I think often people shy away from talking about their failures. I know I do. Maybe we don't like admitting them to others or maybe we just don't want to think about them. Failures / disappointments are hard. I think we have two choices. We can either let those failures / disappointments become our fuel or you can push them deep inside and try to let them not constantly pull at your soul. I choose to let mine be my fuel. I won't let them get the best of me.
I have two that happen to me recently and I've been in a funk about them. I've been beating myself up for days and today I told myself that enough is enough! Everyone has some battle they are fighting inside. Trust me... their social media post may seem all happy and sweet, but no one is perfect. Everyone has something going on in their life. Many are fighting cancer, jobless, homeless, and many are buried in grief. So I also beat myself up for letting my small insignificant disappointments get me all down and depressed the past few days. One of the reason I like to write this blog is because usually after I write something and hash it out, I feel better. So here goes.....
First disappointment... or maybe I should say huge MISTAKE... and maybe some other athlete reading this will make sure they are taking care of their selves especially now that summer has hit us! My ironman coach had arranged for me to meet up with a guy on the coast for a 65 mile bike ride. He is also doing ironman Chattanooga so she felt like it would be good for us to train and get to know each other. I was excited to find someone local doing the race and I was also nervous. He was a guy and guys are usually so fast. So I was very nervous about keeping up with him on the bike.. especially on the hills we would be riding on. I've ridden them before and the course is not easy. It's very challenging. I got up at 4am to drive to the coast to meet him. My stomach was nervous so I only drank my cup of coffee and a piece of toast. Normally I would hydrate with at least 8 to 16 ounces of water mixed with tailwind. I didn't... WRONG DECISION. Always hydrate before a race, long ride, etc.
Jason, who I was riding with ended up having 2 flats and a hole in his tire all within the first 3 miles of us riding. So we went back to his truck for him to go home to get another tire. We had originally said we would do a 25 mile loop and come back to the cars to refill water bottles, but now the plan was changing. Jason was going home and he left me to ride with Jeffery a friend of his that he had invited. I wasn't sure exactly how far Jeffery and I were going to ride while waiting on Jason. All of this kind of threw me off on my nutrition. I didn't drink much out of my water bottle on my bike because I wasn't sure of the route and if we would come back to the cars to refill. So I kind of conserved on my water.. WRONG DECISION.
We did a 12 mile loop and then Jason was back to join us. Now it was a little after 9am and we should have been 2 hours into our 65 mile ride, but we were just really getting started. I had not eaten anything since 4:45am when I left the house and only drank a little water. I'm not sure why I didn't eat when we meet back up with Jason before starting off. My mind was in a fog. It had actually been in a fog most of the week. It was a bad week with many memories of Drew's last week with us. I think most of started when I watched a show on TV that had a death in it and all the memories came flooding in my mind. Then I was nervous about this ride for some crazy reason. Everything was just off in my brain. We took off pretty fast. I was averaging 20 mph keeping up with them. I told you guys are fast. LOL It was good for me in that it pushed me hard. However, it was getting very HOT and I was not drinking no where like I usually do (in hindsight... yep, I've analyzed it a ton!) plus for some crazy reason I had in my mind that one PB cracker was around 50-60 calories. My nutrition for ironman on the bike is to eat 50-70 calories every 30 minutes. Well, one PB cracker has only 30 calories and I think I only ate 4 the entire ride. I burned over 2,600 calories on the ride! Needless to say when we stopped at a stop sign around mile 50 to wait on cars, I started feeling very strange as we were standing there. I started getting very sweaty, dizzy and just didn't feel good. So I quickly took a GU. I had almost forgot I had them also in my bag! The guys were talking and their voices started getting more and more faint and then next thing I know... I'm laying on the ground! Yep, I fainted! I have NEVER in my life fainted or felt that way. It scared me so badly. The guys were super nice and made me sit and drink for awhile until I felt like I could ride the last miles back to the cars. They even told me that I could set the pace and they would follow me. :>) It seemed like forever getting back to the cars because my mind was going crazy thinking about what just happen. It really scared me! I've rode 100 mile bike rides, done half ironman distances, ran several marathons and never in my life had I felt the way I did right before I fainted. So I'm here to tell you..... DON'T FORGET YOUR NUTRITION!!! Don't let nerves or anything else get in your way of taking care of your body. We are in the summer months and heat is an issue. I did nothing the rest of the day but rest, eat and drink. Also saw this post on fb which totally hit home with me...
Lesson learned for me! I felt like such an idiot! I've been doing all kinds of races and long runs / bikes and never fainted until now. So please take care of yourself also!
Enjoy the summer workouts....but please HYDRATE.
Enjoy the summer workouts....but please HYDRATE.
So I felt like a complete idiot on this day. Fainted in front of 2 guys I had just met! Hopefully by me sharing my experience it will help others be more aware of the issues with not hydrating and eating proper nutrition while doing summer long workouts.
My 2nd failure / disappointment recently I'll talk about in my next post on the Heatwave TRI.
Until then..... Keep calm and HYDRATE.
D
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