In Mexico I stayed in a condo with Matt Chrabot. This year was his second win at the Huatulco World Cup, and he’s been on the podium there three of the last four years. If anyone knows how to race well in Huatulco it’s Matt, and staying with him was a great opportunity to learn a little from one of my most successful peers.

Even though Matt lives across the hall from me, we have different coaches and we rarely train together. And that’s just the way it is at the Olympic Training Center. There are about 15 athletes training out of the center in Colorado Springs, but none of us train together on any regular basis. It’s not any kind of animosity between the athletes, we all get along pretty well, it’s a mix of us having different coaches that never talk, and then once the season starts our training priorities are just different. It’s something that USAT has been working to fix, but we won’t see any real change in the structure of the resident program until after London.

In Huatulco, however, Matt and I were on the same plan. Even with different coaches our training objectives in the days leading up to the race were identical. We wanted to practice the hill, and get used to the heat. Even the water was warm in Huatulco, so we did a hard swim workout three days before the race to get used to working hard in warm water. Everything we did meshed up, and it was fun to have a training partner for the week.

We were in a condo, so we had a full kitchen and plenty of space. It was actually a really cool setup because the condominium was brand new, and the two of us were one of just two rooms being rented while we were there. We basically had an entire hotel staff just waiting around for us. We made ourselves omelets and sandwiches during the day then went to the town square for dinner. We found this hole-in-the-wall just off from the main tourist area. It was a little restaurant run by a family in the back yard of their house. They grilled all the food right in front of us, served us homemade lemonade (with mint and cucumber!) and charged us half what we would have paid for lower quality food elsewhere.

Our setup was not conducive to socializing, so the two of us ended up having an inordinate amount of down time, despite getting in everything we wanted to do.  It was by far the best accommodations I’ve had in Huatulco in the three years I’ve done the race, and it was all thanks to Matt’s planning.

….I need to put in an aside here, I’m on an airplane watching Hawaii 5-0 and they just interrogated a guy who was helping triathletes blood dope. I’m not a fan of the image their creating of triathletes…

The whole experience with Matt made me wonder why we’ve never been able to work out the obstacles of training together. We both like group training, but we both stubbornly insist on having our own coaches (for good reason, at this level you really do need a coach who optimizes your schedule for your own individual needs). USAT played with the idea of having mandatory runs and bikes during the week, but the older guys complained and it never happened.

…Now the TV is showing these two triathletes training together in an endless pool at a waterfront house in Kahala, which is probably a 10 million dollar home. That’s probably a more realistic impression of a triathlete, right?…

Anyway, it’s the off-season now. Matt finishes in a few weeks, and over the winter we’ll hit up the fire roads together on our cross bikes. Maybe next year our schedules will match up for more than a few days in Mexico.

…And now they’re showing footage of a race start at Ala Moana Beach Park.  I just saw my former roommate Tai Blechta! That is so cool! They got real triathletes! Now if only they weren’t showing two people in aero helmets climbing the side of a building to steal money from a bank vault…

What was I talking about? This show is distracting…

I just signed up for two more races in May: 5150 New Orleans on May 15th and the Capitol of Texas Triathlon (CapTex) on May 30th. It’s going to be an awesome month! Training is going very well, the weather is getting nicer, I don’t seem to be allergic to anything in Colorado (a clear nose in May is a delightful change of pace from Washington), and I don’t have to travel over an ocean any time soon. Life is good!

Here’s some photographs of the past couple months. (Just click on the image to see a bigger, uncropped version.) It’s been a nice Spring so far.

Since I’ve arrived in Japan there hasn’t been much going on. I sleep a lot. I eat when I should. I train as much as I need to. The rest of the time I’ve just been sitting around, chatting with people, refreshing my inbox to see if the ITU has finally made their decision of whether or not to hold the Yokohama World Championship race in four weeks, or if USA Triathlon has decided yet if they’ll be sending me to the Monterrey World Cup in just three. It’s low stress to the extreme, which is a really nice change of pace from filling out insurance claims, maxing out credit cards, and the other chores of post-theft reestablishment of stuff.

