I got pulled from the race after about 78km. I didn’t want to stop, but the nurses don’t like it when you throw up in front of them.
I forgot how hard a race it was, and the weather was hot and humid all day. The coulees focused the heat and there are so many of them to go up and down. I think I may have pushed myself too much for the first loop. It didn’t seem to get cooler at night. By the time I started my second loop, my legs were tired. Going up hills was painful and I needed a lot of rests. I’m usually great on hills. I suspect it was all because I didn’t do enough hill training, but I was sick and had not been getting enough sleep lately.
Friends commented that I was getting paler for the last few legs. And at the Pavan station, I was feeling queasy. I had assumed eating would help me have enough energy for the rest of the race. Maybe I ate too fast? In any case, I sat down and tried to recover again. I was starting to get less pale, and I felt a lot better after I was sick.
But I was there for an hour before I let myself be pulled. By that time I was probably in no shape to keep running. And the next leg was a hilly 15km, and not the best place to be incapacitated in the middle of the night.
It felt great to be pulled. I got to go to stop running and go to bed.
The worst part is that this morning, when I would have still been running, it was great weather. It was nice and cool. I would have been great today.