No news.... is good news??

Still haven't heard anything. Yawn.

Feeling a hell of a lot better about it now for some reason. I was starting to get incredibly down about it all, and feeling flat and lifeless which is so not like me! Sunday night was horrible - not knowing whether I had a life threatening condition or not really got to me. I'd also dodgied up my back AGAIN which was painful!

But then on Monday I had heaps of wonderful asking after me and keeping me busy while Andrew's busy with the conference organising this week.

I came home and lay in a nice hot bath for ages with a good book accompanied by a bottle of wine and a pack of Tim Tams. It's the simple things in life that bring you back to earth!! After a few glasses of wine, I was the happiest person on earth giggling at anything remotely amusing.... When I got into bed, I was just thinking that I'd kill for a cup of tea, and Andrew came home, and came upstairs asking if I'd like a cup of tea, which he then made and brought me! Gee he's wonderful! I don't know where I'd be without his constant support. :-)

I rode into work again today as well - first time I've felt motivated to do that in a while, and I really enjoyed it. It's just so nice when there's a bit of a nip in the air, and the grass is green, the trees are an amazing array of reds, yellows and oranges, and all the birds are out chattering away.

Bad news is that I've pulled out of the 12 hour endurance ride in 3 1/2 weeks time, which I'm disappointed about, but there'll be more rides, and more opportunities. I'd like to go along and watch it still and support my friends who are doing it, but we'll just wait and see what happens.

No earth shattering news

Saw the cardiologist this morning and he did a more thorough analysis of the family history, and any other symptoms I've had.

The specialist in Brissie hasn't sent back my scans yet, so he redid the echocardiogram, and has sent the video from that as well as the copies of the scans to another specialist in Sydney at the RPA.

He also gave us (Andrew came with me) a better of idea of what's going on by using some nice little diagrams! Basically they think the problem could be with the fibrillin (connective tissue) in the aorta (specifically in the Sinus of Valsalva if that means anything to anyone...). This is the bit in my heart that is quite "prominent".

So there's a test at the RPA they do at the Marfan's clinic that can check to see if the fibrillin gene is defective. Once the guy at the RPA gets the scans, he'll decide whether I need to go to Sydney for tests, or if they can just take blood or something from here and send it to Sydney.

I mentioned that I'm still hoping to do the 12 hour endurance ride in 4 1/2 weeks, and I'm going stir crazy not training, so he said he'd try to move as fast as he can. I'm pretty sure this is because he's worried I might be putting too much strain on my heart rather than him being concerned about my sporting goals, but you know... whatever works. :-)

Cardiologist tomorrow morning...

I wonder what he's going to say when I tell him I'm still planning to do the 12 hour endurance ride (as a 2 person team) in a little under 5 weeks....

Crashing back to earth

Cardiologist rang today. Not allowed to do any strenuous exercise until they confirm what (if anything) is wrong.

The cardiologist heard from the Brissie specialist and he agreed that the aorta is enlarged and abnormal compared to the rest of the heart. Given that my dad and aunt died from aortic aneurysms which is pretty much the aorta expanding and exploding, they have a pretty good reason to be worried!

The cardio is going to squeeze me in next week and do a thorough examination and talk about my options. He's also talking to some specialist at the Marfan's clinic at the RPA to see what he thinks, and he may send me there to get some special sort of blood test done to check for something. Can't remember what it was.... Something to do with the connective tissue.

So, no training for a while, but I'll keep cycling to work, and just see what happens. I'm pretty bummed about it, I was pretty excited about IM....

First step on the road to Ironman

I've signed up with Ben Wisbey from Endurance Sports Training to get programs written up for me.

Ben has been highly recommended to me previously as a great coach, particularly for running technique, and I notice he's now also doing a training tips page in the Triathlon and Multi-Sport magazine, so this should be a step in the right direction.

I hope to stay with him for 12 months and have him monitor my progress the entire way, so this time next year I'll be ready to race!

I wanna be an Ironman!!!

I'm hooked. I had the best time there spectating/volunteering. For those who don't know, the Forster Ironman is a 3.8k swim/180k ride/42k run. There's only 2 Ironman races in Australia, and Forster attracts about 1500 competitors!


RACE DAY

The day started early, and I cycled into the swim start to watch everyone head off. I found some friends and we watched the pro's and age groupers start, then got a good spot on the road to watch everyone come out on their bikes. We were quite interested to see one guy come out with a flat on his single and have a spectator help him change it and even pump it up for him with their floor pump!! If that's not blatant outside assistance, I don't know what is.