My favorite part of being in Ishigaki is definitely the cycling. The people are quite friendly, and the traffic is light. The roads are pristine and the scenery is endlessly engrossing. My first ride on Wednesday reminded me that I had intended to stay an extra day this year so that I could be a tourist. I’ve been about a third of the way around the island, and I really want to see the rest of it, but I let my budget decide my return date so the tourism will have to wait until next year.

There has been a bit of translational humor, which can almost be expected in a place like Japan where the alphabet and language is so different from English. Like when Steve Sexton and I asked the front desk where we could find a simple meal for relatively little cash they handed us their “English” map of the town and pointed to a place called “Banira Deri”. I told Steve that it was probably a deli (with an ‘L’), which he laughed at and I expected to be true. Unfortunately, most of the landmarks on the English map did not have English signs, so it was hard to identify whether places like “Banana Café” we were supposed to pass were really there. When we did arrive to the street where the “Banira Deri” was supposed to be we found two restaurants – both looked appealing – but neither with the sign we were looking for. The first one had a sign in English, but since it didn’t match our map we assumed it was the second store. It was after browsing both menus that I looked up at the first sign and realized that “Banira Deri” was a double translation of “Vanilla Deli” (first to Japanese characters, then back to English). The food was great.

We swim in a 50m pool at the Ishigaki Sports complex, which also boasts a huge gym, a baseball field and a track and field center. The only thing missing is a velodrome. This is where I did all of my swimming the past few days and most of my running. I’m sure there are plenty of dirt paths on this island, but I haven’t found them, so I just lingered around the track to enjoy the grass and soft surface.

Aside from the food – which has been low protein, high-carb with a very un-western palate – and the training, I’ve been a pretty lame tourist. I figured out how to watch Netflix’s live stream by using a proxy server back home (it won’t stream to IPs outside the US), which has provided some entertainment. I haven’t figured out how to get USAT’s Normatec to work without the voltage converter (they bought a 220 volt Norma, so places like Japan and the United States require us to use a voltage converter to step it up from 110 volts) that was left at home thinking it wouldn’t be needed in Australia last week.

As far as the race goes, I’m excited. We came a long way for this, so I’m not leaving anything on the course. Besides, I have some pent up energy from my anticlimactic participatory experience last weekend at South Beach. I’ll take luck, but all I really need to do (in the crass words of Rory) is “not [mess] up.”

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This is a “fun” little highlight video to start off the 2011 triathlon season. Get pumped.

I’m proud to announce that I will be working with Garmin International for 2011 and 2012! Garmin was one of my first sponsors, and my partnership with them has grown substantially over the past three years. It’s been a lot of fun testing out their products and sharing my stories, both here and on the Garmin Connect Blog, about the adventures they’ve helped me through. Below is one of those stories, but I want to solicit you, my reader, for some stories of your own about how you’ve enjoyed your Garmin devices. If you have a story you would be willing to share, send it to me at garminstory@bencollins.org – I’ll do my best to publish each of them, and if your story is particularly compelling I’ll put it up on the Garmin Connect Blog as well.

A couple of weeks ago in Seattle I decided to join in on a local group ride called the Rocket Ride. It’s a “drop” ride, where local cyclists (and the occasional pro) do their best to hurt each other for about fifty miles of rolling to hilly terrain. Unfortunately, when I showed up there was nobody there because the ride leaders from Herriott Sports Performance were in Tucson for a training camp. Instead I joined in with a group of cyclists from a local team and figured it was all for the best (I hadn’t been on a bike in a couple of weeks after finishing my last race of the season, so it was inevitable that I would be receiving more “hurt” than I could offer). This also happened to be my first time out with the new Garmin Edge 800, and my first ride of the winter season in my super-warm fleece kit from Northwave. The Edge 800 boasts a large touch screen that dwarfs its predecessor, the Edge 705 and allows you to have up to ten (TEN!) data fields on one training screen. As soon as I mounted my bike I looked down at my glove-covered fingers and thought, “oh no, I’m going to have to use my nose for the touch-screen!” WRONG! Even through thick wind-breaker fleece cycling gloves the touch-screen works flawlessly! So I was able to flip between my ten data fields and the glowing, crystal clear maps with just a swipe of my finger. It puts my smart phone to shame.

