Sick in Switzerland

Frankfurt-  Well I made it here.  I am sorry for not writing but I have been packing and driving. I am glad to say that I have been eating he past couple of days and feeling a little better.  I leave tomorrow to go home and am looking forward to getting some exercise in this weekend.  I am also looking forward to seeing my family.  It has been a long trip and most of it was in a plastic box (potty) or in the back of a van.  I am still smiles and now I know that I might be immune to this thing I got and so next time I will have a better trip. 

Quitting-  Just so you know I never intended on not doing any more segments of the race. After I was unofficial I still planned on trying to compete in some more of the race.  If I would have known that I was going to get sick like I did I might of left the bikes at home.  There are just some things that you cannot race with and that is something like the flu.  Things happened the way they did and perhaps it was to save my life.  I might have died on the skates. I did not know that I was that I sucked so bad on the skates. I am excited again about continuing to train for this race. I do plan on doing it every time they have it to train for the 7 day race.  I was hoping to race most of the 7 days this time but it did not work out.  Trust me there will still be some stories to read about with gigathlon training for the next 10 years.  This race is great!  Now my mind will shift to Le Tour and I am already preparing my list of things to do and seeing how cheap I can do this thing for.

Camper-  Bad News.---  I returned this today and I have some damage on that darn pop-up tent,.  They are charging me 640 euros.  For future reference do not get the pop ups! This is some of the unexpected expenses that come with racing…ouch they hurt when they happen.   

Sick--I can think of better places to be sick at but this is the way it worked out.  I have been mostly smiles and am ok with the way things turned out. I have even been able to joke about it a bit.  It is amazing how when you lay around you can dream up all kinds of stuff.   The day I really started to feel bad was on day 4 and we were on our way to Leukerbad.  I was only able to see the mountains up top since I was lying down and I noticed some trees that looked like they had been burned or something at he top of a mountain.  I asked Dirk if there had been a fire there and his explanation was that they cut the trees down since they had bugs.  I asked him what kind of bugs and his response was “six legged bugs.”  This was easier then telling me what they were since I would not have understood anyway.  I have come to the conclusion that these bugs left the trees and swam downstream to the water that I was swimming in and into me.  I am usually a pretty good swimmer and so I might have been in front for a while in the swim and perhaps saved the other athletes by swallowing the bugs myself.  Dirk got a kick out of me doing a google search on six legged bugs and can you believe I actually found a website that talked about bugs that swam backstroke and stuff?  I also found out that roaches are six legged bugs but I assure you I did not swallow any of those.  Dirk did not know what a roach was.  You can tell that I was bored in the van since I had this time to dream this story up.  The other reason that I am sick is from a virus and I am betting that is the real reason for illness.  I will tell you that I did feel really bad and I am better.

Dirk-  There are no words to describe how great Dirk is.  I have NEVER been taken care of as well as he has in a race.  He is very smart and knows how to crew since he has so much experience.  He is always positive and has a great since of humor.  He also is a very hard worker and I know that I would not have made it as far as I did in the race without him.  I have a huge amount of trust with Dirk and would trust him with my life.  Dirk helped me when I came for camp and did a lot of driving for me.  He used up a ton of gas for on me and never asked for a cent.  He also found me a great place to stay with Rennie and Rudolfo.  Rudolfo loves to eat and we had some great meals and wine every night.  Yes …even before the race I had some wine.  There are very few people in the world like  Dirk.  He is so helpful to everyone and has such a great heart. I am not sure if he wants me to post all this stuff about him but want the world to know how important Dirk is to ultraracing.  He has crewed several times at RAAM and a couple of times at Le Tour so he has helped many athletes achieve their dreams.  Dirk is the man behind the scenes that people do not know about.  I wished that I was feeling better the last couple of days of my trip so that we could of hung out more.  I was boohooing a bit when I was feeling bad.  I know that he might be a little tired of hearing about it.  For the record his stomach was acting up the last day of the race too.  I must be a big baby cause he did not act like a thing was wrong.  I do always want to make sure that Dirk and I stay in contact and I hope that someday I can repay the favor to him.

