PR or ER (aka 70.3 World Championship Epic Fail Report)

This got really long.  Here's the Cliff's Notes version for people who either don't have the time to read the next several thousand words or who just don't like me that much (both completely understandable):

• Go to Vegas for 70.3 Worlds
• Gamble a bit and play a ton of pinball in the days before the race
• Race day: Swim well, bike OK, attempt to suicide myself on the run
• DNF to med tent, ambulance ride to ER, overnight hospital stay
• Doctors run some tests, tell me I may have a serious heart condition
• Doctors run more tests, do a complete 180º and tell me I'm fine

The Long Version

Well... that did not go according to plan. I didn't sleep at all on Sunday night. That in and of itself is not the problem as the plan did not schedule any sleep that evening. The plan was to be on the Vegas Strip all night making it rain celebrating an AG win at 70.3 Worlds. Instead, I spent Sunday night (and most of Monday) at the St. Rose Dominican Hospital flat on my back, unable to sleep because I was covered in needles and electrodes. How did this unfortunate series of events come to pass? Read on...

Pre-Race

I arrived in Vegas on Thursday afternoon feeling on top of the world. I had just come off an AG win at Nationals a few weeks ago and had been absolutely crushing it in training since then. I felt like another AG win was mine for the taking. Hell, even 1st OA amateur didn't seem totally out of the question, although realistically I'd need a bit of good luck for that. Either way, I showed up in the best shape I've ever been in, fully tapered and ready to go.

After loading up the rental car, I headed on over to my hotel in Henderson and checked in. My room looked like one of those fake studio apartments they set up inside of IKEA.

After assembling the bike and hitting the grocery store to stock up my mini-fridge I headed on over to Green Valley ranch to donk around on the poker tables for a bit before heading back to my hotel to call it an early night.

Friday morning I headed over to the race site and jogged one loop of the run course prior to picking up my race packet. Since that was all over and done with by 10AM and bike dropoff wasn't until Saturday, I had the rest of the day to kill. If there's one thing you can say about Vegas, it's that it is just about impossible to be bored there. Name an activity, and it's available in this town (for a price, of course). As luck would have it the price of my chosen activity was only a handful of quarters, because I ended up going to the Pinball Hall of Fame.

This picture shows ~10% of their machines.

This place is beyond amazing. They do not charge admission, you just walk in, plunk your quarters into the game of your choice and do work. They had not one, but two of my 2nd favorite machine ever, Attack From Mars...

Destroy the saucer!

And my #1 all time favorite pinball machine, Star Trek, The Next Generation...

Resistance is futile!

My skills are a little rusty compared to my college student union glory days, but I still managed to hit the replay score often enough to make 5 bucks last for 3 hours. I ended up leaving only because my feet were starting to get sore from standing up so long. A repeat visit is definitely on my list next time I'm in Vegas.

Saturday was bike and run gear check in. I decided to go for a short ride prior to check in and managed to flat my front tire about a mile out of transition. Luckily some friendly Germans were driving past at the time and offered me a ride back to my car. I never got their names, but I made sure to thank them profusely for saving me from having to waste my only spare tube and CO2 cartridge before the race even started.

Once back at transition I walked around looking for a place to buy a new tube. Strangely, WTC only had official bike tech support back in Henderson. Nothing at all at the lake. I really didn't want to have to make another round trip back into town just to fix a flat. However, I vaguely remembered a large trailer full of bikes a few hundred yards up the road so I set off in that direction. Turns out that trailer was manned by a friendly gentleman named Nick, owner and proprietor of SAGmonkey, who hooked me up with a new tube and valve extender. Seriously nice guy. If you find yourself out on the West Coast and want to ride look these guys up!

After bike checkin it was back into town to drop off my run gear. As I was walking through the expo on my way back to the car, the day's trend of strangers treating me way nicer than I deserve continued. I stopped by the Foster Grant booth to look at their sunglasses and the guy there hooked me up with a free pair in exchange for filling out a survey. Nice! After that it was back to the room to try and rest up as much as possible.