The ride started off casually. I introduced myself and chatted for a little while about triathlon and cycling and the usual handlebar small-talk. We weren’t doing the Rocket Ride route, so luckily there weren’t any big climbs to wake us up. Instead we meandered through the suburbs and eventually hit some country roads where the guys started rotating through a pace line. Each guy was taking a pull of about 2-3 minutes before pulling off, and you could tell this was the time to casually show off a bit. Now, because I was only in Seattle for a short weekend and was riding my old rain bike I wasn’t wearing a heart rate strap, my bike lacked a power meter, and I didn’t even think to add an Ant+ speed/cadence sensor to the rig. When I got to the front my only gauge of effort was RPE (rate of perceived exertion), which is a subjective measurement that quickly loses its accuracy with every day of the off-season. I felt fine, so I kept the speed set by the pull preceding mine, and ignored the increase in pitch (both of which were displayed prominently on my 800’s screen). After four or five minutes I had unknowingly dropped half the group, and was unaware of the dwindling amount of energy remaining in my no-so-fit legs.

We dropped down into the Snohomish River Valley and proceeded north along the base of the western slopes. The area is still mostly unclaimed by the insidious housing abominations that we call suburbs, and the expansive agrarian landscape is a welcome beauty to the pedal powered recreationalist. The five of us began rotating through a pace line again, only this time there was no showing off. We rotated continuously and kept a strong pace along the flatlands. At some point my mind wandered from the joy of riding in a group and the beauty of the valley to a more urgent issue: food. I had skipped breakfast and had not eaten for the past 90 minutes of riding. This is not a mistake I would make during regular training. I scarfed down a peanut butter Powerbar and soon forgot about the strong possibility of energetic depletion. At some point we turned east and headed to Snohomish, a small town with an abundance of antique stores and a fun little river-walk to attract the weekend tourists. My legs were not happy with me, but my 800 said we were holding a steady pace, and my companions didn’t seem interested in slowing as we rolled right past town and began to head back south toward home. I sucked it up, refused to make excused, and quickly forgot to continue eating. At some point I clicked “return to start” on my 800 and observed that we were still much farther from home than I wanted to be. I was no longer feeling very heroic and when we hit Broadway, a long steady climb that takes us back out of the river valley, I found myself dropped. The legs just wouldn’t turn over any faster.

At a stoplight we regrouped but the short break really didn’t help me. We kept climbing over the hill but as we approached a “Welcome To Woodinville” sign, I found myself dropped again behind those with enough energy to go for the sprint point. I was gone, bonking and too mentally hindered to realize it. Too far gone to remember that I had forgotten to eat for another 90 minutes of steady riding, and we were still 30 minutes from home. A few minutes later we were riding casually (slowly even) along a flat bike path and my legs just stopped turning. I looked at the cyclist next to me and just let out a laugh as he pedaled on ahead – I was bonking. Severely. I was two miles from my house and was wishing I had a cell phone to ask someone for a ride home. “Please god,” I prayed. “Let me get a flat tire so I can hitchhike home.” No such luck. I’d already gotten a flat earlier in the ride and that was the extent of my luck for unplanned rest stops. I was dropped on a flat trail with no wind going 15 mph. BONK!! By people will full time jobs, families and “old school” Garmin Edge 705s. This was not my finest moment. The 800 said I was about 1500 meters from home when I said goodbye to my companions, thanked them for the ride, and coasted the rest of the way down the trail. If nothing else, it was a ride to remember.

