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Location: Heber City, UT
The past week has been interesting. Things were going pretty well until around noon Tuesday. I had just finished up my usual 15-km biathlon time trial when suddenly my body felt like it'd been hit by a semitrailer.
I awoke that morning with a slight sore throat, so slight that, if I weren't an athlete, it would have otherwise gone unnoticed. The time trial went really well...
I have done this particular time trial every time (usually I'm here for four weeks) that I've been in Utah since June 2005. So I have a lot of records going back three years now. I use the same course, the same wheels (which I save just for time trials), and try to get out around the same time of day, or at least when the temperature is about the same. The loop here reacts pretty substantially to the strong UV radiation here, below latitude 40 N. If it is sunny, the loop will be markedly slower by 10 AM.
...Thankfully, on Tuesday, it was overcast, so even though I arrived at 11:30 AM, the asphalt wasn't turning into tar. I shaved one minute off of my overall time from last August. That came because I was able to improve my 3-km lap time by about 15 seconds. I lost a bit of time in the range due to two accidental round ejections and a watering hose across the trail. So I'm pretty happy, especially since I had good results four weeks ago in Vermont before I came here. It seems that, despite having less focus on biathlon, I've been able to at the very least maintain my fitness level. Odd.
Right after the time trial, my body just started to ache. Everything ached. My fingers. My shoulders. My head. I had enough water. I didn't overexert myself that much. Sometimes the sun can cause headaches, but that morning it was overcast and quite comfortable.
The sore throat progressed throughout the day, as did my feelings of lethargy and achiness. I barely slept that night because every part of me ached and I couldn't get comfortable on any side in bed. The next day, I couldn't even concentrate on the simplest of things. I reached for my toothbrush when I was about to shave. I decided to cancel training for the day. But I couldn't really do much else. My brain just couldn't do anything. Then I took ibuprofen and the world cleared up. Amazing, I had thought of ibuprofen as being sort of a placebo. It worked magically and even my throat cleared up... for six hours, until it wore off, and I was reminded that it was holding pain and inflammation at bay, so long as it was in my system.
I went out to dinner and then to a friend's wedding reception in Salt Lake, but could only stay at the latter engagement for a few minutes. The prospect of dancing, or even watching people dance, just didn't jibe well with my current state at the time.
I ended up taking a lot of ibuprofen (within reason) and the next two days off from training. Ended up getting a lot of schoolwork done. I've started two courses for fun -- Calculus and Introduction to Accounting. Well, actually, they're to bolster my resume/transcript since I never had either course in college.
This weekend, I went camping with a friend in the Uintas. I hadn't camped for quite some time. It was awesome to leave my to do list at home (or, at least in the car) and have no cell phone reception for nearly 24 hours. Not much luck with the fishing, as some gnarly thunderstorms rolled in this afternoon and broke up that party.
I'm here until Tuesday, then fly to Vermont for a few weeks of training there, plus some visits to graduate schools and a one-week military biathlon competition trip to Chile. I'll be back out West for good in late September after stopping in Minnesota and Colorado for a few days.
When I flew here from Vermont four weeks ago, I was realizing how I was really looking forward to no longer living the life of nomadic athlete. I'm having those feelings again. As much as I love living in two very different places, having that change of scenery every 28 days, it's not something that works all that well with relationships. But I'm not deluding myself completely. I know that even if I'm not an athlete in the future, whatever work I create for myself will probably mean more of the same -- non-stop travel in the name of ambition. At least, hopefully, I'll have a home address for once. But that's still several months away...
I'm looking forward to Vermont because it WILL be late summer and early fall, the best time of year to live and visit the state. Gone are the humidity and many of the bugs; in come frosty mornings and changing colors. Fall is my favorite season.
That's it from Utah.
- Brian
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