Race Day

Finally, race day. I felt like I had been in Vegas for weeks at this point. Since my body clock was still on Central time waking up at 4AM was no sweat and I got out to Lake Las Vegas nice and early. The race started with the pros at 6:30 with my wave scheduled to go off at 7:20. After watching the pro start I got into line with the rest of my wave and shuffled along as we waited our turn. Everything moved along relatively quickly and we entered the water right on schedule.

For some reason they split M35-39 into three waves, of which I was in the 2nd, so there was plenty of room on the starting line. Being the World Championship I expected the start the be pretty rough, but it was actually very mellow since there were so few of us in the wave and we all had plenty of space. A few hundred meters in I settled into a draft and stayed there around both of the turns. Maybe 2/3 of the way into the swim we started running into significant traffic from the previous waves and I lost my draft, so I kept on plugging away on my own. I got out of the water at 28:46, which is a huge personal best for me in a non-wetsuit 1/2-iron swim. If there's one positive I can take away from this race it's the swim.

T1 was a total gong show. I ran down the wrong row and couldn't find my bike, wasting at least 30 seconds. Eventually I stumbled to the correct rack and got my swimskin off and my helmet on. After a long run up to the mount line I finally got rolling.

The bike course starts out tough with a significant climb and doesn't get any easier. I seriously doubt there's a  mile of flat road the entire 56 miles. Traffic was pretty thin thanks to the small waves and 5 minute spacing so moving up through the field never required too much evasive maneuvering. I took 2 bottles at every aid station and did my best to stay hydrated, but that was starting to become a losing battle as the temp climbed up toward 100.

Just after the turnaround at about mile 30 Sami Inkinen came around me for the pass. Sami went sub-9 at Kona last year and is consistently at the top of the AG results and was a logical pick to be on the podium at this race, so I didn't want to let him get away. I managed to re-pass him a couple minutes later and stayed in front for a bit, but eventually he must have decided to kick it up a notch because he went flying by and before I knew what was happening he had about a 10 second gap. I pushed hard trying to close the gap, but he kept slipping farther forward and I eventually had to back off the pace and resign myself to letting him ride away. It's not every day I get broken off like that on the bike, dude is a certified beast.

The good news is that while I was unsuccessfully trying to chase down Sami I passed Tim Hola, who is another guy with extremely impressive credentials. He also started five minutes ahead of me in the previous wave, so that was encouraging. The rest of the bike was fairly boring and I made it to T2 with a 2:25 split. I had seriously underestimated the difficulty of this course as I had targeted a 2:20 split based on the map and elevation profile.

T2 had valet parking. Right at the mount line there was a gang of volunteers grabbing bikes as we jumped off. Nice. I grabbed my gear bag, busted ass through the change tent as fast as possible and got out onto the run.

As I crossed the timing mat marking the official start of the run I looked down at my watch and saw that I was right at the 3 hour mark. As I sit here writing this a week and a half later I can identify this precise moment as when my race went off the rails. Pre-race I had targeted 4:20 as my goal time. So I looked down at my watch and said, "alright, 1:20 it is, let's do this." With a flat course on a cool day that's not totally out of the realm of possibility. Unfortunately for me, this was not a flat course or a cool day, and with the clarity of hindsight it seems like such an obvious rookie mistake to try and run that fast on that course in those conditions, but at the time I was most certainly not thinking logically. I didn't go out to Vegas to not gamble. I was all in.

I started out feeling pretty decent heading down the hill to the first turnaround. I was keeping a lookout for Sami heading back up the hill the other way but I never saw him. At the time I figured he was so far ahead of me that it was hopeless, but anything can happen in a race like this so I stayed on the gas.

After the first turnaround at ~1mi there is a solid 2 mile uphill to the next turnaround. I was still feeling good so I kept pushing it hard all the way up. On way back through transition I heard a nice loud, "Hey Minnesota!" in a thick German accent. It was a guy I had met on the walk between the parking lot and bike checkin the day before. I gave my new German friend a high five as I blasted through. Just before I made the turn at the top I saw Sami heading the other way and the gap was right around a minute. Holy crap... I'm still in this thing. I pushed hard all the way back down the hill and managed to catch him right at the turnaround at the bottom of the hill at mile 5 or so.

