It tasted better going down...

Warning!!! Parts of this post are not for the faint at heart. It involves bodily functions and may be gross. The only reason I’m even bringing it up, no pun intended, is because it has to do with things that can happen during the Ironman experience.

As my coach Mark Allen say’s “expect the unexpected”.

The fun began after yesterday’s pre race carbo-loading meal. I got back to the room and as I was blogging, my stomach was tossing and turning. I kept burping up the pasta meat sauce. I ate a lot and figured it was just my stomach processing the food and some pre-race jitters.

I feel asleep at 11 pm and woke up at 12:45 am. I was hurting. I felt sick to my stomach and all I could taste was the meat sauce. I tossed and turned for about 15 minutes and then the fun began. It didn’t take long until I started wearing a path from my bed to the washroom.

First there was some diarrhea. Every time I’d get back to bed, I’d try to sleep and my stomach would get more and more painful. I finally decided to stick my finger down my throat and try and “throw up”. It didn’t work well; just a minor amount of stuff came out.

I then remembered that I packed Imodium and the doctor prescribed me an antibiotic if I got diarrhea, so I took both. The Imodium started to upset my stomach even more. Shortly there after I found myself with my head over the toilet and having my first round of 4 -5 major barfs, it was coming out like a fire hose, one after the other.

The worst was getting a piece of food caught in my nasal passage and not be able to get it out for a while. I was doing everything I could to get it out. I was pouring water down my nose; sneezing, snorting, you name it. Eventually a big piece of tomato worked its way out.

The rest of my night, looked like this. Go to washroom, shit or barf, go back to bed, get up in 15 minutes, shit or barf, go back to bed, get up in 15 minutes, shit or barf, etc, etc, etc. At no point was I able to fall asleep. This lasted until 7 am.

John was sleeping under the influence of a sleeping pill, but in the morning, said he still heard me “throwing” up. I lost count of how many times I was in the bathroom, I will say I threw up at least 7 to 8 times and went “number two” at least 15 times.

As all this was going on, I saw my hopes of qualifying for Kona slipping away. At this point, I knew I had food poisoning, I’ve had it before, and I was so mad at myself for not being more careful. I started to replay all the past 14 weeks of hard training in my mind and seeing it being “flushed away”. Pun intended.

I also tried to look at it positively. I don’t pray often, but I started praying and telling myself. “I can beat this, I still have one more day until race day, I’ve trained hung-over, this is similar, my body is used to fast recovery”.

All night, I kept drinking water. I intuitively felt it was the best thing to do. When John got up, I forced myself to go for breakfast with him and his buddy Tom. Tom was John’s best man and vise-versa, and lives in Seoul. He flew in to support John.

I ate breakfast, but only soft and safe foods, mostly bread and a little cereal. After eating, I felt a little better, but not much. I headed back to the room and crawled into bed. Something hit me and I started feeling worse. I stared sweating a little and getting the chills.

I kept taking Imodium and trying to rest. In addition to being sick, I was sleep deprived. After an hour of rest, I decided to try a couple of 15-minute pre race sessions on the bike and run. It was tough and my heart rate was much higher than normal. I was running 5:30 pace and it was in the high 130’s, it should have been sub 120’s.

The heat didn’t help. Today was hot, it got up to a very humid 31 C. Between my stomach problems and the heat, they were the most grueling two 15-minute sessions I’ve ever done. It didn’t take long until I started thinking my race strategy should be survival and forgetting about a Kona slot.

I would have loved to rest in bed all day, but I couldn’t. We had the mandatory pre-race meeting and then we had to get our gear and bike ready to drop it all off in the transition zone. From start to finish it took over 4.5 hours. During that time I started to feel a little better, but not by much. The best I got to was 50%.

On the bus to drop our bike off at the transition zone, another girl mentioned that 3 people in her group also came down with food poisoning from last night’s pre-race dinner. One couldn’t stop throwing up and went to the race doctor who said a lot of people came down with food poisoning from last nights dinner. Another person still can’t get out of bed. Her husband was on the bus dropping off her gear in case she gets well enough to race.

I think the culprit was the spaghetti meat sauce. It was what I was burping up all night and the only thing John Barclay didn’t eat. Other than that, we ate the exact same things. I ran into Simon after the pre-race meeting and he gave me some good advice on what I should eat tonight, Chinese noodle soup. It’s high in calories, easy to digest and lots of salt.

I also ran into Ken Glah, a hall of famer pro, and he told me that based on the symptoms, it’s definitely food poisoning and it usually takes 24 hours for it to work it’s way out of the system. He’s comments gave me a little hope that I might be able to shake this by race start.

As of 6 pm tonight, I’m no longer burping up meat sauce, I’m feeling slightly better and my diaherra seems to be under control. I’m still exhausted from no sleep and my plan is to post the blog and be in bed by 7 pm and try to get as much rest and sleep as possible before our 5 am wake up call.

For those that want to follow the race online, you can track our progress at www.ironman.com . You will see an area called “athlete tracker” for the Ironman China race. It should be in the center on the home page. Due to the time zone shifts, the race starts in North America at 6 pm EST / 3 pm PST. You enter the last names for, John Barclay, Bryan Payne or Simon Cross. The results may not start appearing until after 7 pm, when we get out of the water. Then for the rest of the race you’ll be able to follow our progress live.

Even though this is a smaller race, it is a tough field. It seems everyone is focused on getting a Kona slot, not a lot of smiles, just a lot of “Game Faces”. Tomorrow will be interesting. Will I be well enough to race or just try to survive and how much of a factor will temperature be? Right now, they are forecasting 30 C and humid. It’s not going to be an easy race by any stretch of the imagination.

Pre Race Run - 15:04 / 2.69 km / 5:35 pace

Pre Race Bike – 17:27 / 7.02 km / 24.14 kph