38.1

38.1! That was my temperature one and a half hours after today’s workout. I’m currently not in my happy place! Let me tell you the story.

The day started well enough, with not a breath of wind and not a cloud in the sky. It was shaping up to be a scorcher! However due to some organisational issues and my Sunday obligations (which me and Eve were typically late for) it wasn’t until just before 9.30am that I ended up getting away. Given the rapidly rising temperature I decided to ditch the 2k swim as that would have meant I would have been riding and more importantly running, well into the early afternoon – the hottest part of the day.

The ride went well enough. The route that I rode heads up Albany Hill after just 2k’s of riding, so its straight into it (according to the road sign the road grade gets as high as 10%, I’d always thought it was a little lower). The climb itself is a 3k grind with no let up until you get to the top. As I started the climb I spied a roadie up ahead. He was far enough away that it was going to be hard to catch him, but I’m the kind of guy who just loves to chase stuff down and I caught him just as we were cresting the hill.

Like every good roadie he jumped on my wheel and stuck like glue for the next half an hour (one of the longest “turns” I’ve every taken). To be fair he did come up and ask if it was ok if he stayed on the wheel for a while, and it was nice having someone right behind to keep me honest and make sure I kept the pace up (which I did). After hammering away for half an hour he peeled off and I was on my own.

The rest of the ride was pretty uneventful. I had a good tail wind for a while (for a change) and saw Cameron Brown out with a couple of train hacks heading in the opposite direction to me. All the top guys seem to train out my way – must be because it’s awesome!

As I cruised along my bike computer was telling me that the temperature was creeping up and was peaking at 35 degrees in places (average seemed to be around 30 degrees towards the end of the ride). In the end the ride was knocked off in 2 hrs 59 minutes (but it was only 85 k’s and not 90).

It was then onto the run. This is where I really started running into problems. I’d decided to do a course which loops around my house just in case my thigh played up. That way I could pull the pin and not wreck myself. As it turned out I ended up cutting things short for another reason. By 13k’s I was starting to struggle, and by 15k’s my vision was narrowing … so time to get home. When I got home was the only one there (the family was out somewhere) so I flopped onto the couch and shortly after that started shaking – not a good thing.

I felt freezing cold but my skin was scorching hot. So I peeled myself up off the couch, got some protein down me and headed to the shower to try and slowly cool myself down (the plan was to start the shower warm and slowly get it to cold, I seem to recall that going straight to cold is a good way to bring on shock). This went well to start with until the family came home and the kids were thrown into the bath, suddenly my shower went from warm to freezing cold – again, not good.

By the time I got myself out of the shower I was shaking with my teeth chattering and quickly curled up under a blanket.

A bit later my lovely wife thought it might be a good idea to take my temp which at that point was 38.1 degrees Celsius. Far to hot and I was officially not in a happy place.

Being self inflicted there’s not much sympathy for me around here (apart from my two year old girl who is taking good care of me) and as we all know blokes like nothing more than sympathy.

So what are the positive? Well the ride was good with a steady average speed over a hilly course. And I found out that I can push myself if I really need to (and hopefully I won’t). On the down side I haven’t felt much like eating, although I have forced some grub down. In saying that I lost 1kg during the days activities which actually isn’t to bad considering the conditions, and m stomach held together until right at the end of the run , so I was able to get gels and food down throughout the day (something I’ve been struggling with lately).

So what am I doing tomorrow? Hopefully lots and lots of sleeping! And rediscovering my happy place.