On the way back up the hill I started to feel pretty crusty, but this is completely standard at this point in the race so I just did my best to keep the pace up and put some distance between me and Sami. I made the turnaround at the top of the hill (about mile 7) still feeling what I can best describe as "acceptably shitty" and made the turn to go back down. As I passed back through the transition area to start the 3rd lap my pace really started to suffer and I was rapidly passed by about a dozen people after not being passed by anyone for the entirety of the first two laps. Even this wasn't too alarming as I was starting lap 3 and many of the people passing me had to be on lap 2. I saw my one-man German fan club one last time and couldn't even muster up the strength to slap his hand as I went by.

At this point I was concerned about my pace falling off, but I was still thinking about the podium, not survival. That all changed within the span of a minute. About a half mile down the hill from transition (I think, this part is a little fuzzy) it was like someone threw a switch and my body just crapped out. The last thing I remember was veering off to the left and ending up on the curb, thinking to myself, "Wow, that's not right," then jumping back down on the road only to end up back over to the left on the curb a couple steps later. Then next thing I remember is sitting on the grass on the right side of the road (I have no idea how I got  all the way over to that side) being handed a bottle of water, insta-puking said water upon trying to drink and thinking, "Where the fuck am I?"

<The next couple paragraphs may or may not have happened as written, the memory is fuzzy at best>

After a couple minutes sitting there things started to slowly come back to me. Where am I... oh yeah, Vegas... what am I doing here... ummm, some sort of race... oh yeah, 70.3 Worlds... fuck, I think I was winning my age group and now I'm not even going to finish. All the while I was trying to drink but nothing at all was staying down.

Eventually I was loaded into a golf cart to head back to the med tent. I have no idea how long that ride actually took, but it felt like hours. My condition steadily worsened the whole ride and by the end of it I couldn't feel my legs, was having trouble breathing and was thoroughly convinced I was going to die. I very distinctly remember the only coherent thing going through my mind at the time was the repeating thought, "Don't close your eyes... don't close your eyes." I also remember absolutely screaming at the driver trying to get him to go faster. Race director Frank Lowery called me on Wednesday to see how I was doing. It turns out he was the guy driving the cart. Frank, if by some one in a million shot you stumble upon this blog, thank you again. I can't possibly apologize enough for whatever I may have yelled at you while you were driving.

Upon reaching the med tent I was hoisted out of the cart, plopped down onto a cot and had an IV jammed into my arm. After a couple minutes a girl came by with a name tag that identified her as a nursing student, which, ridiculous as it sounds was a huge relief to me. I figured if they're unleashing the students on me I must not be actually dying.

An IV bag and a few glasses of Coke later I again had full use of my arms and legs, but my head still felt pretty fuzzy. Several people asked me for my race number and I couldn't remember it to save my life. It also took me a few moments to remember my age when asked. This set off a whole new round of terror in my head as I was now convinced I was permanently brain damaged and doomed to spend the rest of my life as an incoherent moron who can't even remember his age.

Over the next hour or so I laid there in the med tent trying convince myself I wasn't brain damaged by attempting to remember random facts like family and friends' phone numbers and birthdays. I also ran through the multiplication tables and some basic arithmetic in my head. Luckily it all came back relatively quickly and my fear of knocking a few points off my already suspect IQ was gradually replaced with anger at not finishing the damn race.

Eventually a doctor came by and told me I wasn't coming around fast enough and he was recommending I go to the ER. I put up a pretty feeble argument against it, but I was obviously not quite all there yet and ended up relenting. So when the EMT's showed up I hopped onto the stretcher to take the roll of shame through the packed finish line area out to a waiting ambulance. 

It was only a 5 minute or so ride to the hospital and I was wheeled into the ER to await evaluation. Over the next couple of hours they poked and prodded at me in a variety of ways. First they took some blood for the lab, then they wheeled in a portable x-ray machine for a chest x-ray, then someone showed up with an ultrasound rig to look at my heart.  By now it's somewhere around 6PM and I'm actually feeling somewhat normal, so I'm confused at why they kept ordering additional tests to say the least.

