Christmas Perineum 2013

DRAFT AND WAY TOO LONG....

The "Pireneum" is defined by a very good friend of mine as the "weird bit between the fun bits", ie the strange suspension of time and reality between Christmas and New Year, where you have to keep checking the day and date with others, and actually have a valid excuse for once, instead of just being senile and forgetful.  Medical dictionaries define it slightly differently, but what do they know, eh?

My very good friend, aka Mr Thorpedo, says that he uses this time to look back on the year, measure success and failure and plan the next year.  I thought that was such a good idea, not only would I steal it for the end of this blog, but also for the start of my next blog.  Perineumising them nicely together (yip, that is a made-up word, but it should be real, AND in Medical dictionaries)

Except, for this, the last blog entry in "Really Trying", I'm not going to start with 1 Jan 2013.  I'm going to start with a big bang.

This particular big bang happened not 13.7 billion years ago, but instead in October 2010, about a week after my big four-ow.  It came in the form of a truck hitting me off my bike on my way to work.  And my whole world changed in an instant.  Just not instantaneously.  Yes, I know that sounds weird, but stick with it.

First of all, that very instant, I couldn't feel my legs.  I could however feel my back, and it hurt a lot.  I wasn't sure what was preferable, but suspected I would have chosen being back in bed eating chocolate cheesecake for breakfast like I was half an hour previously, if there was an option c).

I can't remember the last time I was that scared.  I don't think I've been that scared since, although I am very forgetful so that might not be as meaningful as it first sounds.

I lay there, unable to move for a while, with silent tears streaming down my face.  Sorry, did I bollocks.  I shouted the place down - screaming in pain, then oh my godding and finally swearing at the driver until some very nice men in very nice uniforms came to look after me.  I wasn't sure why they were dressed as Firemen but to be honest I didn't mind, because they were lovely.  They asked me for my name and I told them, I asked their names and they said "Matt and John, but you won't remember later".  WRONG!!!  Matt and John just happened to be the names of my first and second husbands.  Or was it the other way round?

Eventually, after what seemed like forever but almost immediately at the same time (no, I don't understand it either), another couple of people came to ask me my name, and they had an ambulance with them.  I asked them their names and they said "Andy and Katherine, but you won't remember later".  WRONG!!!  Andy was the name of my third (and current at the time) husband.  And Katherine?  Well, to be honest, I hadn't really thought that far ahead.  But a seed was planted.

In the meantime there were lots of screams and shouts as these wonderful four people tried to put me on a stretcher.  I'm pretty sure that some of them even came from me.  Andy (although of course I won't remember later) asked me if I had any allergies or medical conditions, and I excitedly tried to wave my arm at him - the one which had my medical alert details on it.  Two problems immediately ensued;
1) I couldn't move my arm, and 2) Neither Andy nor Katherine had their reading glasses with them.
So, I had to say all my ailments.  Silly me - that delayed the first shot of morphine for about five minutes.

They then took my blood sugar reading, and when it came back very high (15), I tried to explain about the chocolate cheesecake I was eating whilst I was happily lying in bed about an hour previously.  I heard a voice shout  "Cheesecake?  For breakfast?".  I thought these public-servants weren't supposed to judge.

I was then rushed to hospital, with the lights blazing and the nee-nars nee-narring away.  I would have been excited if I wasn't a) in lots of pain and b) getting very odd looks and comments about the whole chocolate cheesecake thing.

To cut a long story slightly shorter, and glossing over the misdiagnosis ("It's just a flesh wound") and the unintentional overdose of insulin ("Oh, have I just given her a week's worth in one go?  Silly me!"), I made it out of hospital alive and kicking.  Well, alive.  To be honest, there wasn't much kicking going on at the time.  Turns out that I had broken my back in three places ("Ooops, yes, missed that one, sorry!  Back to the golf course!") and my collarbone (only discovered by a physio six weeks later, when I'd found something other than my back to scream about).  And done some nerve damage to both arms.  And had the contents of the rucksack on my back completely crushed.  I was inches away from death.

Orange rucksack and CS

Stuff to do with triathlons pre 2012

Steve  (a whole line all to himself)

2012 goals and aspirations and how I did - 1st blog
Olympic distance triathlon
Kurt
2/3 of 1/2 iron and not being able to work out multiples of fractions

2013 goals and aspirations and how I did - 2nd blog
Mr Thorpedo
Olympic Shmolympic
Half Iron for me!  Plus a trophy!  Plus a gluten-free cake!  With golden curly wurlies!

2014 goals and aspirations - 3rd blog
Marathon
Iron in a Year
That'll do, pig.
Oh, maybe a couple of half irons.
Write a blog about being a diathletic - ie someone who has diabetes and is (vaguely) athletic.  Even if only parkrun think so.

