I haven’t posted anything in a while, because, well, last week was not such a good week and the last thing I wanted to do was describe what happened as a result of the Chicago Marathon.
Just a few words on the Marathon before I move on: the race was HOT, but seriously folks get over it. There was huge amounts of water on the course and, of course, it sucks when you cant get to it fast enough, but you just have to adjust your plans - its that simple. Train again for next year and hope for better conditions. I don't want to sound like a jerk, but try running Pikes Peak in abnormally high temps. At that race you only get aid stations every 45 mins to an hour, depending on your pace. That really sucks... Still, with that said I understand that something was very different about this year's Chicago Marathon.
Anyway, this is a whole new week and I’m feeling much better.
The basic story is this: Emily, Tom and I flew back from Chicago on Monday morning; it was beautiful in DC so we went ahead with our plans to have a post marathon and Columbus Day BBQ. All was well for most of the day. I felt tired, but no more tired than I normally do after a race. I soon started to realize that two things were very strange. One, I felt HOT, my skin, my chest, everything just felt too warm – and no matter how much cold beer I had, I just wasn’t feeling much better. Two, my heart was going crazy. My normal resting heart rate is in the high 50’s, which I high for a runner like me, but nonetheless my heart was acting especially wacky.
Tuesday, although I still wasn’t feeling great, I decided to return to life as usual. Throughout the day my symptom from the previous day because worse. Only at this point I began experiencing heart burn and feeling nauseous. Throughout this whole time I felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest. The muscles around my lungs were totally worn out and, not to mention, my heart felt like it was working overtime. I decided to go to the “school” nurse and get checked out. My pulse was strong, but normal at 63 bpm at 10 am. But, my blood pressure was 108/94, a very odd “score.”
I decided to go to the doctor.
First, my doctor thought I was crazy, but then she got over that and was really cool. She was pretty sure I had not had a heart attack, but she couldn’t rule it out. One way to find out if a person has experienced a heart attack is to test their blood for an “enzyme” called CPK, which is release when muscle cells die. Unfortunately, because of all the races I’ve been doing week after week and because I am a long distance runner, my body just has high levels of CPK all the time, or so I’m told. Dean Karnazes, talks a lot about this phenomenon in his book Ultra-Marathon Man.
So the Doc decided to do an EKG, which turned out to be fine. It was crazy having all those wires attached to me. After the EKG the fun started. The doc decided I need a full bag of IV fluid, but after I sucked that in super fast they decided I needed another. The second one went in faster than the first, they seriously contemplated shoving another bag in me, but I had enough and was about to float away so I turned it down.
After the doctor’s visit I started feeling normal again, I was just really tired. So I slept, a lot. And now I’m as good as new and ready for Marine Corps Marathon in two weeks…
Oh yah and Frank Shorter wrote a good article in the New York Times about the Chicago Marathon.
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