While I was laying there the EMT's who brought me in stopped by a couple times to see how I was doing. I'm not sure how it even came up, but on one of their visits I somehow mentioned that my hotel was only a couple miles from the race site. The EMT then completely blew my mind by volunteering to get my bike and drop it off at the hotel. Apparently when they're not responding to a call they're allowed to do pretty much whatever they want provided they stay within their assigned area. Since both the hotel and race site were within their area using the ambulance to haul my bike was completely above board. I never got the guy's name, but whoever you are, thank you immensely. It would have been a colossal pain in the ass to try to track down my bike the next day.

Finally after several hours in the ER a doctor shows up and starts saying something about Troponin levels and T-waves. Apparently between my labs, EKG readings and ultrasound images they hadn't ruled out some sort of heart condition. Anything from congenital hypertropic cardiomyopathy to a straight up heart attack. Seriously!?! A fucking heart attack?!?!? The one place that I had never felt any pain through this whole ordeal was my chest. Wouldn't I have known if I had a heart attack? Regardless, the doctor told me I was being admitted for observation over the night and should expect further testing by a cardiologist the next morning.

After a couple more hours sitting there in the ER I was wheeled up into a room. This was a significant upgrade because I had a TV. I was getting pretty bored staring at the wall down in the ER. Now there was nothing to do but settle in for a long night and call home to Tiffany and let everyone know I was still alive.

After a night of little to no sleep Monday morning finally arrived and someone showed up to roll me down to the lab for a cardiac stress test. For those lucky enough to have never had this experience, it involves being shot full of some sort of radioactive tracer and imaged under a gamma camera, getting your heart rate elevated to ~85% of max either the old fashioned way (running on a treadmill) or via drugs, then getting another dose of radioactive juice and going back under the camera. I'm still waiting on my super powers to develop.

So after the first image they wheel me over to the testing area and hand me a consent form for the drug-induced stress test. OH HELL NO. I inform the nurse that sitting on a bed perfectly still while my heart spazzes out is not an option and it's the treadmill or nothing. She kept trying to tell me that the cardiologist (who I had still not met) had ordered the drug-induced test and did not want me to run. I dug my heels in and eventually she called the cardiologist who approved the treadmill test with zero hesitation. WTF?!? Who the hell is actually in charge here and why can I ask one person what the hell is going on and get one answer, then a few minutes later ask someone else and get the completely opposite answer?

With the blessing of the mystery cardiologist I got wired up to yet another EKG and hit the treadmill. Holy crap it felt good to move my legs a little after being flat on my back for the better part of 24 hours. As the treadmill started at desert tortoise pace I was told the speed and incline would be kicked up a notch every three minutes until my heart rate reached 158, then I had to maintain that for a minute. I finally got there 18 minutes in, which I was told by the staff was a record. Sweet, I may have DNF'ed the world championship, but I rewrote the record for a cardiac test usually given to elderly heart patients.

After another round of images I was sent back to my room. After another several hours watching crappy daytime TV I finally came face to face with the mystery cardiologist. Dude walks into the room, shakes my hand, and tells me, "You have what we call an 'athlete's heart'. You're perfectly healthy and we're discharging you this afternoon." 

Don't get me wrong, this is much better news than being told my heart is going to explode, but at the time I was just sitting there slackjawed wondering why in the world it took a 24 hour hospital stay and many thousands of dollars worth of testing to come to this conclusion. I asked if I needed to limit my physical activity at all and he said no, I was free to do pretty much whatever I wanted. And just like that homeboy left the room and I had nothing to do but pack up my crap and figure out how I was going to get to my car, which was a solid 20 miles away out at the lake. I'm sure I looked something like this the rest of that day...

Several hours and one expensive cab ride later I had retrieved my car and made my way back to the hotel. It was still only 8PM and I briefly considered trying to rally and hit the strip, but as soon as I saw the bed the whole ordeal caught up with me and my energy-o-meter went straight down to zero.

So what's next? No idea. I feel pretty good right now all things considered and would like to race again this season to try to redeem myself from such an epic fail in Vegas, but I'm honestly a little scared to race given how everything went down. I figure I'll chill out for another week or two and then reevaluate whether or not it makes sense to try and rally for a late-October race somewhere, otherwise I'll just throw in the towel on the 2012 campaign knowing I've failed in a way in which only a select few have managed to fail, which I guess is sort of a win.