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:)