One Hot Week In Boulder !

There is something ironic about riding towards snow capped mountains through 105 degree heat with a thick warm wind blowing sluggishly past you....... Only in Boulder ah! It's been hot here in Boulder, record breaking hot, we have had a week of 100+ degree weather and unfortunately this has brought about a summer of serious fires in Colorado. There are currently 5 fires with the worst been the Waldo Canyon fire which broke through the fire fighting lines on Tuesday night and has incinerated whole communities in Colorado Springs. It is pretty devastating for all those involved. There is an constant presence of helicopters and air force planes circling the flatirons that shadow over Boulder city and you can see them off loading the gallons of water on the flames and smoke as it billows over the top of the mountains. The fact that the flames are visible not just the smoke is enough for me to have mentally packed my back pack and planned my evac route on my bike! Yet none of the locals seem worried at all so I should take my vibe from them! All seems well and safe so far here in Boulder and it looks like it should remain that way thankfully! Boulder has some great water ways and the Boulder creek path was a hive of activity last Saturday, with everyone cooling off, Boulder style of course... Tubing and tight rope walking! I have even been heading up there to cool off, but i can only go waist deep as am not allowed to swim with my stitches yet. Cant wait to be able properly cool off and go for a swim!! Aside from the fires this week has been about starting to ease myself back into little bit's of exercise, (note the lack of the word training, as that is what it is exercise.... focussing on getting moving again,very slowly!) I have managed some short, flat bike rides amongst lots of rest and it has been brilliant to get out again. However I am beginning to question the words of wisdom from my surgeon pre surgery or should I say my gullibleness (is that even a word!) It seems that I appear to have brought into the per surgery sales pitch that I am now beginning to question the validity of.... Statements in questions #1: You will feel better post surgery than you did when you came in. #2: You will be able to go hiking tomorrow if you want ( the day after surgery) #3: You will be back to cycling and running no worries one week post surgery. So........ The verdict thus far is..... I definitely did not have a miraculous fix post surgery. My body seemed to have accumulated copious amounts of fluid and it wobbled like jelly when I walked. I was sore, weak and very stiff.....Nope cant call that much better than before surgery. If you call hobbling around a super market trying to get some food a hike than maybe number two was accurate, personally I don't, It took me a whole week to be able to walk the very flat bike path up to the coffee shop! So I don't know why i even tried to run one week post surgery as after a few steps it was obvious that was not going to happen so soon, but to her credit she appears to be right on the cycling front, so I have been enjoying getting back out on the roads. Its been slow, flat and short but getting some improvements each day so happy with that. The jury is still out on the last statement in question: #4: you will be back swimming no worries 2 weeks post surgery. I am not holding my breath considering the rotation involved to swim successfully...... but it will be nice to get in and cool off so maybe some kicking will be a good place to start!! Anyway despite the frustration of having to recover and regain my strength and fitness after been so fit and strong i feel very blessed to be in such a beautiful place. Boulder is definitely an ideal place to be recovering and easing back into training, despite the very blunt awareness that I miss my family and friends:) Anyways Bring on week 3 and some anticipated improvements, and of course lots of rest and recuperation!! And the excitement of the weekend is that my favorite Boulder coffee shop 'The Cup' is showing the Tour De France everyday live! so considering Callum and I don't have a TV I am stoked!.

Good Bye Gal Bladder.....will be lighter without you anyways :)