After the Huatulco World Cup I planned to stay put for a couple days. Originally this was so I could train and recover from the heat before dehydrating myself on another airplane. Instead, I spent Monday and Tuesday whining about how badly my back hurt, changing bandages, and riding my rollers indoors. It did seem like I was recovering quickly, but I was definitely not getting in the water with such massive open wounds on my back, hip, arm and hands. Also, running hurt like crazy thanks to the contusion on my hip and the raw skin under my armpit.

Tuesday evening I flew to Puerto Vallarta where I would spend the next 8 nights. At that point, I really didn’t think I would be healed enough to race in a dirty harbor in Mexico before Sunday, but change fees and late cancellation for the hotel would have cost me almost as much as staying. Besides, Rory and Mojdeh were flying in from Colorado to spend the week with me, and I wasn’t about to miss out on my end-of-season vacation (post race) just because of a little pain.

Wednesday afternoon my friends arrived. I was studying for an accounting exam, so I told them to go enjoy themselves while I stayed in the air conditioning. Rory brought fishing equipment and was out on the beach catching fish within an hour of landing while Mojdeh found a sunny piece of sand and thawed out in the radiation.

That was pretty much par for the week. Rory fishing, Mojdeh fishing until she got bored then reading a book in the sun, me studying, changing bandages, and keeping out of the sun and water. By Thursday I was running again, though I couldn’t swing my right arm and my hip was painfully causing me to limp. Friday I took my exam and reluctantly agreed to spend Saturday morning at a time-share presentation in order to get a discount on a fishing boat trip the following Monday. Mainly I wanted to get out of the hotel room for long enough to feel like I was getting ready to race.

The presentation turned into a humorous morning. We met the guys who organized the trip for us that morning outside our hotel and were briefed on the protocol we needed to follow. Rory and Mojdeh were asked to wear wedding rings that were purchased for them on the way to the resort. The cab ride was much longer than expected, and by the time we arrived at the resort I was already starting to feel the “I’m racing tomorrow and things need to go my way” primadonna attitude coming out. Luckily, there was free food, which always makes me happy. Our guide spent about an hour asking us questions, though she was mainly interested in Rory and Mojdeh and had very little to say to me. They asked where I like to vacation and I told them “home” because I rarely get to spend any time there anymore and that’s where my friends are. Rory told them straight up that he hates resorts and would never buy into a massive place like that. Mojdeh told them she wouldn’t be interested in anything like that until she was a mother (I think she nearly said “until I’m married” but caught herself). I looked at the offer and figured out that what they were offering could provide a 30% annual return on the investment, and started asking lots of questions. The salesmen ignored me, and told Rory that the reason he doesn’t like resorts is because he doesn’t feel he can afford them and subconsciously he would rather believe he doesn’t like the resort than admit that it’s a financial situation. I don’t think he knew his audience very well.

After the presentation we hurried back so I could do the bike course preview. I’ll summarize by paraphrasing Jarrod Shoemaker’s tweets regarding the course: This is the most dangerous course ever. Cobble 180s, freshly paved sections with loose blacktop, and tire eating cracks in the center of the road. We weren’t able to ride the entire route, however, because they were still paving part of it.

Saturday is when I finally made the decision that I was healed enough to race. I hadn’t swum since the previous Sunday, but I was healthy enough to give the race a shot. It didn’t go so well because of that, but I learned a few things about how to keep myself prepared when I can’t train. Two words: core strength. That’s what I should have been working on during the 6 days of rest.

Next up, a full race report for my 8th place finish at the Pan-American Championships.

This is the story of how I managed to burn the skin off my back on fast-moving hot asphalt, and why you should know more Spanish than I do for the Emergency Rooms of Mexico.