Gigathlon-  a race report is coming soon.  I will try to work on it in the next week.  The blog is just a rough draft. I still need to do my writing.  There is so much to report.  I am very glad that I did come and I do like the change in my lifestyle.  I have learned much about life and even though I did not finish the gigathlon I know that I gave it 100%.  I have never trained so hard for anything in my life.  The problem was that I did not start soon enough.  I did not know until October of last year that I was going to get into the Gigathlon and I had to do Ultraman and recover before I could risk hurting myself on the skates and mountain biking.

Inline skating- Six months is not enough time to learn how to skate for the Gigathlon.  I might have been ok on the mountain bike but way to much time was getting lost on the skates and if I was able to continue I would have for sure been coming in just under the cut-offs or even after the cut-offs.  I saw some video of some of the skating and there was a day that they had to climb some stairs and also had a downhill with a sharp turn on it.  Even the swiss were having trouble on this downhill.  There were also curbs, railroad tracks, bridges, and speed bumps on the course.  I am certain that I would have hurt myself again on some of the skating.  This is something that I am not going to give up and I will continue to train on them. I am not thinking it will ever be my sport but I will get better.  I also will learn how to do a hill climb with poles on them.

Mountain Biking-  Well when a Swiss tells you it is not technical then they are lying.  I did some interviews from some of the mountain bikers as they crossed the line on day 4 and they all said is was hard.  Georgio is a good mountain biker and even he was bitching about the mountain biking. If these guys thought is was hard then you can imagine how hard I was thinking it was. This is one thing I will master and I do plan to become a mountain biker.

Road Biking-  This is about the only thing that I could do at the race.  My swimming sucked so it was all left to the road bike.  Since I have been training ultracycling it is a bit slow but I did feel like I did not loose much time on this.  I am not going to bother looking up splits to burst my bubble but this was the only part of the race that I think went well.

Swimming-  The only thing that did think that I would really kick butt at was the swim on day 1 and that went down the tubes.  I need to pay more attention next time as to which side of the river to get out on and not swim past the place to get out.  The upstream swimming made the swim a but harder and I sucked even in this.  I also hate swimming in wetsuits and cold so none of the swims really went well.  I was wanting to do the swim on day 3 but it got cut and replaced with a 5 mile run.  We were already doing enough on our legs.

Running-  I only had one good run and that was when Rudolfo ran with me.  The rest of them were with some walking.  The first day I was sick from not doing the nutrition right and Georgio and I were both making the cut-off ok so we did some walking to save ourselves for the rest of the week.  Little did I know I was going to be really sick with bugs.   Day 4 I was starting to get ill from the virus and did not eat a thing.  Georgio and I thought we had plenty of time to get in for the cut-off but we did not know the mountain bike was going to be so technical….oops.  The tendons on my feet hurt from running or walking such steep hills.  My toes are not used to being folded in half so I was limping around for a couple of days after I stopped.  Who knows if my feet would have made it or not.  I am going to take up hiking and rock climbing to get ready for future gigathlons.

Future Gigathlons--  Will I be back?  HELL YES.  I am hoping that they hold the 7 day race again in 2012. I am planning on coming back to all the ones they have until then. I think they will have some two and three day races and I plan to do all of them until I do get better.  I am already excited about trying it again and know how to better prepare for the next races.  Next year there is not a Gigathlon but this is not going to stop me from training for it.  My ultimate goal is the 7 day race.  This has been my goal since 2003 and I will accomplish it someday.  It is just going to be a little later then planned but I am ok with all this.  I have had a wonderful experience and love the people here.  This is a great race and the energy is terrific at this race.  I might even like this more then ultraman and I love that race.  It has the same kind of energy.

Le Tour Ultime-  This race is something that I have been planning for a year. I was needing to finish the gigathlon for sponsors and my funds are a little low but I am going to see about crunching the numbers.  I am not sure how long the race will go on and I want to do it now.  I need to move on from the expensive ultraracing and work on my career and motivational speaking.  My body and mind are ready for the challenge of Le Tour now and so I am going to give it a try.  The good side of not completing the gigathlon is that I do not have the muscle breakdown that I was going to have.  Now that I know what 3 days of the gigathlon is like I can tell you that I might not have been recovered from Le Tour.  After I get back home I am hoping that my body is recovered from the illness and I am ready to train for Le Tour.  I am excited about the race and yes I am scared of failing again but you never know what you might be able to do if you do not give it a try.  Wow….the Tour de France course…..how exciting!