The Week From Hell

I knew it was too good to last when I wrote how everything had gone so well. It’s less than 24 hours until the start of the Outlaw Triathlon, and its fair to say it’s been the week from hell.

It started on the Saturday night not long after my last blog post. I had a thumping headache and felt unwell, but I just put it down to tiredness. Instead, at around 1am, I woke up and rushed to the bathroom. There followed over 24 hours of some V&D bug that just completely drained me. Even on Tuesday, I was still in no condition to complete an ironman. I tried a swim on the Wednesday evening which saw me cramping – probably a sign of dehydration from the last few days. I managed a jog on the Thu evening which felt alright, but was at least 5bpm higher heart rate than it should have been. I did a very short bike yesterday, and the legs still felt heavy and achy.

On top of the that, Niamh has also been struck down by illness. She had the bug I got the week before, but came down with what may have been food poisoning during the week and was crippled for 24 hours but has started to recover.

And as if all that was not enough, I got a phone call on Monday saying I had till the end of the week to decide whether I wanted to stay at my current employer and TUPE across to the client I am working on. I knew I had to make a decision but expected this to be a few weeks off yet.

With all the above, the stress levels have been through the roof. I have spent many hours walking around with a knot in my stomach and feeling sick with worry and nerves about some of the big life decisions to be made. As you’d expect, none of this has helped with getting lots of sleep and coming into the race feeling well rested and full of energy.

I guess second thoughts are what happen as you get close to major events. I wish it was a week later to allow me chance to recover, but realistically I am definitely fit enough. It’s now just a case of whether I am over the illness and my body doesn’t just shut down. It couldn’t have gone much worse this week, but I can’t change that now. Hopefully, by the next blog post I will be an Outlaw and be proud of my achievement, whatever the actual result on the day