I arrived in Mexico on October 7th with a bunch of other people. Matt Chrabot and I were on the same itinerary from Colorado Springs and we met up with Jillian Petersen and Melisa Mantak in Houston to continue our journey south through Mexico City and on to Huatulco.

At the Mexico City Airport we found even more athletes sitting in the Star Alliance lounge, and even more at the gate. There must have been 25 athletes with us on the 90-minute flight from Mexico City to Huatulco on a small prop plane that only held 45 people. It turns out 25 bikes will not fit on a plane that small. In fact, they had been short on room for bikes for several flights already, and the only bikes that made it onto our plane were the bikes being delivered to athletes from previous flights. None of us had bikes when we arrived to Huatulco, and there were so many delayed bikes that the airline had to send some to another airport and drive them on a truck eight hours to Huatulco.

Meanwhile, I was perfectly content to have no bicycle. I was sitting in a hotel room with Mark Fretta watching some of the best television I’ve experienced outside the US, eating fajitas con pollo, and finishing all my homework for the week. When I did venture out is was to go swim in the bay.

My first time to the beach was frightening. Mark and I went over to get in a swim and found that the beach was littered with jelly fish. They were everywhere, little translucent blobs of nasty sticky jelly. But there were other athletes in the water who weren’t being stung, so maybe they weren’t the stinging kind, right?

It took about 20 minutes for us to brave it into the water, during which time we walked up and down the beach looking for an opening without any jellies. After that proved to be impossible, and after we were assured by at least two people that we would not be stung by the thousands of jellies, we finally ran into the ocean, screaming like little girls, and swam head high until we didn’t see any jelly fish. After that we did a couple of loops of the bay stopping only to shriek and complain about all the jellies that kept getting stuck between our fingers, rubbing our faces and sliming us with their apparently tentacle-less bodies.

The next day we were braver. There were fewer jellyfish, and since we hadn’t been stung before we were ok with the idea of swimming in a bay of gooey gumdrops We got in quickly and swam out to the end of the bay – only this time something hit me in the face and stung. I stopped to shriek (obviously the most effective solution) and found that were in the middle of school of box jellyfish (with tentacles). I shrieked again, then Mark told me which direction to swim in, and I took off with him on my feet. That was it for my pre-race swimming, which was okay since it was the day before the race.

Sunday I felt great. I did my normal pre-race routing and arrived at the starting line feeling confident. I was lined up at the far right of the swim start where only a few brave souls ventured to join me. Unger, Serrano, Fretta – the guys who had as much faith my swimming ability as I did. Unfortunately, beach starts are not my forte, and I found myself behind the right-side-starters and I cut my way across the field and hopped on their feet as soon as I could. I was in pretty poor position around the first buoy, but kept moving up until I was boxed in behind the leaders. The pace felt slow, but I had no escape route. The leaders were swimming four or five wide because all of them were going for the $500 prime at the end of the first lap. It went to Eder Mejia from Mexico, and if you watch the video on the ITU website you can see that at the swim start he waited on the beach, walked in, assessed the situation in front of him, then dove in and swam around everyone. I’m a confident swimmer, but I don’t have the balls to walk into the water in a World Cup.

Running from the water and into T1 I was passed by Matt Chrabot. This has become a trend over the past few races, as Matt sprints by me and makes it into the front pack on the bike while my running-speed-to-transition gets me a few seconds back that I have to close in the first lap of the bike. But I did, and once we caught up to the leaders I went off the front with Matt and two other guys. We were away for a lap, and then I crashed by crossing wheels with the guy in front of me (Supanov from Ukraine). We both went down at 40+mph on a descent. He got back up and finished, I tried to start riding again (after a bit of bike fixing) but was bleeding profusely and in quite a bit of pain. I gave in and let the ambulance take me to the nearby emergency room.

