Feeling more and more like less and less

The Friday before Galena

As I’m driving out to Galena, I feel the first twinges of a headache. A migraine-esque one. I debate: should I stop somewhere and rummage around to find my migraine medicine, or should I just keep going so that I don’t get stuck in suckier and suckier traffic?

As is my way, I keep going. This could probably be termed “Mistake #1.”

I get to Galena relatively early, and think, perhaps I should go for a ride, see if I can figure out how to shift on them hills. Yeah, that might be a good idea. By now I’ve taken some Imitrex for the headache, but only half a pill because I don’t want it to make me nauseated. Yes, dear reader (s), Mistake #2.

We set off, Sálome and I, and go about a mile when my right aerobar pad goes kerpuppling to the ground, which tends to happen quite a bit. Great. I go back to get it, then set off again, zooming down hills and struggling up them, as usual. I turn off a road so that I can figure out where the heck I am exactly, and that’s when I notice........I'm not wearing my helmet. Sigh. I gingerly make my way back to the house and decide maybe I should just go rack my bike already, quit while I’m at least somewhat ahead.

Race check-in

I sportily wheel Sálome down to packet pickup, but when I get all my race stuff, this is when the real trouble starts. How, HOW could I have forgotten something so elemental, so basic, yet so potentially detrimental to one’s race?? Of course, I’m talking here about the race number for the bike. They actually expect me to put this thing on my bike somehow, and thus risk marring her shiny perfection. Quelle horror! I study the number, look at Sálome, number, bike, number, bike, until my head spins around wildly and goes flying off into the cosmos. Or close to it. At least as I gaze out upon the frigid Apple Canyon Lake, with its buoys carefully tucked around ice floes and the like, for the first time ever I think to myself - “Hey, that swim doesn’t look that long!” I know, alert the media.

After wrapping Sálome in plastic bags and carefully tucking her onto her rack, I take the number back to the house with me to study this problem, hoping I’ll come up with a solution before morning.

Later

Many spreadsheets, vector analyses, broken pencils, and calls to NASA later, my headache is raging out of control and I’m almost ready to concede defeat. It’ll have to be a game day decision, what to do about all this.

Race day

I don’t know if it’s lack of sleep or the fact that I only had one migraine pill with me (Mistake #3), but the headache is still horrendous. I make the supremely lame decision to not race today, but I throw on some sunglasses and a hat to help constrict the blood vessels on my head and go out to cheer on all the people who are better than me, because they’re racing and I’m not. I’m not quite sure how I feel about this – I’m not relieved, per se, but I also can’t figure out why I’m so hesitant to do this damn race, why I think I’ll suck so badly. According to my training records, I’m training as much this year as I was last year at this time, and last year at Galena I was all gung-ho. Now I feel like I couldn’t get up a hill if I were hitching a ride off the back of a pick-up. Maybe it’s because I feel totally out-of-shape compared to how I was last year in, say, August. But it’s not August. People who’re training as if it’s August – I think they’re stressing me out.

But no matter how you look at it, I’m still pretty lame.

And to compensate for said lameness, I’ve decided that my new recipe for success is the run-every-day/Atkins-diet plan; yes, we’re moving further and further away from common sense here, which is something I should have done long ago, since common sense never seems to get me anywhere. But, “поезд ушёл”, as they say, so this is where it’s at, right now. Besides, the House of Stupid is a familiar, almost comforting place for me to be. Home at last.


Three days later

I seem to have gained 3 pounds on my 300-calories-a-day all-protein diet.......and I think I’m developing shin splints. Super. Insert disclaimer here: don't try this at home.