I am a firm believer that life sends me messages, so why I keep deleting them without even giving them a cursory glance is beyond me.

 

Take last week for example. The life messages were coming in fast and furious and my internal mail box that is labelled  ‘Warning’ was filling up at a rapid rate. Yet I was ignoring them, knowing all the time that heed should be taken and I should be crawling under my bed for maximal protection.

 

On Tuesday evening the reality came home to roost when life’s postman gave me a whack on the back of the head to wake me up.

 

On the way to the group Tuesday night track training session, I wasn’t feeling too fantastic with an overpowering urge to stop the car and just sleep. I ignored the message reasoning that as I had been up since 4:30am I was just tired.

 

The training session consisted of a 20 minute warm up run then running 17 x 400 meter laps, with the first 200 at a sprint and the second 200 meters slowly  recovering with no breaks in between. It was to be interesting.

 

(Sensitive readers should look away)

 

After lap 10 I got the message that I needed to pee. I deleted it.

After lap 12 I REALLY needed to pee. Again I ignored the signals.

Lap 15 concluded with me in ever increasing pain and an overpowering desire to head behind the nearest tree. I continued running instead.

The last lap ended with me screaming into the undergrowth for relief. But now I needed to vomit as well which I did in no uncertain manner and continued to do so on the way home. (stopping the car first obviously)

 

Tuesday night and Wednesday passed in a blur of sickness. I have never felt so ill in my life. I was off work on Wednesday and Thursday and then on Thursday night my wife also got sick with the same malady. This neatly cut off my supply of sympathy and nursing. I was in hell. (So was she, but lets be honest about this, you read this column to find out about me) Come Friday I was feeling a bit better so I headed off to work to see how the body held up.

 

Any normal person would have taken an extra day or two to recover after what I had just been through before venturing back into their fitness regime, but the Western Province Triathlon champs were on Saturday. I was entered and had been looking forward to the event for a Month already so I had a hard question to answer. Was I really going to stay at home and not compete? Of course not.

 

I reasoned with myself that I would just take it easy and go for a finish no matter how slow. I wasn’t reading the messages you see.

 

The swim was great. Halfway in 15 minutes, and out of the water in exactly 30 minutes, consistency at it’s best. The short run to the bike was fine and transition one went off with no drama and no sense of urgency in keeping with the aim of just going for a finish.

 

To set the rest of the scene, I need to let you know that I have managed to ride 18 Months and almost 6000 kilometres on my road bikes without having a puncture. Frankly I was getting worried about this because the closer IronMan is getting the more the law of averages was looking at correcting the puncture balance in Port Elizabeth in April.

 

Not to worry, the South African National Glass breaking championships appear to have been held last week on the very same route to that shared by Saturdays triathlon. 22km and 3 punctures later I was stranded on the side of the road with no tubes, no CO2 bombs and just as little enthusiasm left. I was out of the event and looking for a lift back to the finish.

 

Luckily on my walk back I met up with a young rider from Wellington who was competing in her first Triathlon and was also stuck after numerous flat wheels. She was able to use the phone at a local Winery to call her mother to come and rescue us.

 

This young lady whose name escapes me, (I think it is Lizandre or something similar) was actually the first lady out of the water after the swim and had her first puncture as she left the swim bike transition. I was happy that despite all her problems at her fist Tri event she was still bubbling with enthusiasm for the sport.

 

Perhaps, like me, she needs to learn to listen to life’s e-mails.