Slick_D wrote:
Any race report for future slowtwitchers with GI distress the week before the race?
What happened and what advice would you give others?
I will say that I have had worse food poisoning. By the day before the race, I was keeping food down, and diarrhea had let up. It did make a return on race day, though, resulting in me losing time in the port-a-potties. It is a bit hard to decouple the race conditions from the illness because the only nutrition they had on race day were gels, and those were only on the bike course. (FWIW, I do NOT recommend Monticelloman.) Even under the best of circumstances, I can only stomach so many gels, so I had a three on the bike but didn't want to push my luck. I had about 200 calories of solid nutrition in the form of Lara Bars on the bike, but with the downpour, it was difficult to eat. I was also able to keep down a Honeystinger Waffle on the run.
So, I was calorie deficient at the start of the race, the swim course didn't have nearly enough buoys to sight which resulted in swimming a couple hundred extra meters, and the pouring rain on the bike made me very cranky. Honestly, if I hadn't been able to talk myself through it with the reminder that I have done much harder races, I would have been DNF. I also kept telling myself that I had harder races coming up, and making it through this would be good training for those. There was a lot of internal argument, and at one point when the rain was pelting me in the face shortly after I saw someone get off his bike and quit because of the weather, I just told myself to make it to the next aid station and take it from there. As I wrote earlier, I accepted that I wouldn't PR, but on a flat course like that, under good circumstances, I would have been about 45 minutes faster. It was really disappointing because I had great workouts the weekend before and had been feeling strong and confident.
It ended up being one of those races where nothing came together, and I just had to look at it as a learning experience.
On the plus side, apparently if I am tired and not paying attention, I can do a flying dismount. I can never get the right in practice, but I did one in the race without thinking about it. I didn't realize it until someone said that it was one of the most impressive ones he had seen. I probably can't do it again, though.