before the saga we must have foreshadowing...

I have read a number of race reports and keep reading about people setting alarms and eating at 3am the morning of race day or some crazy hour and then GOING BACK TO SLEEP.  Clearly, these are young punks.  Even if I had been able to keep food down before the race there is no way I'd purposely wake myself up from successful sleep just to eat.  Going back to sleep after waking is a perk enjoyed by the young and no longer in my bag of tricks.  I had also picked the wrong week to stop my asthma long-term meds as I'm still in denial I actually have asthma and decided the way to stop the heart palpitations was to stop the meds.  Hell was going to have to freeze over before I stopped drinking coffee.  That worked somewhat but what really helped was increasing my water intake.  D'oh!  After a couple of attacks that really got the attention of my old folks later, I figured I was risking a heart attack in my dad and went back on the meds.  So lesson 1 for next year, Don't Stop the Asthma meds the week before Ironman.  Who knew?  Really, they should put this in a book or something.

The entire extended family, my sister and her family, my parents and our entire family of 6 all mysteriously came down with either a very quick and violent GI bug or a lingering and nonviolent bug the week before the race.  We were going crazy trying to figure out what food could have felled all 3 families and could not figure out what it could have been.  It never occurred to us that it could be a GI bug as we were all hit so quickly and en mass (with only 1 family being local and the other 2 arriving in Mexico at different points in time).  Just didn't seem possible to be a bug.  I was pretty sure I'd be eating by Friday or Saturday and expected whatever it was to simply get me closer to race weight without any ill effects.  How could I have gotten this old and still be so stoopid?

I started getting worried on Saturday when I still couldn't eat without severe stomach cramps and constant dizziness and nausea.  But to backtrack a bit, my sister, BIL and 2 nieces along with my octogenarian parents, AND Zach and Kristen came down to the venue.  Jesse was staying in town for the jazz festival and the girls had a birthday party Friday night, so I took Pike, the dog, Zach, Kristin and my sister's family over to Cozumel on the early afternoon Friday ferry.  The car ferry is always less rough than the passenger ferry but I was surprised how much we rolled (cue foreboding music).  We had 2 houses rented and both were very close to each other.  One was a giant mansion of 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms, 2 salas and a giant kitchen and pool and the other a modest (but lovely) 2 BR house which turned out to be much better stocked than the Big Haus.  We dropped Zach and Kristin at the Little Haus and we began to unload mountains of crap from the van into the Big Haus.

Saturday morning Zach and I headed to the swim venue as I'd always wanted to preswim the course (and it is too costly to visit Chankanab as a tourist) and found the water, well, rather rough.  I was still not eating and beginning to get worried about the entire event.  As I had not swum (or biked or run) since the previous Monday due to sickness, I figured I had to get it and see if my arms still worked.  Strangely they did work and while I felt okay for the 30 minute 200 m swim (it is entirely possible that is an exaggeration but it was quite rough that day) my arms were Very Tired and I was now officially Worried.