Hayatz on the go

Hello WF Long Course,

Yes, you still hold that enviable position of my race nemesis. I just can’t seem to figure you out. Maybe it’s because you’ve never been my A race and you hold ill will towards me. Don’t worry, that will change in 2013. I won’t put an Ironman or a 100 mile ultra in front of you, I promise. I’ve finished you once out of 3 tries and that was the first time we met. You taught me to not try new things, such as riding a TT bike 1 week after getting it. I still managed to finish that first time but it was ugly. The second time we met things got worse as I went into the race after having arrived early on Tuesday to put up tents for GGTC and make sure that our space was secured. Race morning came and I was achey and tired. After a slow swim, soon into the bike, my body decided to reject anything that I tried to take in. Even now, I can’t eat jelly beans during a workout. And I used to love jelly beans! So after 40ish miles of throwing up on myself, my transition went from bike to med tent instead of the usual run. 2 IV bags later, I emerged from the tent a sad little man. For this reason, I decided to do the Olympic course in 2011, hoping that racing on your shorter sibling, I would have a good day. And a good day it was. Ended up actually PRing the olympic distance. With this renewed confidence, I signed up for you again this year, hoping to finish and do better than my first time of 5:37. And this is where my 2012 race report begins.

I came back in 2012 with a bit of a tired body but a confident one. I had recently finished in the top 20 in a 10 mile run and an olympic distance duathlon along with riding my bike from SF to Santa Monica. This may sound like a weird taper but for many of you, this is just training. I had no expectations of doing well but I knew that if everything came together I would easily beat my previous time here.

The swim was a moshpit of me and my closest friends high fiving each others’ heads and playing footsie with ribcages. But after the first turn, things thinned out quite a bit and I spent most of the swim seemingly alone. I didn’t exert too much energy as I practiced breathing on both sides. While I was hoping to swim a bit faster, 35 minutes was actually 3 minutes faster than my previous two swims.

Onto the bike I went and mentally this ride was a piece of cake. The legs definitely didn’t have that extra gear as I quickly learned with how fast Stefan, then Brett, then Ritch passed me. At one point I actually thought the brakes were rubbing so I released them a bit. 56 miles and 2 hours, 46 minutes later, I rolled into transition doing the flying dismount that makes me feel cooler than I am. This was a 13 minute faster bike than my previous best time here. Knowing that I wasn’t going to be breaking any Hayatz records, I decided to rock the pink compression socks for the run which made transition a bit longer but made me look all the more cooler with the new GGTC kit. *Pictures to come.

The run is always tough for the first 6 miles but knowing that if I could stay consistent, the second half would be faster even with the pit. I was getting hot out there but was making sure to grab gatorade and water at each aid station. My pace was fluctuating between 7:30 and 8:30 pace and picked up a little through the GGTC cheer area. My body was starting to dislike me but my breathing and mental was fine(ish) as a half marathon doesn’t feel far. Then mile 10 came and while running down into the pit, my chest started to hurt like my heart wanted to jump out. But the weird thing was that I wasn’t breathing hard and the beats per minutes weren’t spiking. I reached the turnaround and the volunteer at the bottom asked me if everything was alright. I told him that my chest hurt when I ran but was fine when I walked. He walked with me and called in my issue to headquarters. I told him I’d be fine as long as I walked. I tried running a couple more times but was relegated to walking as chest pain is kind of scary. Just after mile 11, a fire truck pulled up and asked if they could check me out. I said ok thinking they would listen to me breathe, maybe check my blood pressure and then let me walk the last 1.8 miles to the finish line. Then the ambulance came and they wanted to do an EKG. So up into the ambulance I went which led to me being driven to the med tent. In the med tent, I was told I most likely failed a personally given stress test and that I’d be alright. I just needed to make sure I saw my primary doctor this week for a follow up. They had me lie on a cot and gave me an IV. During this time, the EMTs and the doctor took a look at the EKG results, which apparently weren’t normal. This meant that I would receive another ambulance ride to the closest hospital with a cardiac unit, about an hour and a half away in Salinas. Luckily my friend Margot was in the med tent checking on another friend and jumped in to go for the ride. About 30 minutes into the ride, another EKG was taken which looked ok and kept me as a Code 2 patient. Then with about 30 more minutes left until we reached the hospital one more EKG was taken and that one said something about a potential heart attack. This is when I got a bit emotional and a lot more scared. Awesome started leaking out thru my eyes (Dave, just read that term on your fb I was upgraded to Code 3 which meant faster speeds, pretty lights, and sirens. When I got to the hospital, they brought me into trauma unit 1 which sounds worse than it is… a woman in trauma unit 2 had a dislocated shoulder. They hooked up me up to more cords, took some blood and then it was time to wait to see if some “levels” went down. 5 hours later and after my friends Mike and Joanna showed up with some fresh clothes and humor, I was discharged since I appeared to be better and my levels had come down.

Sunday was spent cheering everybody doing the Olympic distance race and drinking lots of fluids. So glad Zico was giving away coconut water.

It’s Monday now and went to my local hospital where they did another EKG which came out normal so next step is to see a cardiologist who may want me to do a stress test. Other than that, I’m feeling fine and drinking lots of fluid. Will be taking it easy until my next appt and hear more.

Definitely the most skurred (scared) I’ve been but hoping that it was just a fluke and I’ll be back to training in no time. Until then, I’ll be doing yoga, going for long walks on the beach, and regularly checking facebook and okcupid.

Thank you to everybody who’s been checking in on me and made sure I made the smart decisions.

Wildflower, I promise to kick your ass next year.