System breakdown

I very rarely get sick and I mean properly sick like the flu. I’m not talking about the flu that most people commonly get where you have a snotty nose or maybe a sore throat, I’m talking about the flu where you have a high temperature (>380C), your whole body aces, you feel cold but you sweating like a pig and you too week to even sit up in bed. I’m one of those people that only missed two days out of 12 years of my school career for being sick and have never missed a day of work for being sick either.

There is a very good reason why I have such a strong immune system. My father is a Pediatrician working in a South African government hospital and as he is exposed to so many viruses and sicknesses on a daily basis his body naturally builds up antibodies against all these sicknesses. As he comes into contact with the rest of the family back home it is all passed on to us in a similar manner. Sounds a bit far fetch maybe, but trust me that’s the way it works.

This scenario has been very different for me as I felt like I was in one of those medical drama series with doctors trying to discover what is wrong with me. Due to my father being a specialist in the medical field for so many years I’m very fortunate to get to see so many different specialist doctors to help me out.

After getting married and while on honeymoon I started coughing quite a lot and had a very tight chest. As usual I thought I’d just picked up a bit of a cough, I felt fine so all was good. A few days later in the week I seemed to be coughing more and my chest felt even tighter. I was beginning to become a little concerned about this only because I was scheduled to race the Double Century (a 202km team road cycling race ) on the coming Saturday and not because of my actual condition. It would take a lot for me to pull out of the race and let the rest of the team down. Other than the coughing and tight chest, which is obviously not ideal to have for a race, I didn’t feel sick so I believed I was good to go. Well I can now honestly say from a personal perspective the seriousness of racing when you are not 100% healthy!

The Sunday evening after Saturday’s race my coughing had progressed to an uncontrollable manner! I phone my father and he said I need to go on antibiotics immediately (pharmacy visit number 1). Relief I thought as that would fix me up in just a few days… little did I know…

Monday evening the fever hit me. My body was acing and my temperature rose above 380C. I felt exhausted as I wasn’t getting much sleep during the nights because of the persistent coughing. Now I was taking Panardo to help fight the fever.

Tuesday was no different as I was still feeling sick and coughing endlessly with a phenomenally tight chest. However, that afternoon I started to notice something very strange. My legs had swelled up in a big way, turned very red and were incredibly itchy! All my scares from my cycling and mountain biking expeditions had puffed up as well. I showed my father and he told me to stop the antibiotics immediately as I was having an allergic reaction to them! Now I was thinking how am I going to get better? I’ve never been allergic to anything in my life before so I couldn’t understand where this all of a sudden came from? So I had to resort to an antihistamine for the allergic reaction (pharmacy visit number 2).

Wednesday things were looking a little better on the allergic reaction side as the swelling in my legs decreased a bit and the itchiness was gone but they were still as red as a Ferrari. I still felt rather sick and nothing was changing in the department of my chest and uncontrollable coughing.

Thursday the swelling in my legs was gone but they were still Ferrari red. I was feeling better but there was still no change in my coughing and tight chest. I have never felt my chest like this before where every breath is a struggle. By this time now my ribs are hurting so much from all the coughing and my stomach muscles are stiff as well. Now my farther thinks its time for me to get my chest X-rayed to try figure out what’s going on. So I’m off for a hospital visit. I get my chest X-rayed accompanied with a complete examination by a Physician. “You got Pneumonia and you going to have to take it easy for a few weeks” is not what an athlete wants to hear! Back to the pharmacy for visit number 3 and I need to report back to the doctor regarding my condition on Saturday.

All is quite the same on Friday. Saturday comes and I’m feeling better but I’m still struggling with my chest. So the doctor prescribes me something else and back to the pharmacy I went for visit number 4!

By Sunday things are beginning to get a little better. So now it’s just a matter of finishing the course of medications and taking it real easy for a little while to recover and ensure I don’t have a relapse.

