I found out after the race that it boasts of the most difficult half IM in Canada. In a way, I’m kind of glad that I didn’t know this information going into it. Also, I now know why people do not opt to do this race as their qualifier for Ironman Canada. While it is almost a sure-thing that you will get in, you have to endure the wrath of the Desert Half IM course. This is no feat, I now know all too well.

The swim was fairly uneventful. I did have a personal best (PB) for a half IM swim by coming out of the water at 39 minutes. I did some drafting and I swam on my own. It is definitely the warmest lake swim I’ve ever done – it was 23 degrees on race-day morning, which made it just under the cut-off for wetsuits. They split us up into two heats: men under 50 in one and women and men over 50 in the other. It turned out to be all right and I only got roughed up a little bit. Well, the heats were about 200 people for each one, so it would be pretty unusual to be hit a lot from such a small number of people. I’m getting used to swimming with more people, so this race kind of nice and mellow for the start. It was two laps and I wish I would have looked at my split time. I’m sure my second one was faster than my first – I really need to iron out (no pun intended!) my race-day pre-race preparations so that I can get into my rhythm faster.

Once the swim was done, I knew that the big job was coming up. Everyone who knows me that I love bicycles. I love to ride bicycles, look at bicycles, fix bicycles, talk about bicycles, and pretty much everything to do with bicycles. I think they are fantastic machines that are super efficient and super cool to look at. However, on this particular Sunday morning, I hated being on my bicycle. I did know that this bike ride would be hard on my body, but I had no idea how mentally difficult it would be on top of that.

Let me paint you the picture of the bike course:
It’s in the dessert where plants grow sparsely without much water unless irrigated. The hills were hot and windy, no matter which direction you went. There was one flat section for about 10 km, the other 80km were hilly. The hills felt like they went on forever. FOREVER. Going out wasn’t so bad, but I was getting frustrated a little bit. I thought that it would be better once we turned around. I was wrong. Well, the flattish section was better going back because the wind was at our backs, but there was definitely more climbing coming back. I don’t know how many rollers there are, but it felt like 20. I cried once. I swore a lot. I wanted to bike off the side of the mountain just so that I could stop the torture. My body didn’t like the hills very much, but my mind hated them. It isn’t very often that I get so upset while on a bike. However, there was no way I was stopping after getting that far. That’s how I reasoned with myself. I just kept telling myself, “You can get off the bike very soon. We’ve come this far. We’ll practice hills for Ironman.” At that point, though, I didn’t even want to do Ironman. The Ironman course does Richter’s pass and the rollers, which we did twice during the Desert Half IM (once forward, once backward). My bike ride was almost 5 hours. HELL. ON. EARTH. The only other time I was so happy to be running was during Ironman Canada in 2007 when I was on the bike for 8 hours. Now I remember why: it’s the hills! NOTE TO SELF: PRACTICE HILLS!!! I live in the prairies, though, which makes finding hills kind of difficult. I needs to be done, though.

Once I got off the hills and off my bike, I was happy again. I cheered people on as they ran the 2-loop course. It was actually a lot of fun. On the bike I didn’t pee once, so I was really happy to pee several times on the run. Perhaps too often? I just looked at my official time and I spent about 15 minutes peeing. Although, one time I did not stop to go. This was the first time I’ve ever done that. I panicked at one point because I realized that I would be close to the 8-hour cut-off, but then I remembered that they added an extra half hour to this race because it is so difficult. NO. KIDDING! It was also very hot once on the run, about 35 degrees. It was a little bit cloudy, though, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. I took lots of water, gatorade, ice chips, and gross sponges to keep myself cooled off. According to my watch, I ran for 2 hours, 33 minutes. The official time was 2:48. I’m all right with all of it. I couldn’t believe I could even run after that bike ride. Not only did I run, but I ran at a fairly good pace [for me]. The extra bike time didn’t affect my run as much as I thought it would have. Plus, I felt great. I had no pain anywhere and my mind was clear and calm.

Also, once off the bike, I figured that I was in the clear in terms of my health. Thankfully, I was right. I did not have a relapse stroke or any problems whatsoever. I felt the best I have felt in a tri in a long time. I think I’m ready for Ironman Canada! Oh yeah, I went to the meeting after the race and they gave me a spot! So I’m definitely going and I’m really excited about it. I’m going to be trying to find some bigger hills around here. They are pretty small, so I’m just going to go up and down the ones we have many times.

My final race time was 7:42, about an hour slower than my worst previous half IM time. I was 88th out of 111 (not all finished). I was last in my new and very tough age category of 30-34 (even though I’m still 29). That being said, I’m really glad that I did the race and finished it and that I’ll be going to Ironman Canada. All THAT being said, I doubt if I will ever do that race again. It is so tough and so hot. A nice prelude to IMC, but it really kicked my butt.