What next?

DRAFT

Lots of thinking.  Lots of reading.  Not much exercise.

Full Ironman? - that annoying half thing (or HIM), makes it sound only half as good.  Metal that's only half as  strong as Iron..?

No, wait, I've signed up for a Marathon!

And aarrrrhgh, what if I did a full Ironman but in a year?  A week?  Three days?

Needs to be smarter and slicker and go into more detail about diabetes

Next blog name......

First one - Trying to be athletic - Olympic distance triathlon
Second one - Really trying to be really athletic - Half iron triathlon (HIM)
Next one - Diathlete?

My Oscar-winning acceptance speech

DRAFT

Gala dinner

Who got me there

Who helped me finish



What does it mean?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardnesses_of_the_elements_(data_page)

The Longest Day - BTRS Half Ironman race report

So this is what happens if I really try to be really athletic.  

Except it very nearly wasn't.  I fell over like an idiot a week beforehand, and managed to hurt not only my ribs but most of my limbs too.  This meant that breathing was painful, it was difficult to bend my legs, and I couldn't put both hands in the air like I just didn't care.  Not exactly perfect preparation for the biggest race of my life, where I'd be lucky to start, let alone finish.

But, you never know unless you try.

To add an extra twist, Kurt told me that he had gone through the list of entrants and told me that I had a really good of actually WINNING this race.  What, me?  I've never won anything sporty before.  The closest I've ever come to that is winning an elastic band for being the fourth nicest to marshalls during Uncle Steve's triathlon, and almost winning a day with Victoria Pendleton due to my curly wurly addiction.  And even in my bizarre world, neither of those actually required being any good at sport.

I would kick myself if I didn't try.  And if I couldn't bend my legs far enough to kick myself, I'm sure Uncle Steve would have offered to help me out.

So I turned up on the day with a certain amount of trepidation, a considerable amount of strapping and a shed load of painkillers.   Oh and a bike.  Forgot the alcohol though.

SWIM (1.9k) - 0:50:00

Guess what? It was cold.  Luckily I was too nervous to notice the cold.  And it helped to numb the pain in my... well, everywhere really.  Like last year, it was a relatively simple along and back course.  Like last year, there was hardly any swell.  However unlike last year, there was a strong tide so it felt like I was swimming uphill for half the time.  Actually it felt like I was swimming uphill all the time.  I've been told that's technically impossible, but that was from someone who noticeably wasn't swimming 1.9km that morning, meh.

I'd hoped to finish the swim in under an hour.  I finished intact, still alive, still breathing, still with all my limbs, in bang on 50 minutes.  Couldn't argue with that result.

T1 - 0:13:00

I could however argue with Kurt for putting a wall in the middle of T1.  On top of that I had to test my blood sugar.  And make sure I didn't forget anything  And eat a curly wurly.  I also had to take more painkillers, rub cream into my feet, add some more knee support, put my socks on and get out of my wetsuit.  I got confused about the order of things again, which meant that I may have eaten more than one curly wurly, but worse things have happened in T1

Blood sugar was a reasonably OK 11.3 before me and all of my dodgy limbs got on the bike.

BIKE (90k) - 3:31:00

The first part was to Shoreham, then out to Newhaven and back, followed by six laps of the harbour arm, otherwise known as Unnnngggghhhh's time trial.  I would have been reasonably confident of not only finishing the bike course, but also finishing in less than four hours, feeling almost up for running a half marathon and definitely up for a nice sit down with a bowl of chips.  But that was before I twatted myself last week.  I changed my strategy to "pedal and hope".

That massive Himalayan peak is affectionately known as "Get the Hell out of Newhaven" on Strava,
and is a Category 4/5 climb.  Just sayin'

So it was with absolute delight that I managed to finish the course in a record time of 3 hours 31 minutes.  Not only that, but I was also almost up for running a half marathon, and definitely up for a nice sit down with a bowl of chips.  And I finished the bike on a blood sugar reading of 5.5.  Wow, those painkillers were good.

T2 - 0:25:00

One of the many golden rules in triathlon is never change your nutrition on race day.  That meant I absolutely had to have a nice sit down with a bowl of chips.  Luckily that was just enough time for the next lot of painkillers to kick in before the real hell started.   

In the meantime I had a slightly pressing engagement with a toilet.  However not only were the loos over 100m away, but they were in the complete opposite direction to the way I had to run.  I knew that the run course went past toilets, but that wasn't until about 10km in.  So I had to make a decision.  Go now and walk about 200m more than necessary, or wait until I'd had a nice sit down with a bowl of chips, taken my painkillers and then run 10km, all the time praying that I didn't do a Paula (or worse) in the meantime.  The answer was obvious.