A lot can happen in a week, that is for sure....... Its saturday here exactly one week since i rather meekly said goodby to my Gal Bladder and went under the knife to get it removed. Four key hole scares and a swollen tummy later I am just only today able to manage the walk up the boulder creek path to Pearl street's 'The Cup' to get a decent fairtrade coffee..... its been a long week! so let me take you back a bit and explain how it all got to this....... I returned back to Boulder after the surrealness of the disaster that Boise 70.3 was and was determined to get back into training and turn things around for my next race in Lubbock, Texas. I had 2 weeks... and given my base going into Boise I was confident it was plently of time. However my body had other ideas and on my first attempt of a training session i was hit rather bluntly in the face with the reality of what state my body was actually in. I managed to crawl a measly 2kms, bearly breaking 6mins per sector and i was struggling big time. My whole body had a blanket of weakness over it, my stomach was hugely bloated and felt really bruised and sore and i was faint in the head. I called it at 2km's and walked home, stoping at various vantage points to rest. mmmmmmm..... maybe not quite recoverd yet..... After a conference call with Coach Gordon ( thank goodness for SKYPE thats all i can say!!) We decided to back right off rest and try and shake the bug for good. it was not ideal but what other choices did we have? AS the week went on I rested, and attempted training sessions as planned but the pain i was in just kept getting worse. Apart from the ongoing fatigue and bloating and bowel issues, I was starting to get massive bouts of intense pain, pressure and bloating after meals and as each day would progress the pain and pressure would just increase. By THursday the pain was wrapping istelf around my ribs and into the mid back as well as the stomach and i was to be honest crying myself to sleep after trying to dwon play the pain i was in during the day. I didnt know what was going on i didnt know how to fix it, i was starting to get a bit worried. Come FRiday night 12.30am I was lying on the floor in my room in front of the fan in the fetal position, I heard my flatmates coming dwon the hall, I tried to sit up so I didn't loook completely pathetic, but when they came in I just burst into tears I couldn't tuff it out any longer i needed help. Thankfully Katie had a car and she very nicely said she would take me to the A&E. I went in expecting to just get some antibiotics and some pain relief but instead got a battery of tests and ultra sounds between the hours of 1 and 4.30am and thankfully some pretty amazing pain reilf. ( I knew it was going to be good when the nurse said "let me just lie you dwon to give you this" as she adjusts the bed and puts the rails up on the sides!!) Yip a pretty decent narcotic. She was not kidding when she said this may make you feel a bit loopy!, for the proudly drug free, dehydrated Lawrence it was quite the head spin!!! The varying temperaments of the the on call nurses etc as they one by one got called in from deep sleeps..... eventually eased as they started to figure out that i was actually in pain and that there was more than just a tummy bug going on! Anyways the news came at about 4.30am. It had been a long night for both myself and Katie( what an absolute angel she was staying with me through this even though i was fully awear that it would be ruining her training for probably the weekend, she didnt complain at all,and refused to go home till it was sorted. It meant the world to me to have her there to support me. I had only meet her 3 days ago...... its amazing that unspoken bond of your fellow athlete, when it really counts we are there for each other although at times it appears that each is just out there for themsleves.) The diagnosis, was An infected, very inflamed Gal Bladder and the duct that goes from the liver to the stomach. Plan of attack, admission to hosiptal, meeting with surgeons in a few hours and then surgery ASAP. oh yeah and a whole heap of IV anitbiotics, fluids and pain relief! the doc said most people didnt wait 2 weeks before they got them removed so we didnt have time to wait, it had to come out as waiting would just casue more complications. so that was my weekend drugged up in hospital. One of the nurses said to me, "you dont have to be tough in here, if your in pain let me know, we can fix that"..... that was all i needed to hear i think I left my toughness at the door of the hospital.I was definatly not in my element, needles, blood tests, injections, sugery, high pain narcotics...... I felt a mere shadow of the girl who lines up at the startline that was for sure. This past week has all beeen about recovery. I have some pretty decent looking wholes in my stomach. I feel ike I am 6 months pregnant with all the swelling and fuild build up in my stomach and body but as each day passes, the improvements are really noticeable and I am hanging on to the little gains. Its going to be about 3 weeks of getting back mobile and training again and then I should be all good to get stuck back into things again, which will be great. Obvoiusly this is not going to be season of racing that I planned, and i have been pretty gutted about that, but for what ever reason these are the cards I have been dealt so I am going to work with them the best I can. I had no idea the extent I would need to hear those words from the song on the radio in Boise echoing the words.... "This will only make you stronger..... Stronger..... Believe me...make you stronger"...Ironically or should i more accurately say naively thought that that was as hard as it was going to get....... it appears that that it was actually only the beginning. My Cousin wrote on my face book in response to my last blogg entry reminding me it is not the hardships that define us but our come backs. He told me I was born to do this ...... And if anything through this rather blunt wake up call......... it seems that I finally believe that.....

Boise 70.3 ..... Not quite what I expected!