I was missing a lot of skin on my back from the crash. Maybe a quarter of my back was scraped and burnt from the asphalt, and it felt like blistered sunburn worse than any I’ve had (and trust my, pasty white guys like me know sunburns). At the ER the doctor wanted to get X-Rays of me, which I was not happy about. Radiation scares me enough at the high-tech radiology labs in the US, but this was an old machine and the guy wasn’t even standing behind anything while taking pictures of me. I tried to ask for a lead blanket while he aimed the machine at my shoulder for the first X-Ray. He dind’t understand. I pointed at the lead vest hanging on the wall (does a lot of good there, right?) – no comprehension. I pointed at it again and said, “Lead por mi pene?” which is probably not even proper Spanglish, and certainly didn’t help with the tech’s comprehension. He stood a foot away from me and fired off the first image, then moved the x-ray machine over to the center of my hips, as if to take a picture of the “pene” I was trying to protect from radiation. “No!” I screamed, then started flapping my limbs around and moving in any way I could, which must have looked like a lurching seizure, and seemed to confuse the guy even more. “No fractura en mi pene, no fracturas en todos, no fracturas para mi!!” was the best Spanish I could come up with on the spot and must have meant something to the tech because he responded, “no photographia de tu pene?” No senior, no photographs of my penis, but thanks for asking.

I was pretty upset with myself for crashing and not finishing another race. This is the third race this year where I’ve crashed and not finished, and the fifth time I’ve crashed. Clearly I need to change something about the aggression with which I ride, or get better at riding aggressively. Luckily it’s an easy problem so solve, and I have a whole winter to work on it (after a few more races).

As for the Huatulco World Cup, there’s always next year. Besides, the best parts of the race are the monster hill, the after-party (Mexicans know how to make a fiesta!), and the food. The hill was cut from the course because of construction (should be back in next year), and I skipped out early on the party to start my recovery for Puerto Vallarta the next week. At least there was still some great food.

Not everything went right today, but the important stuff did.

The race started right on time, and Brian Fleischmann and I were lined up right along the far left side of the deep water start. I was hoping we would start early since they had us lined up in 14 degree water over two minutes before the gun (and since I was number one I had an extra two minutes in the water at least). For all my nervousness about a deep water start I discovered there was nothing to worry about. I pulled away from the line quickly and met up with Tommy Zafaras (also coached by Victor Plata) around 150m into the swim. He’s fast, so I stuck on his feet until the second buoy. At that point I started having trouble following his line, and I decided it was time to push the pace anyway. I took the lead (thought apparently I was swimming a line that looked like a seismometer reading) and never looked back.

I was first out the water, and was surprised that the group behind me was strung out and I didn’t recognize anyone. I started off on the bike slowly, putting on my shoes and hoping somebody would catch up to work with me. I didn’t want to let up too much because I figured if people had to work to get up to me it would weed out anyone without the firepower to do so. One guy finally caught up, though when he did and I tuned on the gas he lasted less than half the lap before falling back.

From there I turned the 25 seconds I had out the water on the main group into 45 seconds by the end of the 3rd lap, then gave up 15 seconds and finished my solo 40k bike ride about 30 seconds up on a group of 11 that had been working to catch me. I ran like I was being hunted, eleven wolves drooling for the taste of victory if they could catch me. After the first lap (of 3) I had 27 seconds left.

On the sidelines Victor was encouraging me, “you look better than all of those guys! You’re not giving up any time! You won’t give up any time!!” Next to him was my college friend Brandon Basso yelling, “Ben! You look like a runner!!!”

Both helped. I put my head down and a lap later I had 35 seconds over the next runner, but I could see that Steve Sexton had made a move and was running away from the rest of his pack. At the final turn around Steve had closed the gap back to 27 seconds, but with only 1500 meters to go I was starting to think about the finish. I had to snap myself back into the race twice in that final stretch, reminding myself to focus on the moment, “C’mon Ben!” I told myself. “It’s not over yet, endure it.”