Basically to summarize, I pick up pneumonia while on honeymoon. I didn’t know this as I simply had a tight chest and a cough. I was feeling ok, so I raced the Double Century. This intensified the pneumonia and made me to get very ill and feverish. I was on antibiotics, which I got an allergic reaction to and therefore had to stop those. I then got my chest X-rayed and examined by a Physician to diagnose me with pneumonia. Now I have to take it easy in December to recover.

In all of this at least the Physician pointed out from my chest X-ray that I have an athletes shaped heart and huge lungs!

Double Century 2010

Photo: Torque Pics (www.torquepics.co.za)

This year would be my second Double Century (DC). Last year was my first and I raced it with the Club100 Elite team where we came forth by 45sec! It was a little disappointing to just miss out on the podium. This year I got the opportunity to race it with the Anderson Transport team. This was very exciting but at the same time a little daunting as Anderson Transport are the defending champions! I’m always up for a challenge and this year I feel much better prepared for the DC based on the endurance mountain bike racing I’ve been doing over this year compared to last year.

The only problem was that I would have just finished a relatively long season of racing and just gotten married. Therefore the last two weeks leading up to the DC have been rather easy weeks for me. However, I was not worried as I believed I would still have a good base fitness in me and all it would mean is that I will be nicely rested for the race.

With these thoughts in mind I was good to go. But, there was one other worry in the back of my mind. I seemed to pick up a chest infection during the week prior to race day while on honeymoon. I felt physically fine but my chest was rather tight and I just could not stop coughing! (more on this…) But pulling out of the race with only a few days to go to the start was not an option for me as I didn’t want to miss out on this opportunity and especially let the rest of the team down!

Traditionally with the DC there are just over 200 teams consisting of 12 riders in each. You have to have six riders from your team finishing together with the time of your 6th rider counting as your team’s time for the overall positions. It is a staggered start with each team starting individually apart from the other teams, similar to a time trail. Being the defending champions, we were the last team to start.

We were doing fine with an average speed for the first 20km of 42.1km/hr. After the first climb and a minor mechanical issue that needed to be fixed causing us to loose a couple of minutes, we still had our full team of 12 riders together. After the next big climb and leading into Montagu at about 100km we had lost one or two riders. I was still feeling fine at this stage, but from after the 100km mark things started to go a little pear shaped. It was tough going along the road between Montagu and Ashton as the road is very narrow and congested with riders and team support vehicles. We mostly had to ride on the other side of the white line into oncoming traffic, which weren’t all that considerate! This made for some dangerous encounters and a few very close calls! After this I could feel I was starting to get tied. I kept pushing on until my legs gave in at Bonnivalle, 163km with 40km to go to the finish. I dropped off the back of our team and tried desperately to hang on but I had nothing left in me. I was blown and that meant that there were only 7 riders still together in our team. One other rider dropped off after me before they got to the finish resulting in only 6 riders finishing together and therefore just making it with enough riders to the finish and take third place overall.

I continued to make my way slowly to the finish with a lot of difficulties, but I wanted to complete the race. I ended up crossing the finish line about 20min after our team of 6 riders. We were obviously not all that happy with our performance as being the defending champions and only coming 3rd, but that’s the way it goes, at least we were still on the podium and there is always next year to fight back!

Wines2Whales

It’s been a while since the race and this post is long overdue I know, but I always say better late than never! The week after this race was one that led to one of the most important and exciting days of my life, the day I got married to the most beautiful girl in the world! So my mind was very busy on other things, and then after that was a special week away on honeymoon.

So back to the Wines 2 Whales 3-day mountain bike stage race…
I was coming out of a period of serious recovery since the DCM Cape Pioneer Trek and I believed I was feeling ok by now and ready for the race. It has, however, been quite a long season of racing for me and I could definitely feel that a bit of time off the bike was in need.

None the less this was a race I had really been looking forward to, being a nice 3-day stage race in my back yard. This time I paired up with Stu, my other team mate from Blend Properties.