AS i pulled into the remnants of T1 (transition 1) at the lucky Preak Resivour the words on the song i had mindlessly playing the back round radio seemed to fliter into my awearness..... "It will only make you stronger... stronger..... BELIVE ME... this will only make you stronger ....." the high pitched female voice seemed to be repeating these words with conviction straight to me as if she had personally knowen the way the events of the morning had unfolded. I sat in the car park soaking up the warmth of the sunshine, it all felt so surreal and removed from the intensity of the morning. The sleeting rain, the 4 degrees above zero that felt like many more below...the confusion and isolation of the Medical Tent...I looked over to see Wellington, the sole bike left in Transition with her own security guard sitting in his car diligently watching over her. SHe was, as left all prepped and ready to race....I smiled to myself as a few tears finally felt free enough in the quiet of my rental car far away now from the hype of the race headquarters and finish back in dwontwon, to fall down my cheeks...... only make me stronger..ah I arrived in Boise Idaho on Wednesday 6th June a few days prior to the race. Training had been going realy well back in Boulder and although on the flight over I had started to feel quite sick in my stomach I was realy looking forward to the race, excited to be there and of course i wont deny it nervous as well. However to be honest alot of that nervousness was in angst about having to drive in a completely new city by myself on the wrong side of the road coupled with the slight aprehension of meeting my homestay whom only the day before I had been informed had been changed. It was a real relief to find that I quickly found my confidence driving, made it across town and to discover i was staying with a super nice lady and her amazingly cool dog 'Bear' and to top things off i had an awesome queensized bed with feather duvet and pillows... Yip, i was stoaked :) My luck was soon to turn a full 180 degrees and by 7pm I was in bed sick with a a fever, high temperature, with waves of freezing cold to burning hot, All through the night I kept telling myself i must have just eaten something wrong, but deep dwon i knew this was more then that I had caught something and was pretty sick. From there I ended up spending most of THursday in bed. I ventured out with my Homestay around 6.30pm to drive the bike course, and i did feel better when i returned, which was promising. I figured I must be on the up and by Saturday should be good to go. However Friday turned into a day of pretty bad Bowel disfunction and although i got up Saturday and the plan was to race, I felt pretty weak and nauseous. So If it had been a normal June day in Boise I should have been fine to complete the race, but then why would that be the case!! Saturday was Freezing and wet and it only got colder as I made my way up to the Lucky Peak Resivour where T1 and our swim was to take place. We had to park dwon the bottom of the dam and then walk your bikes and gear bags up the dirt trial to the top. Just as i entered the path the lady said to me, " we have big thorns here you will need to carry your bike or they will puncture your tires" really cool of her to let me know that but wow what a mission! feeling like i wanted to throw up, carrying both gear bags my bike, fluids etc up to the top as it was relentlessly sleeting on us. There was a trail of people making the trek up and I must have looked like i was struggling as a lady offered to help me with my bike. On a normal day i probably would have delcined, but today I was all for it and so thankful as it was a lot longer climb than the map protrayed. At the T1 there was no shellter and to get into it you had to strip dwon all your wet outer layers to get body marked. Both shoulders, calf, both hands..... ( by this point i was standing shaking all over as i shivered in the cold thinking "jees what do we even need our bib numbers for with all these written on us"!!) So it was to be a morninng of embracing the process for me. I set my bike up, and began to shuffle out on what I would like to call a warm up. I tried not to think about how sick I felt in my stomach and how weak my legs felt and justified that all those feelings would be intensified in these conditions. No one would be feeling good. All the pros just had there heads dwon getting on with it, no one looked all that excited about the prospect that lay ahead. I am pretty sure I was not the only one who was quietly relieved when I heard the loud speaker announcement that they were going to shorten the bike course. Most of us I think were just willing them to ulter the course in some way. The only comments of those around me were "man whay cant they just cancel the swim"? I was just relieved regardless. The way I was feeling I had no idea how I would have finshed a 90km bike after a swim in these conditions. The shortened course meant it was was just going to be a hard day in the office, but I could handle that. This is what its all about racing pro, no one said it would be easy, I just had to put my head dwon and get on with it. I had to get help getting my wetsuit and caps on etc, as by this stage i was uncontrollably shaking with the cold. THey kept calling the pros to the start area but I knew 20mins out from the start in weather like this that they could keep calling all they liked no one was in a rush. Due to the bike course changes they ended up having us waiting at the waters edge for about 20mins. All of us completely and utterly frozen, shivering and shaking, none of us looking very pro at that stage. I was starting to realise that i had lost the finer motor control of my fingers and could no longer hold my fingers together. I dont know what rationale i was working under but i put them in the water to try and warm them up. Unfortunatly no luck. It was going to be a long swim, I was going to be swimming 2km with a open palm. I could not do much about it so i resigned to the fact that I would just have to kick really hard. Finally they got us started but i had a terrible swim, i felt so sick and weak. I stopped twice but made myself finish. The propsect of a shorter bike and normal run should have suited me but i had to get through the swim. I made it out and started to run up to transition, I knew I would not be able to get my wetsuit off so stopped to get the help provided. I went to sit dwon so they could pull it off but everything started to go black and I lost it and collasped, i was pretty disorientated at that point so just had to go with there decision that the race was over for me and they lifted me up to the stretcher and wheeled me back to the med tent. memories of ironman 2011 and the hyperthermia started to flood back and the tent looked all to familar yet the reality of been so far from home started to sink in. The medical and ironamn staff were amzing though and i felt completely looked after. By the time i came out of the tent the hustle of the race had cleared and the que had been given to start packing up the transition. It took most of the day to warm up fully and was a mission to get transported back to twon to get my car keys then get a ride back to T1 to get my car and bike. all the time in my wet race suit, an emergency blanket and a borrowed volunteers shirt to keep me warm. By the time I had made it back up to T1 the race had all unfolded and the excitment of the compeditors as they shared there race day stories sounded epic, yet again sureal. The sun had showed up and the afternoon was warm and dry, the best part of the race had been completed while i was still up in T1 in the med tent. My Flatmate Callum had put on a superb race placing first = in a sprint finish. Many of the pro men had opted to race the 15mile bike leg in there wet suits, it was definitely not your normal Boise race day in June! This had not been the day nor race that i had planned, I had tried to work through each obstacle that presented itself and soilder on, yet I felt I had not succeded in doing that. I had felt like i was in good shape going to Boise so my frustration was purely that i was not able to express that hard work and training as I had been so looking forward to doing. Yet the day was what it was. I could not beat myself up about it. Sureal as it was i had learnt a lot. I now needed to leave the "what if" and the "why" questions behind and focus now on getting healthy. The words of the young official who dropped me back at my car resonated in my head..... "dont judge your reason for been here on today, today was bad, leave it behind and do another race." He knew all to well that this was the first race of my first season racing pro over here. But he needn't worry I am not going to take anything away form Boise 2012 other than stories to tell back home, I will be racing again, I am alot tougher than I look:)