving body parts I had become a swerving liability to myself and the other riders on the road. I casually pulled over at an aid station and prudently took myself out of the race.

I’m hugely disappointed—mostly because I didn’t get to do what proved to be an incredible course. But my efforts now need to be to get this sorted out. There are always more races to run – but we only have one heart (oh wait I guess they can give you another one). I’ll keep mine for now and see what I can do about getting it to let me come out and play again. I’ll be back…again.

If you are a triathlete interested in proving what you’re really made of – The Auburn Tri is the true test. If you are looking for an exquisite ass kicking in the sport – the Half Ironman is for you. Not for the faint of heart (pun intended).

Huge kudos to Julia, Sherri and Jane for amazing efforts in incredible heat on a proven tough course. You rocked!!
Terri