Day 1: 68km Lourensford – Grabouw, 1800m climbing

Time: 3h39m
Position: 4th
Heart rate (ave/max): 158/183

Starting in Lourensford on the Somerset West side of the Hottentots Holland Mountains and finishing in Grabouw on the other side of the mountains obviously meant that we had to get over there somehow. Doing this off-road forced us to portage up the old ox wagon trail above Sir Lowry’s Pass. This is a short but incredibly steep stretch straight up and over the mountain, which consists of big rocks and bushes! It is incredibly challenging simply trying to walk up there, let alone with your bike, which felt like it weighed 30kg! How the voortrekkers took their ox wagons and oxen over there I can’t imagine! It is amazing to see that there are still grooves in the rocks from where the wheels of the wagons carved there way under the loads they carried.

I knew this was going to be a very technically challenging day through the mountains above Somerset West and into Grabouw! The pouring rain didn’t do anything to help in this regard either! After a solid start and settling down after the first climb out of Lourensford we were together with a small front group consisting of 3 teams (Contego Elites, Mr Price GT and ourselves Blend Properties). We were feeling good and riding nicely until Stu’s chain broke at 38km. we lost about 3min trying to fix it as the muddy conditions made this rather difficult. We lost one position in the process as a team came past us while we were stopped. We worked quite hard after this to make up time, however, this was difficult to do over the short distance remaining in the stage and I started to struggle towards the end.

Day 2: 77km Grabouw – Grabouw, 1700m climbing

Time: 3h35m
Position: 5th
Heart rate (ave/max): 148/170

Today I felt flat from the start and was dropped by a larger than yesterdays front group from the gun! I had to work really hard to catch back on as Stu was up there. I had an upset stomach after yesterday’s stage and between then and this morning I dropped a kilogram from my starting weight, which is not good during a stage race as that is valuable energy reserves lost. This was probably the reason for me feeling so flat from the start. I managed to come right a little in the middle of the stage but could still not get my heart rate up to where it should have been (as my average HR for the stage was only 148!). At this point the front bunch had split up quite a lot and we were leading. But the worst was still to come as I blew so badly at about 55km with 22km still to go! I was finished and had nothing left in me. Stu had to drag me the whole way back to the finish. It was not a pleasant time!

Day 3: 84km Grabouw – Onrus, 1500m climbing

Time: 3h48m
Position: 6th
Heart rate (ave/max): 141/173

Today was a less technical day with more descending than climbing as we headed from the mountains to the coast. However, there was a southeaster wind to contend with! From the start I could feel a huge difference compared to yesterday as we went up the same small climb out of Grabouw in the beginning. Instead of being dropped and hanging on for dear life from the front group, I was leading the bunch and comfortably setting the pace up front. I had obviously regained that energy I had lost from my stomach issues over the previous two days.

Stu and I were going strong with a slightly bigger front bunch than the previous two days due to lesser climbing to split everyone up. We were out of contention for the top spot overall but I was amped to finish with a stage win and end up on the podium overall. However, as luck would have it on the rocky descent from the Houwhoek Inn down into the Bot River Valley at 30km, I punctured. This was very unfortunate as I was using Kendar Small Block 8 tyres, which I swear were developed during World War 2 with the intention to ride over landmines! After fixing the tyre with a plug and remounting our saddles we had lost about 4min. We rode hard to make up the lost time. I had my favorite girl supporting and doing her usual superb job of giving us time splits on the leaders. We were making up time and I was certain we could catch them back up as there was still a fair distance to the finish line. However, with about 40km still to go Stu blew! This was probably due to him dragging me for the past two days as well as just having an off day. Our pursuit on the leaders and hopes for a stage win came to an end at this point and it was a long struggle to the finish. This time the tables had turned and now it was my turn to drag Stu to the finish.

In the end it was a very technically demanding race in one of the best areas for mountain biking in the country. It seemed like Stu and I just couldn’t get it together over the 3 days. We didn’t do as well as we would have liked by coming 6th overall but this wasn’t too bad based on the way things turned out for us over the 3 days.

Now it was time to get married!!!