ITU San Diego...NOT

My racing an ITU race and finishing on the blue carpet was just not meant to be, and I will have to check off this bucket list some either time. I think I wanted to do this race too badly, because history has proven time and time again, that when I really really get excited and want something too badly, something always go awry. I flew down to San Diego early Friday morning sans bike (it was being driven down to SD by some friends), Charisa and Jose picked me up, and we went and had some coffee/pastries. Easy peasy I thought and this trip could have not started any better. The weather was sunny and warm, and the race venue awesome. Once I saw the color of the race wristbands, my favorite blue, I became really excited to race, and I remember thinking tomorrow could not come soon enough! I don't think I've been this excited for a race in a quite some time.

Charisa and I went to lunch, and I remember seeing this awesome salad that I wanted, but I thought a big salad was just too much fiber the day before a race, and I stuck to carbs. I mention this because irony would have it that in my attempt to choose the right food, I ended up choosing the wrong food and getting food poisoning. We believe the culprit to be a side order of uncooked beets! About 7 hours later, I was faced down by the toilet puking. In total, I puked 7 times between 7-10 PM. I went to bed hoping for the best. I woke up the next day, and as I laid horizontal, I thought I actually might be able to race. But when I stood up, whoa, not so sure. I told Charisa that if I could get some calories in me, I would try and race. The Vega smoothie went down okay. The rice cracker with almond butter took me about 15 minutes to finish, but I got it down. Leaving the house, I told Charisa best to grab a puke bag just in case. I think that pretty much convinced Charisa that I should not be racing. As we we drove to the race venue, things went downhill. I finally ceded to the food poisoning, we grabbed my bike from transition and turned in my chip. BIG BUMMER!

The rest of the day was spent on the sofa drinking Ensure, and doing nothing with Charisa. By bedtime, both Charisa and I thought doing nothing was pretty damn fun, and it was a nice change from our routine. I should mention that Charisa really didn't do nothing, she ran 18 miles and then went out for a 90 minute spin earlier in the morning. But we did have fun the prior day, attending the grand opening of SKLZ headquarters, one of Charisa's new sponsors. Life gave me a lemon, and I'm happy to say, I for the most part was able to make lemonade from it.