Taking matters into my own hands...

I woke up this morning and thought I was in the movie "The hangover".

Last night was party night and near the end everything was a blur.

My morning started with me opening my eyes and not recognizing my own bedroom. Then something felt strange, I was sleeping with my shirt on and "commando" down below. How did that happen?

I looked at the clock and it was 9 am and my training plan was to do a long bike and a brick run today. Last night I didn't think about how "damaged" I'd feel in the morning. I made a quick evaluation of the situation and decided to "sleep it off".

A few times, I'd wake up, look at the clock, do the math backwards from when it gets dark and how much training I needed to fit into the day and then go back to sleep. Eventually, time ran out and I had to get up.

I was as sharp as a bowling ball and writing my blog wasn't easy. It turned out being harder to do than the training. Even now, writing this post, I'm still hazy.

Funny how my first priority, even before coffee, was to get last nights blog post up. I felt pressure. I knew John Barclay probably didn't sleep well because he didn't have his "Training Payne" bedtime story, and I also felt bad that Doru had nothing to read this morning with his coffee.

Before I wrote the post, my "Hangover Movie" continued. I got out of bed and there was a trail of clothes to my bed. It looked like this; sweater, then 1 foot later sock, then 1 more foot later other sock, 1 more foot and it was shorts with underwear perfectly fitted inside.

It looked like my underwear was attached to my shorts. I assume the underwear fell off when I took my shorts off and it looked like it happened for two reasons. The first is I've lost weight since China and the second is my underwear is really, really old and stretched out.

When I got downstairs, everything was a mess, which is to be expected. What I didn't expect was to still see my computer sitting outside on the patio table and the outside gas heater was still on. Normally, we're pretty good about "closing up shop", before we go to bed.

I now know three things for certain. One, we live in a very safe neighbourhood. Two, the weatherman can be right every once in a while, no rain. And three, next months gas bill is going to be through the roof.

I had a feeling today's training wasn't going to be in the low heart rate zone. Before I left on my ride, I bent over to pump up my tires and when I stood up, my heart rate was 144 bpm. I'm not supposed to exceed 143 bpm. That was the first time I've ever went anaerobic using my tire pump.

Then magic happened. I got on the bike and I was effortlessly flying. It was windy and it didn't matter. For apparent reasons, my mind was "numb", but my legs were like pistons, like they were fuelled with pure alcohol.

It was a self induced "out of body experience". I didn't even feel like I was pushing hard and within the first hour I was averaging over 33 kph. I was most curious to see how I'd feel after 5 hours.

Yesterday I got sent a link to Chris McCormack's blog. He was the pro who got what I got in China and dropped out. It turns out that he's been experiencing the same lasting effects that I have been.

He wrote this in his blog post:

I picked up a virus in China a couple of weeks ago, and have to say it floored me. I have been very flat ever since and even during the past 10 days have been very careful with my workloads. I am super happy that it is early season, and can ride out an infection like this without jeopardizing any big races, but still it is always annoying. I am starting to feel a little stronger now and am looking forward to getting back to the mainland on the USA, knocking over some sponsorship commitments and some early season racing, before settling into LA around mid April to prepare for my season with a greater focus. My team and I reset our early season plans after getting sick in China and took some emphasis on these early season events. The main key now is to get healthy and then build a bigger focus into May and through June and July.

Wow! It looks like John and I must have picked up the same thing. I should probably email Chris with the antidote I discovered. Heck, I'll post it right now and that way it will be around to help others as well.

What I did was go to my local "Barley & Hops" shop and picked up a case of 24 individually bottled treatments. Each treatment contains an active ingredient called "alcohol". As most know, alcohol is a powerful cleaning agent, it's proven to kill nasty germs on contact. My plan was to inject alcohol into my system and give my organs a good scrubbing.

Today was the test and I'm happy to report it worked. I was able to maintain a very respectable 31.2 kph in hilly and windy conditions. I'm now confident that my "Brown Bottle" injections worked. Although, I have to warn anyone that wants to try it, there is side effects. I also need to add, "do not consult with your doctor beforehand, I highly doubt he'd approve of you using this medication in vast quantities".

