One More for Good Measure

I spent the past couple of weeks preparing for the Smithsburg RR which was the MABRA age graded road race championships. I knew this was going to be my hardest race of the season and as the days closed in, the 30+ field got larger and the competition got exponentially hotter. The plan was to work for either Bryan or Mike and make sure they got into what was sure to be a breakaway with the strong guns and leave no horsepower left in the field to chase them down over 62miles of fairly hilly course.

As a primer for the weekend I made it down to Greenbelt for the Wednesday training race. It was hot and humid and it took it's toll on me early, I was sweating buckets 5 minutes into the race. I ended up punching out after 11 laps. The plan Thursday was to get a long easy ride in, but Boulder had his ACL surgery the day before and we picked him up from the Vet around noon and he was pretty pathetic. The anesthesia had him well out of it but at the same time very restless. He just couldn't get comfortable and paced around and had to go out constantly to pee, which was limited to barely a trickle when he would finally get outside. Needless to say my chances of riding were quickly reduced to zero.

Then disaster struck. Around 4 I started to notice my lunch wasn't agreeing with me and felt like it was stuck in my chest. I figured I just ate too fast and it was indigestion. An hour later the fireworks started. First, I started out lying on the office floor with Boulder hoping the nausea would fade but then it hit me, my mouth started tingle and I was salivating uncontrollably. I knew what this meant and it wasn't going to be pretty. Within minutes I was hugging the toilet bowl and breaking into a cold sweat. Just to make things more complicated, my body decided to take a two pronged attack to purge whatever had invaded my gut and I found myself swapping positions and hoping I didn't have to blow from both ends at the same time.

To complicate matters, I was home alone taking care of Boulder who couldn't walk on his own and I had to carry him up and down the garage stairs to get him in and out of the house. After the second such trip following the start of my illness I couldn't do it and had to call Gina who was working late. For the next 7 hours I was downstairs on the couch making hourly trips to the bathroom. By around 2am I had successfully made it an hour without vomiting which meant I could start trying to replace the fluids I had lost. Since Friday morning I've lived off of Campbell's soup, pretzels and soda so needless to say, I didn't race yesterday. My dehydration headache has finally subsided, although it could have also been a result of my detox from caffeine helping the headache along.

Over the past three days what I did accomplish: lost 7lbs, slept for probably a good 60hrs, after watching Jay Leno Thursday night I have a new found respect for Dr. Phil, decided Leslie Mann (the drunk chick from 40 Year Old Virgin) is either the dumbest or most coked up actress in Hollywood and watched The Big Lebowski twice.