And I did. I arrived at finish chute with time to spare, strutted up to the line and grabbing the ribbon with the pride of a lion. This is my first win in an ITU race. Heck, it’s my first win at a legitimate pro race! And I did it the hard way! Solo for 51 kilometers!! I don’t know if it was guts or stupidity (maybe both) but it worked. My parents were there to watch, Victor was there to watch, Tracy and Brandon and Christine and Kelly all made it out to watch me race… it was so exciting! I love having friends and family there for me, and it’s even better when I get to give them a show.

As for the little things: my bike showed up from Reno this morning (huh?) but the only way to get it before the race was to ask my parents to pick it up. Then I sliced my finger nearly to the bone on a metal part of the case. (after being charged both ways I’m realizing this case was a mistake. I’ll have to go back to my homemade no-charge bike case v2.0 – which really doesn’t get charged.) Later on I struggled to get out urine so long that Victor and my dad had yo pack the bike (I haven’t looked inside yet…), and by the time awards were given out my dad was waving his watch at me trying to cut my speech short. I had to ask my mom to drive like road warrior to the Oakland airport in order to get me there at 4:57 for a 5:45 flight back to Denver. I checked in within a minute of the cutoff time, then found a CO2 cartridge in my backpack and was given secondary screening because I gave it to TSA rather than chancing it through the bag scanner. I still made it to the gate, though it wasn’t until I took my seat I felt like the race was finally over. Woohoo!

8:15pm – I’m pretty sure that I don’t belong here. Sitting in a hospital bed in Colorado Springs waiting for a doctor someplace to tell another doctor someplace else that I should get some test that the OTC wasn’t able to do on site that will hopefully tell me why I’ve had a fever and a raging headache for three straight days after having a fever just last week. Some of the diseases they threw out there are pretty scary to me – mono, leptospirosis, meningitis, hypochondria… (just kidding about that last one, I wish I had the mental capacity to worry myself into a fever like this).

I’m sure eventually I’ll have some …

…

9pm – OK, the phlebotomist and the nurse just came in. Hooked me up to an IV and took a bunch of blood for analysis. They’re looking for all the things I listed above (except the last). The nurse is on the phone with the Doc from the OTC telling him she can’t do an “LP” until tomorrow for some reason. I have no idea what an LP is.

…

10:30 pm – Alright, I gave four vials of blood, peed in a jug, and now I’m sitting with my computer talking to Courtenay and my Mom on video chat. The nurse keeps coming in to check on me, and I keep telling her that my headache is killing me. Now she’s going to call the doc and ask for something better than Advil. I’m not sure I really want something more than Advil, that sounds scary, but my head really hurts. Oh, and the “LP” is a “Lumbar Puncture” or what is otherwise known as a Spinal Tap (as in, “Our amps go to eleven”). I called my uncle, who is an ER doctor in Hawaii, and asked him about what they’re doing and he also thought I needed the spinal tap tonight so they can start me on antibiotics.

…

11:20 pm – The nurse just came back with morphine. Never been so glad I had my computer handy so I could check the status of morphine on the DRO (Drug Reference Online – otherwise known as the banned substance list for those of us that get random out-of-competition testing). It’s legal out of competition, but not in. I’m still not keen on it. Also, they’re going to do the spinal tap right now.

…

12am – That was really really scary. I asked a ton of questions. Apparently they do this procedure a lot, but when the doc came in wearing some radiation suit (he was a radiologist because they use an X-Ray machine to pinpoint where the needle needs to go) and he had bright white hair, slender build and a German sounding name (Van Wagoner), I was absolutely certain that I was part of a mad scientist’s experiment.

First they turned me on my stomach. Wait. No. First they made me sign a form saying that there were all kinds of risks, but there was no other option. Then I turned on my stomach – which hurt like crazy because my neck is so stiff – and then they wiped down my back three times with iodine, then came the first big needle of lidocaine, a local anesthetic. A moment later, a second, bigger needle of lidocaine. The first one hurt a lot, the second hurt almost as bad, and then I saw the 5 inch long, thick as the momma earth worm in the compost heap, shiny, scare-the-crap-out-of-me needle.