During the treatments, as you ingest more and more, you feel euphoric and your appetite will grow. It's not uncommon to crave "Potato chips and onion dip" or anything that would be considered "unhealthy". Don't be scared. The next phase is mental, you will lose your sound judgement and your speech and face may "slur".

At one point you will lose your hearing. You can still hear people, you just don't listen to them. The treatments cause huge amounts of narcissism. It's good to be around loved ones that can comfort you through the process and allow you to be the "center of attention". It's important the loved ones know that the patient needs lots of praise and encouragement. Acting as if the patient "is the smartest person in the room" is a perfect starting point.

After completing all 24 treatments, the following day you will experience more side effects. It is very common to experience confused thoughts and your hands may shake uncontrollably. The simple process of making a pot of coffee may seem overwhelming, and even remembering your kids names could be a challenge. If you experience any of the above conditions, and were lucky enough not to have died the night before, don't despair. Those final side effects will disappear within a day or two after your last treatment.

I'm living proof. I had a strong ride today. Albeit, during the session, I felt like I was back in China with food poisoning, but there was a slight difference. China was easier, my head was fine, it didn't feel like a "hangover" was coming on. At the 2 hour mark, I wanted to quit and go home and sleep. Instead, I stopped at a store, filled up my water bottles, ate a muffin and "sucked it up" and kept riding.

By the end of my ride it was WINDY!!!! It was 54 kph and gusting up to 70 kph. I'm glad on the way back it was mostly a side wind. When I did have to go directly into the wind, it was tough to keep it at 19 kph.

It was a quality ride. My legs pushed hard the entire time, albeit my heart rate was higher than I would liked. The only way I would've been able to keep it in the zone would have been to "pull over to the side of the road and fall asleep in the ditch".

The toughest part of the ride, was making decisions. For example, when I would come up to a stop sign, I had to check, double check, triple check and even then I wasn't sure if I was making a good decision.

When I got home, I did NOT want to do my brick run, so I did it anyways. My legs were stiff in the beginning and then loosened up. By this point, it was 7:30 pm, the wind was wicked and it was just starting to spit rain. I didn't even bother trying to keep the heart rate in the zone, I just tried to run relaxed.

It's a good thing that during my last recent check up, my doctor said I have NO risk of getting a heart attack, it helped me discount the heavy pounding coming out of my chest. As I ran, I was saying to my heart, "go ahead, pound away, I know your faking it, I'm not stopping, faker".

Overall, I accomplished a couple of big things today. I believe I eradicated those Chinese virus "bastards" from my system and I simulated having health and dehydration issues during my long day of training. As I was suffering, I was thinking, "if I'm able to show up at Ironman St. George healthy, that would be so much easier".

Couple of closing items. Today's picture shows more of Reid's fine penmanship. It may look like scribbling, heck I was pinned down and still moving when he tried to write it, but for those that are curious, it's supposed to read, "homo" and "loser". Kids....they grow up so fast.

I also got a couple of funny tweets from @ree_ti_ree after he read last nights blog post. The first one said, "Your blogs are better than TV reality shows. If you did a reality TV show, everybody would think no way, can't be real. haha", his second tweet was the shows name "Playin with Payne".

He also liked the Avatar picture Alice took of me off my iPhone last night. I posted it above. I tweeted the photo last night and Alice said to add the tagline "Alice says this is the REAL me".

It's funny that @ree_ti_ree thought "Playin with Payne" would be a good TV series. Just last night, as Alice was attending to my narcissistic needs, she said she thinks people follow my blog because I'm like the guy in "The Truman Show". It's a blog soap opera and everyone wants to know what "Training Payne" is going to do next.

If that's the case I need a tagline, I've got a few ideas below. I personally like the third one.

Th, th, th, th, th, th, th, that's all folks!

Sleep tight John(Barclay)-boy.

Where's my medication?

Long Bike - 5:23:01 / 168.03 km / 31.2 kph / avg hr 141 bpm / Elevation gain 732 meters (2401 feet)

Brick Run - 30:03 / 5.93 km / 5:03 pace / avg hr 150 bpm

180.2 lbs / 19.8 BMI

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