I am sitting in a very cool place while outside is scorching hot. Well, not as hot as it was earlier, but pretty close. Actually, I’m in Penticton which is not nearly as hot as Osoyoos. Apparently the water was 22.5 degrees Celsius today, which is .5 degrees cooler than the cut-off for wearing a wetsuit. Whew! I have never done a triathlon without a wetsuit before. I guess there is a first time for everything!

This race is all about first-times for me. I have been really nervous about this race and was wondering what that was all about, but then it dawned on me: this is the first major race I have done that is completely self-directed. Most major races that I have done for the first time have been because a friend has suggested or coerced me into it, other than my very first one seven years ago. Also, usually I train with the particular race in mind for at least several months. So on top of all the health stuff, I am also figuring all this first-race stuff by myself… with the help of my great support-person, Tina.

We had a heck of a time trying to find where “68th street” was in Osoyoos. It turns out there is no 68th “street” and it is actually “68th Avenue!” We shook our prairie heads at these mountain folks. Once we figured out where to pick up the race package and made their map have north as the top, we were good to go.

Yesterday we drove the bike course. WOW! That is one tough freaking course. It is hot, steep, hilly, and everything else hard. I am excited for the heat, though. It has been a while since I’ve done a hot race and am hoping that it won’t kick my butt too much. A finish is all I’m looking for at this point. A PB isn’t even on the map, but I’m pretty sure it’s possible. I’m hoping to finish within 6.5 hours, which would be a PB and is very doable for me.

Anyway, I had better go walk the dogs and get ready to bed. The 4am wake-up is going to come very early. I hope tomorrow I will have a positive race report!

After spending the last several days talking to receptionists at my places of various medical caregivers, I made a personal decision that I am going to continue my season as I want. This may seem to make a lot of sense. However, after my doctor telling her receptionist to tell me that I should not race this weekend I was hesitant. I have tried for the past many days to get in to see my doctor, but she has been completely booked. I have been on the cancellation list and I have tried to get the receptionist to let me talk to my doc over the phone. No dice. Alas, I was stuck with an in-between message from my doctor from the receptionist saying that “Dr. Nave does not recommend that you race this weekend.” Of course when I ask why that would be, there is no reply from the receptionist – how could she reply for my doctor? Apparently my doc wanted me to wait for my tests to be done – an EEG and a consult with a neurologist. Ok. So I ask when those are happening. The helpful receptionist says she’ll get back to me. She calls me back to say that the office that does the EEGs did not get their fax. I couldn’t help but wonder if that was kind of like the whole “What? You didn’t receive my email?” or the “It must have got lost in the mail!” situation when in actuality you didn’t send it in the first place. They sent in another requisition and my appointment is booked for November 16th. That’s right… November 16th. That is four months from now. I would have loved to ask the question, “Is there even a point to GETTING an EEG done 4 months from now??” But again, I could not talk to my doctor. I called the office that does the EEGs and they told me that there are lots of sick children that need EEGs and that I would have to just wait until November. Oh yeah… did I mention the neurologist? The waiting list for that is 1 to 6 months… for the appointment! I’m not sure if you, dear reader, can feel my frustration that is pouring from my fingers into this keyboard, but trust me when I say that its presence is very strong right now.

It became clear that I had to make an uninformed decision. I sat in my house contemplating my choices. I had two: 1) Fake stroke symptoms and go to emergency hoping that they would get me tested right away, or 2) Just go ahead and live my life. Honestly, #1 was tempting, but I really hate the ER and I felt this pang of guilt from that woman saying that the kids are sick. So #2 won out. I talked to several close friends and my mom and sister about it. While everyone is, of course, a little bit concerned of “something” happening, they are supportive of my decision and know that I would have done it no matter what anyone said. I sent in my registration and talked to my friends in Penticton, who are letting me crash at their place. I have my support buddy booked and am pretty much ready to go. My dogs are coming with us and we leave tomorrow. Hopefully Sunday goes well and I do, indeed, break on through to the other side of my slump.

I realized that it has been a long time since I have written about nutrition. When I examined why that is, I realized that my diet has become a rather sad state of affairs. Somehow along the way, I have lost my zest for cooking. It was probably due to my lack of time because of training and because when I’m training I want to eat NOW. So instead of opting for recipes that take longer than 15 minutes to prepare, I have been going to the easy stuff. Pasta with veggie ground round takes about 5 minutes to make. Raw veggie dogs take 0 minutes to prepare. Toast takes 2 minutes to prepare. Smoothies take 2 minutes to prepare. It takes me a similar amount of time to consume them when I’m training. Now that I have a bit more time to prepare food, I have found myself out of the habit. My summer roommates and friends, Angela and Omar, cook quite a bit and it has shown me that cooking is fun. Cooking for one is just not as much fun as cooking with friends.