Now, I’m a watcher. When I was little I had really bad acne and I had to take this terrible drug called Accutane. It was so harsh that I had to have blood draws every few weeks to make sure the drug wasn’t going to kill me (ah, what we do for vanity). I got so used to having needles stuck in my arm, that I actually started to like it. The way it goes in and then the blood starts squirting into the tube… The point is, I don’t mind needles at all, and if anything I derive some strange enjoyment of being poked and prodded. This was different.

There is nothing about a spinal tap that is not scary – even if they rename it to “Lumbar Puncture”. The giant needle goes in, then he taps it to get it into the spine, then he taps again, then the x-ray machine comes back over while the needle is standing straight out of the spine, then a bit more tapping, then the doctor’s hands are both way over away from me grabbing other stuff while this giant needle is protruding from my spine. And the whole time I’m laying there face down, afraid to move, afraid to breathe, afraid to do anything that could mess up the procedure (I read the list of awful things that could happen! It said DEATH!!!), and meanwhile I’m running out of oxygen, about to pass out, trying to will my back muscles not to spasm as the pressure in my spine telegraphs its way into my hips and upper back and slowly starts to cause a few twitches throughout my back, and then into my abdominal muscles. The words I had read on the waiver are flashing in front of my eyes, “Nausea, Headache, Fainting… DEATH”.

He finishes drawing the first vial and asks me if I’d like to see what spinal fluid looks like. I’m thinking “can’t it wait?!” in the primal part of my brain, but the more academic side is first to the vocal chords and I hear myself muttering, “Yes, of course.”

It was completely clear. Like water. I thought it would at least be viscous like glycerin, or maybe a bit opaque, but it pretty much looks like water. I relaxed and began to think, “at least that’s ove…”

“Okay, we’re going to do three more vials like that one.” I froze. I was so scared, and so uncomfortable it seemed like that big needle had been in there for way too long already. How could the prep have been so quick, but the actual “tap” be more like a crescendo.

I held my breath, then breathed shallow, then held it again and finally it was over. The needle came out with a jerk and a pop and before I knew it I was back on the gurney being pushed back to my private room here in the hospital.

Now I’m on antibiotics and tomorrow I’ll have a better idea of what’s causing all this illness. But for now, I’m going to take advantage of this moment of opiate-induced painlessness (first time since Sunday afternoon without a headache) and try to catch some Z’s.

I’m sitting in a coffee shop in Boulder right now with Courtenay Brown, Rory Seiter, and Mojdeh Hamidi. We’ve been spending the last couple of hours interrupting each other and getting stuff sort of done while at The Laughing Goat on Pearl Street. “Getting stuff done” consists of Rory interviewing me for the Checkmate Triathlon Team website (my side project that will be awesome once Rory and I figure out all the logistics of starting a team from scratch without start-up capital), Courtenay writing a blog, figuring out which graduate school she’ll go to and providing input to Rory and me (she started a women’s pro cycling team a few years back and has some great perspective), and Mojdeh generally being pleasant company.

What’s interesting is how we all got here. I met Rory when I was designing underwater robots in Honolulu and he was finishing up his degree in Environmental Management. I met Courtenay online through her ex-boyfriend, and Mojdeh and Rory met when he made an unexpected pit-stop in Boulder during a 2008 world tour. Last year Courtenay gave up her independent lifestyle in Lake Tahoe and moved in with me at my parents’ house in Seattle after dating me long distance for two months. Rory and Mojdeh had only been dating a couple months when they left Boulder to travel around New Zealand together for four months, and the trip went so well that they ended up spending all of 2009 living out of a van and dragging a trailer of triathlon swag to races for the USA Triathlon Endurance Mobile Tour. Sitting in a coffee shop figuring out what we’ll do next is much more exciting with this particular group than it might be with your average coffee shop dweller.