After that I headed back into town to the bike course, and stood halfway between the turnaround and the corner heading back out through Forster. As soon as all of the guys from my club came through, we went to get our spot near the bike/run change tent. It was a great spot there, we could see people getting off the bike, and heading out on the run course and back again.

It was a great race spectator wise with the leaders being so close off the bike, then watching Macca (Chris McCormack)and Lisa Bentley just blitz it on the run. We really enjoyed ourselves cheering people on! I tried for an hour trying to read people's race numbers as they got close, then looking up their names in the competitor booklet and cheering them on by name. Most people were stuffed from the small hill, and just looked at me with a really confused look on their face....

CATCHING

My job for the afternoon was to "catch" athletes as they crossed the finish line. Everyone puts so much into it, and it's such a strain, that people just cramp up, or their bodies just completely stop as they cross the finish line, and they need help just getting to the recovery/medical area. So as soon as someone crosses the line, one catcher throws a towel around them and grabs one arm, and another cather comes from the other side and grabs the other arm. Often people are collapsing by the time you get to them, but generally they're fine, and are happy to have you there with them just in case!

At about 3:30/4:00 I went over the the finishers area as Macca had already come across the line, so figured I should "get to work". I got a couple of good pics of people interviewing Macca while I was there, and also of Luke Bell who was crossing the line just as I got there.

I joined the line of catchers as the pro's started crossing the finish line and managed to catch Stu Bardsley from our club who was doing his first IM as a pro, and managed to do a 20 minute PB!! He gave me a hug, and was just so pleased with how he went. I think he was pleased to have a familiar face on the finish line as he yabbered on to me for a while about the race and how he went. I was so proud of him - had tears in my eyes when he crossed the line. For a guy who doesn't have a coach, doesn't have any other guys at his level to train with, works full time as a bike mechanic and doesn't exactly earn a fortune, or have sponsors falling over him trying to give him gear, he's done such a great job.

There were a few scary moments. I'd just said to someone that I hadn't had anyone collapse yet, and of course Murphys Law kicked in and the next person was incredibly woozy, threw up (all over his finishers medal), then passed out. We grabbed a wheelchair and we had to try and drag this dead weight into the wheelchair to get him straight to the medical tent. He was just completely spent and was delirious and kept yelling at us to leave him alone and let him just lie down on the ground. Poor bugger... Hope he was ok in the end!

The other scary moment was when another guy I knew collapsed in front of me, and I just managed to grab him before he hit the ground. He would have have some nasty scratches on his face if I hadn't have recognised him and gone up to say hi....

It really was just such a fun place to be. There was so much going on, and I got to be there when my friends crossed the line and give them big hugs and make sure they got whatever they needed. I also got to go out into the finishers chute to do a guard of honour for when the last person crossed the line, and again for when the guy who missed cutoff came across.

I was completely exhausted by this stage, as well as covered in hundreds of other people's sweat (mmm....), so finally got to go home where everyone was chatting about their days, and we finally dragged ourselves to bed around midnight, tired but very content.

AWARDS AND MELTDOWN

I thought the awards dragged on a bit, but it was still good. Everyone got the chance to thank the organisers and volunteers and recognise the multi finishers. I thought Lisa and Chris' speeches were good, and I was pleased that they won, they were both incredibly excited about it! Funniest thing was when some chick who sang the National Anthem at the race start also sang Simply the Best to them at the end of the awards night!! The poor things looked so embarrassed....

Then the meltdown. Now THAT was fun!!! All my piker tri buddies went home, but I figured I'd find a bunch of others that I knew, so wandered about and found people from the Transitions triathlon website that I frequent. From there I met so many other people throughout the evening, and after a couple of drinks was feeling very happy and loving the atmosphere of the place.

Great moments in the club include the man now known as "stumpy" streaking through the club at around 2:30am, and the sight of Macca completely pissed, but still chatting to absolutely everyone who approached him, happy to chat to whoever, pose for photos, and profusely apologising for the state he was in. It was good to see him relaxed and just enjoying himself and joining in the celebrations with the rest of us nobody's!

I finally got to bed at about 3:30am, was up again by 7:30am, and was all packed ready to head off by about 9am! Made it home to Canberra safely, and have many many fond memories of the last official IM in Forster.

Now to think about qualifying for Port Mac next year....