Ugh... shattered

Electrolyes are funny little things.  They help you...  um...  they... 

 

Ok, I don't know what they are.  I'm an accountant.  But they live in Gatorade.

Saturday, they didn't live in me.  At least not in high enough numbers.

Here's the lowdown of my MS150 ride.

 

I make the decision to leave from my house and join up the route where it turns left on Clay road.  Not a bad decision.  It allows me to sleep in a little and get gear together.  I calculate when I need to leave to catch the pack and miscalculated a little, but that's ok.  I reach the route at just about the back of the pack and start passing.  What fun!

 

I'm rolling along at a good clip--nobody on the road around me--wondering if I'm in the lead or at the back until I roll into the first rest stop.  Those folks confirm that I am, in fact, at the back of the pack.  No bother, I catch up to everyone at lunch.

 

Anyway, I'm cruising along at a good clip.  There is really nothing spectacular about the ride for the first 40 miles or so.  It's mostly just another Katy ride.  Just before Bellville the hills start, but then you get to rest for lunch.  Into the lunch stop I had been rolling at a swift 18mph clip.  In the portacan I discover that I'm not hydrating enough.  So, from there on I make a conscious decision to drink more water.

 

This is where things start to turn south.

 

The temperature after lunch starts ticking up.  The hills start rolling.  It's also where the scenery begins to get just pain gorgeous.

 

Riding through the countryside of Texas is where the thought occurs to you that there is a good reason God put his people in Egypt and not Texas--they'd have never left Texas.  You roll up the hills and are rewarded with gorgeous, sweeping vistas as big as the horizon.  It's just breath taking.

 

3/4 of the way--75 miles in--my legs start to get seriously rubbery.  I'm begining to get a little light headed.  I seriously need to just rest.  My speeds are dropping.  I knew the biggest concern I'd have would be staying power and my concern is proving to be well founded.  2 miles from the next rest stop I try to flag down a SAG wagon but everybody else was catching the wagon at the previous rest stop.  I come to the discovery that if I'm going to get any help I'm going to have to get it 2 miles down the road.  So, I nut up and ride.

 

I roll into the next stop and just about fall over.  Something's not right, and it's really not right.  I head to the can and the fluids are the right color, so it's not that.  Something else is going on...  I wander around for a little bit trying to get wind back into my sails and run into my friend Margaret Shelton.  Priceless personality, priceless person.  I tell her I'm thinking about sagging to the next stop and she says "you know, if YOU feel like that, then you probably should."  I take it to mean that beyond the light headedness and rubbery legs that if I'm thinking of it--of all people--that I probably should listen to me.  I don't take sagging lightly.  Besides, if I get an 8 mile breather I'll be more likely to finish Saturday and be fresh enough for Sunday.

 

So, I sag.  8 miles on the bus.  85 miles into the ride.

 

From the last rest stop I grab some generic Advil, juice up again, and take off.  The last 11 miles was tough, but I finally passed the rollerbladers and the unicycle guy--you never want to get beat by the rollerbladers or unicycle guy, since I started out behind these freaks I knew I had to catch them.  I cross the line, meet the fam at the Continental tent, and begin to take a physical assessment.

 

I'm cramping.

I'm nauseous.

I'm light headed.

I'm dizzy.

I'm flushed.

My skin is hot.

I have chill.

 

I get a massage and the cramps don't go away.  In fact, they get worse.

I opt to give it an hour to see if things get better.  Then I opt for 2 hours.  Still nothing.

 

Now I'm faced with the option of starting a ride that I know I can't finish and forcing someone to drive to Austin and pick me up for no good reason.  Plus I'm facing some kind of heat related something that I don't think I've ever faced before.  I opt to throw in the towel.  96 hours in 6:16 averaging 15mph is enough for me.

Sunday was spent not in the hills of Bastrop, but fighting headaches and nausea for most of the morning.  There's no way I could have ridden today.  I know I made the right call.

 

That doesn't mean I have to like it.

 

I talked with a doctor friend of mine and the current working hypothesis is that my electrolyte level got low.  I drank enough water--but not too much--but I wasn't replacing the salts and whatnots that were coming out in heat.  That sounds about right.

Dallas is out.  San Antonio is probably out.  This is a lesson is always--ALWAYS--remembering that the event is big, no matter how strong you think you are or how often you've done it in the past.  Respect the event.  Train for it.  Train hard.  Had the temperature been 5 degrees lower (like it usually is), I probably would have finished without serious issues.  But it wasn't and I wasn't ready.  Simply put.  It's hard to imaging riding 96 miles in a day being a humbling experience, but there you have it.

 

Jill's ride probably went better.  Bug her until she posts the update.