Week 10 Wrap-up (Camp Ironman continues…)

We woke up Monday to rain and a pretty dismal forecast, so we had a slight change in plans—instead of the long bike we were going to do, we decided to do a long trail ride on our mountain bikes on Tuesday instead, so we all headed back home from LaPorte. It was actually pretty nice having Monday off, especially since I was anticipating having another punishing ride following a pretty intense weekend—and I think I beat most of the traffic headed back into Chicagoland, which is always a bonus.

After an awesome night’s sleep, I headed to Sue and Michele’s house in Mundelein early on July 4 so we could head over to the start of the Mundelein 5K run. We met up with Theresa and her daughter Emily, who were also both running the race. True to form (at least for me), I took off way too fast and ended up fading midway through the run, but I still turned in another 5K PR with a 21:58 time (that’d be 7:05/mile if you’re keeping track). I was thrilled with my time—and I picked up some more hardware by coming in third in my age group. Michele placed, too—good day for the Ironman crew. After the race, Sue, Michele, and I took off on our mountain bikes and headed toward the Des Plaines River Trail for our long bike. Unfortunately, about a mile after we got on the North Shore Trail, Sue had a flat tire—always unfortunate, but made even more so in this case by the fact that she couldn’t get her bike bag open. The good news, though, is that Michele had a spare tube and I had levers and CO2 cartridges—and once we had that fixed, we kept plugging away. It was a blast riding the trails—I love riding the roads, but it was a great change of pace to hit the trails instead. We even saw two spotted fawns and two incredibly striking sand hill cranes—other than the fact that my left hand sort of went numb due to the completely different hand position on my mountain bike, it was an awesome and fun day. I wound down the holiday at Theresa’s with an all-American picnic with her and her family, then bailed before the fireworks to go home and crash.

Because we had a busy weekend of cycling planned, Michele and I pounded out our long run (13 miles) before work on Thursday—in theory, it sounded great, but I was dragging like a champ by my mid-morning meetings. Thankfully, there is a Caribou Coffee about a block north of my building—and God bless the concept of the extra shot of espresso!! After some good open-water swimming in Diamond Lake both Thursday and Friday nights, I was ready for a weekend of hitting the open road.

Saturday morning, Erin, Sue, Michele and I met up at Fireman’s Park in Verona for the first of two days of cycling and two loops of the IM course. Unfortunately, it was hot and windy—found out after the fact that the winds were ~16-18 mph in Mt. Horeb—which made the ride that much rougher. Plus, the third hill on the back half of the loop was being resurfaced and was basically pea gravel—lots of fun to combine a crappy road surface with a tough hill. Other than the wind and the heat, I also had a fun situation that became very apparent at about mile 12 of the first loop. At some point over the previous weekend, I got an insect bite on my left calf—not a mosquito bite, but something else. It had itched a little throughout the week and had itched again on the way up to Verona (and when things itch, I typically scratch them), but I didn’t think too much of it at any point. However, the area around my bite starting hurting a little on the way to Mt. Horeb on the first loop, and when I looked down, I realized to my horror that the area around the bite had basically turned bright red and swollen. Not exactly a warm, soothing feeling for me as I had visions of flesh-eating bacteria and brown recluse spiders racing through my mind for the rest of the ride. Plus, when I actually made it back to Verona after the second loop and headed out on my brick run, I realized that my leg hurt with every step—not bad enough for me to stop running, but enough to scare me.

Sue and Michele graciously stopped by the Verona Walgreens with me for some over-the-counter relief, but at that point, I was ready to go for medical attention. Of course, we HAD to stop by Great Dane in Madison for food and drink first—I still have my priorities, after all, and I was really hungry—but I called Theresa on the drive to Madison for some online assistance in finding an urgent care center near me. As it turns out, all of the urgent care centers near my house close at 6 pm—bummer for the not-so-critcally ill or wounded in DuPage County, which sadly included me at that point in time. But, thankfully, the urgent care facility near Theresa was open until 10 pm, and she has actually taken her children there before, so I figured I’d head back to Mundelein for a fun-filled Saturday evening at the doctor’s. Let’s be clear—I HATE going to the doctor and avoid it like the plague, so it was actually a pretty big deal for me to go. Thankfully, Theresa offered to go with me (helpful also as she actually knew where it was located)—nothing like being a 32-year-old woman who has to drag her friend along for moral support. As it turns out, I was diagnosed with lower leg cellulitis and came away with a tetanus shot, a prescription for antibiotics, and the outline of the swollen area around my bite marked up with a Sharpie, but at least the doctor didn’t freak out and give me any bad news, and he cleared me to bike the next day, too. And, one very cool thing came out of the visit—when the nurse took my pulse, she made the comment that I must be an athlete…not something I’m used to hearing, but pretty cool nonetheless.

Sunday morning, I trekked back up to Wisconsin (Burlington this time) to meet up with Sue and Michele and do another ride, aptly named the Heatstroke 100 as it was still bloody hot and pretty windy. Having started my dosage of antibiotics and being short on sleep from the late night at the doctor’s, I decided to do the 74-miler instead of the century, which Sue and Michele opted for…but still had a good ride even with a reduced effort. So, after a stop at Dairy Queen for a recovery chocolate malt, the extended Camp Ironman came to a close.

Here’s the roll-up for the week…

Swim: 1:40:00 / 5000 meters
Bike: 14:00:12 / 217.27 miles
Run: 2:58:49 / 22.11 miles
Total: 18:39:01 / 242.51 miles