RUN/ZOMBIE SHUFFLE (21k) - 2:56:00

I managed that first 10km before my wee break (in both senses of the word) in just under 1 hour 10 minutes.  If I carried on at that rate, I'd be over and done and stuffing my face with curly wurlies before Pimms O'Clock (if I'd remembered the bloody alcohol).  However it wasn't to be.  The next 11k was hell.

Winston Churchill once said "If you're going through hell, keep going".  I know this because I had a whole bunch of people shouting this at me, as well as other comments such as "Pain is weakness leaving the body", "Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional", and "Pain is temporary, quitting is forever".  I really wish they would have stopped going on about pain.  What they should have said was "There's a massive gluten-free chocolate cake waiting for you at the finish line, and it's decorated with golden curly wurlies".  That would have helped enormously, even if it wasn't true***.

In the end, I managed to run/zombie shuffle the full 21k, albeit in a pretty disrespectful 2 hours 47 minutes.  I don't know how I did it, but I did.  I'd given it my all, and I felt like collapsing there and then.  There was only one problem - I hadn't actually finished.   To my absolute horror, it turned out that the run course was a full 1km longer than the half marathon it should have been.

I had specifically put myself through over an hour of unnerving discomfort to avoid walking 200m more than I absolutely had do in T2.  I was now faced with an extra 1,000m of extreme discomfort on the run, like it or not.  I would have cried if I had the energy, but I had nothing left. Nothing. At. All.

Except.

Sis, who doesn't get out of bed unless there's a medal involved, was with me.  She'd planned on joining me for the last 10k of the run, but had instead run the whole way.  Without complaining once.  

Bro, who I have never seen run before, was with me.  He hadn't planned on running at all, but had been with me for the last 12k of the run.  He was very cheerful and upbeat.  Some would say slightly too cheerful, but I wouldn't possibly admit thinking that.

Amy and Russ, who came out on the bike to support me on the last leg, literally and figuratively.

Everyone who was waiting for me at the finish line, including Kurt, who was holding out a medal for me.

So I managed to run every step of that last, unexpected 1,000m.  Simply because it would have been rude not to.

TOTAL TIME - 7:54

I finished!  I didn't die!  My blood sugar was a remarkably normal 4.3!  And, bugger me sideways, I WON!  OK, I was the only woman to actually finish.  And the only one to actually start.  But that still counts as a win in my book blog.

Me, finishing!

Me, not dying!

Me, winning!  I was the only female who finished the course, so technically, I was last too.

*** It bloody was - THIS was waiting for me at the end!

A cake!  A gluten-free cake!  A chocolate gluten-free cake!
A chocolate gluten-free cake with curly wurlies!  Golden curly wurlies!
If I'd have known this was waiting for me at the finish line I would have broken
my half-marathon-and-a-kilometre PB.

The Seven Pees

You know what they say about the seven pees....  Well, if you don't, this is them...

Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance

Of all those words, I'm most worried about the pee one.  The one that sometimes happens to me when I have an infection down there (oh soooo TMI).  The one that Paula did, if in fact that was a pee (TMI again?). So I have planned.  I have double-planned.  I have back-up planned.  And if all else fails, I have a post-it note on the front door.  I think I've got it covered.

My last minute fail-safe checklist.  What could possibly go wrong?

Update - I forgot the alcohol.  Plonker.

Extreme tapering

DRAFT

Friday "Fun" this week hampered by my inability to do mental maths AND my inability to put one foot in front of the other.  As a result I went arse over tit and hurt lots of bits of me, including my pride.  Luckily I was with two wonderful people who looked after me and fed me curly wurlies until I managed to stagger back to the cafe for my weekly fix of post-exercise chips

Just a fleshwound.  But the bruised ribs hurt a lot more

Anti-ranting

I must confess to feeling sorry for myself after another day of cancelled plans because of illness of one form or another (I've just got over diabetes-related infection waning, to be replaced with asthma-related chest issues again)..... I started googling for advice from other asthmatic diabetics, and came across a blog which had a fantastic post about anti-ranting.  It suggests that when you're feeling a bit down, see if you can think about reasons to be cheerful/grateful/lucky.  You'll always find at least one.  It's here if I ever forget.

So, after about five minutes of thinking hard, I realised that I am a very very lucky bunny;

a) I get FREE prescriptions. In the USA it can cost over $300 per month just to be asthmatic. Quadruple that if you're diabetic too

b) I have friends who voluntarily give me 10 curly wurlies (nothing whatsoever to do with me stealing their wetsuits and holding them to ransom)

c) CS is currently topless, covered in grease and is calling for my attention.