The summer is a great time to experiment with cold/raw foods and I am going to try to do more of that. I’ve been craving wraps lately: beans, greens, tomatoes, peppers, and anything else that will go in it. I have been eating a lot of salads lately as well with a simple oil, vinegar, and citrus dressing. Did you know that adding lemon or lime (maybe even orange!) to an oil and vinegar dressing gives it a nice little punch? Well, now you do!

While I have been having problems “making” myself prepare food, I have absolutely no problem going food shopping. So maybe I’ll start by doing that. Mmmm… grocery stores.

Ever since I have been home from Ironman, I have been in a bit of a haze. It’s not necessarily a bad haze and it’s not necessarily because of Ironman. It’s summer in Saskatchewan, which is a little bit hectic because here on the harsh and cold prairies we try to fit in a lot of summer into a few short months. Alas, I have been busy seeing friends, walking my dogs, seeing my family, and in there I have been going to doctors appointments and worrying a bit about my health. So what the heck happened at Ironman? Well, this is how it happened for me….

I awoke on June 21st completely calm, excited, and pretty much stoked for the day ahead. My motto as of late is that a day swimming, biking, and running is a great day in my life. This particular day just happened to be a bit longer than a usual day of doing these three sports in conjunction with each other. My support person and friend, Dana, was great in keeping me calm and was extremely supportive in all the right ways. My training buddies and I went about our pre-race routines in the morning and we got out the door pretty much when we wanted to. Trevor did have an issue of forgetting his goggles, which is why his brother and support person was great and drove all the way back to get him the goggles. When Dana and I got down to the start area, it was a zoo. I just happened to run into a body marker and got marked up… they marked my age as 30 even though I told them I am 29. I am fairly prepared for the big ol’ 3-0 thanks to this race and year of racing in the 30-34 category. The athlete area was really crazy and it felt really disorganized. Actually, that is probably my biggest complaint of this race: the set-up of the transition area, the expo, and the whole area where people spent the most time. It was disorganized and was really frustrating to get around. I walked up and down a pebbly sidewalk in my wetsuit with bare feet trying to find the Special Needs drop-off and then trying to find the place to get to the beach. My only other previous IM experience was Ironman Canada and I really appreciate it a lot more now. It probably helps that IMC has been around for >25 years and this was IMCDA’s mere 7th year.

Once I got to the beach, I found some other Saskatoon triathletes and my training buddy, Navarra.  Before we knew it, the gun went off. I thought the swim wasn’t too bad. It was pretty crowded, but wasn’t as rough as I thought it would be with all those people around. I consider myself a fairly “seasoned” triathlete now and can really maneuver my way through the crowd. That was a nice realization. I did have someone actually pull my goggles right off my face. Luckily, I had my goggles in between my two swim caps and it stayed pretty much in place. [Side-note: two swim caps is my open-water tip to all triathletes because it keeps your head warm and the noise to a minimum.] I did say some profanities before I put the experience behind me and kept going. The first lap went pretty well. Doing two laps was pretty fun, actually. The swim didn’t feel nearly as long as Ironman Canada. I came out at 1:24, which was almost 10 minutes slower than what I had wanted, but I was all right with it anyway. The day was just about getting through it.

The morning was actually pretty nice in terms of weather.  It was sunny and fairly warm. The water was warm and I didn’t feel cold at all getting on my bike, but I think the temperature dropped and/or the wind picked up because it was not warm for the rest of the day. Because I’m a fairly fast swimmer and not as fast on the bike, I got passed about 1000 times (this is not an exaggeration!). It can be a bit disheartening, but I kept my spirits up by cheering on every person that passed me. The first lap of the bike was great. I smiled, cheered, thanked volunteers, and was really enjoying the beautiful scenery that was all around me. The course was pretty technical and extremely difficult. Lots of big ups and downs. Some sharp turns at the bottom of hills, which made me grateful for my mountain biking background. It was pretty obvious that lots of the other riders were not as comfortable on the technical sections, but it was heaven for me: risky, fast, and fun! I loved it! Plus, I was going at a good pace. After the first lap, my average speed was >26km/hr. That exceeded my expectations a lot.

However, it was soon after the halfway point of the bike that I started to feel a little “weird,” for lack of a better word. I thought that maybe I was low in blood sugar. So I took in Gatorade at the next aid station and an extra gel. My lightheadedness was strange and not a sensation that I was used to feeling. I have felt low blood sugar, I have felt cold (it was pretty windy by this point and getting cold on the bike), and I have bonked. This was not like any of those feelings. I started to feel really dizzy and nauseated. Actually, the only other time I felt even remotely similar was when I had inner ear vertigo and was dizzy for no reason at all. At the Special Needs area, I stopped and got off my bike. The patient volunteer held my bike while I sat on the ground to eat my Clif bar (mmm… chocolate mint is my favorite!) and drank more Gatorade. I felt heavy as I got up and got back on my bike. This is about where the smiling stopped. I kept going on the flat section and decided to keep going until I saw my support people, who were cheering us on a few kms up the road. I was extremely relieved to see them at the 120km point.

I immediately got off my bike and sat down on the road. Dana rubbed my arms to warm me up. I felt really really cold, which was weird because I had trained in weather EXACTLY like that wearing EXACTLY what I was wearing. It was about 12-13 degrees Celsius (I made someone convert it for me) and pretty windy and cloudy. All of a sudden, I couldn’t sit up any more. I laid down and started to hyperventilate and have a seizure and convulse on the ground. Dana held my head in her lap as I did my thing for a few seconds. Then my mouth went numb and I couldn’t feel my fingers or toes because they were numb and tingly. Dana said that one of my eyes was shut while the other one was open and the right side of my mouth drooped. The paramedics were called and they took me off the course in an ambulance. I couldn’t talk very well because my mouth was numb, but it came back after about 15-20 minutes (I think – time was really hard to tell at this point).

They took me in an ambulance, which was my first ambulance ride ever. Exciting. No sirens or lights, though. The paramedics took me to the med tent instead of the hospital, much to my Canadian doctor’s chagrin. It took them a really long time to warm me up. My friend Dana said that the moment she knew I was going to be all right was when they offered me chicken broth and I said, “No, no. I can’t eat that. I’m vegan!” I then proceeded to argue with the paramedic that I did not need an IV because I was not dehydrated. We argued for a bit, but I lost and he poked me not once, but twice to get the IV in. Actually, Jessie and Butch were great EMTs and I was glad to have them helping me back to health. Actually, I realized on the ride to the med tent that Jessie was pretty cute and kind of wished that I didn’t look like shit from swimming 3.8km, biking 120km, and having a gas mask on my face after a seizure. Oh well, I flirted anyway! That was the other moment when Dana knew I would be all right.

Once in the med tent, they warmed me up with space blankets and heated bottles of water. Dana entertained me later on that night by using the space blanket as a cape and made me laugh as she jumped around the house. Eventually, I got my dry clothes bag and I saw other people come in and out of the med tent. I had strict orders to go home and not to cheer my friends on from the sidelines, which I was not very happy about. At the same time I didn’t want to be cold anymore so I did as I was told. My training buddy Navarra also left the course by ambulance later on after 14 miles on the run because of hypothermia. Trevor was the only one of the three of us that made it through the course. We watched it on our laptop at the house and cheered him on. There were big hugs and lots of beer once he got home. A big congrats to the newest Ironman in my life!

Actually, after I warmed up I felt great and was really disappointed to not be finishing the race. The next day I was a little fatigued, but my muscles were ready to go. I was ready to go. I wished that I could have done the whole day over again. Since I have been back, I have seen two doctors and they both said that they think I had a mini stroke. Apparently I could have been doing “anything,” which I find kind of hard to believe given the circumstances. It was probably because of the increased blood-flow that made it happen during Ironman or something like that. I am being referred to a neurologist and she’s trying to get me some other tests. However, it’s been almost two weeks since I saw her and have not got any tests done other than some blood tests, which came back normal. Another doc wants me to get some fasting blood tests, so I’m getting those tomorrow.

Since getting back and taking in the whole ordeal, I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do with myself. However, I quickly made an alternative plan and talked to my coach. This weekend coming up I’m going to go to BC to do the Desert Half Ironman and attempt to qualify for Ironman Canada at the end of August. I just don’t want to waste all of that time and energy on a race without finishing it. I feel like I’m in a slump of some sort. My last three major races over the last two seasons have been flops. My minor races have gone all right, but I seem to have a hard time with injuries and technical difficulties at my A-races. I am going to try to push through the slump and maybe I’ll get to the end of the tunnel for a great race in Penticton at the end of August. Even if I don’t qualify, I’ll be happy to do another race so soon. I’m ready for it. Did I mention I’m going to bike there from Saskatoon? With my two dogs? Oh yeah, I’m doing that too.

I’m putting together some photos from the race to put up here. Stay tuned for an Ironman Coeur d’Alene 2009 Phupdate!