Heartburn? Seriously? You WUSS!!!

I'm the first to admit I'm a total pansy when it comes to being in pain. Some people deal with it okay, some people get all macho and won't admit that they're hurt or injured if they're bleeding from the eyes, and some people cry when they get a papercut. I would be one of those in the third group. I don't deal well with pain and I'm not afraid to admit it. If you read Lance Armstrong's books he talks of ascending 14% grade slopes in the French Alps with freezing sleet coming down, feeling as if his calves are on fire from the steady pumping to get the bike up the damned hill. I'm not Lance, and since I'm not sponsored by US Postal, pushed along by throngs of fans from every nation, every culture on the planet, or spending 8-12 hours every day training, I tend to just pack up and go home when adversity hits. My sponsorship comes from myself, my only fans are my boyfriend, my friend and family, and my loving little kitty, and I spend maybe 8-12 hours a month training. As a recent bet with an Ironman-athlete-in-training-boyfriend demands, however, my training regimen is in for a long-overdue overhaul.

I am lazy, however, and so instead of sitting down and mapping out a schedule, I tend to train when the urge hits me. Usually, that's on the weekend, while my boyfriend is putting in his four hour-long bike rides and three hour-long runs and hour-and-a-half-long swims...I'll laze around for awhile and then get off my butt, haul out the cruiser, and go for a ride or toss on my sneakers and jog for a bit. This past weekend I decided I'd ride for an hour (while Gregory was out with the Boulder tri club for four). We were going to do a post-ride half hour run at the reservoir so it seemed like a good way to warm up...and I'd meet him out at the res afterwards. I was feeling good, so I threw on some shorts and a tee shirt and hit the road. It was a beautifully mild spring day, one of those days when you thank your lucky stars that you live in Boulder, Colorado, home to more sunny days than the two Sunshine States. It was, in other words, an absolutely perfect day to ride. Unless, of course, you factor in the climate in my stomach.

I'd gotten going and was keeping a pretty good 16-20mph pace, keeping the bike in her upper gears, working my quads, and was about a mile from my house when I felt a mild achy, burning sensation in my chest. I figured I'd ride it out and kept going. Another couple of miles later, however, I was having trouble maintaining my posture on the bike. My chest felt like there was a vat of battery acid erupting inside of it. For a few minutes I seriously debated whether or not I was a qualifying candidate for cardiac arrest (blood pressure: good, ex-smoker: bad, weight: pretty good, stress level: bad, especially right now, etc.) and then I realized I was just suffering severe heartburn. But man, it was the heartburn that they make those "purple pill" commercials about. I kept trying to ride, wanting to get in at least a solid hour, but alas, the pain won out in the end. I ended up stopping at a gas station for some Pepto-Bismol, which, unfortunately, didn't work as quickly as it's commercials would have you think, and a Gatorade which, once I swigged enough of it to get the chalky taste out of my mouth, posed a new problem: what the hell do I do with this Gatorade? I have your fairly standard-looking cruiser: fat tires, heavy frame, chain guard, fenders...and no cages for a water bottle. Fortunately, I also have a battery attached to it for a high-tech lamp rig I've got for night riding, and as it happened I'd left it on when I went for the ride. It's attached with a lengthy Velcro strap, and so I spent my ride home, curled over the handlebars in agony, with a Gatorade bottle/battery jerry-rigged to the bike's crossbar, sharing the metal pipe with the battery pack nestled close beside it.

To make matters worse, my situation hardly improved at home. I ended up e-mailing Gregory, knowing he'd pick it up on his cell, to let him know I wouldn't be at the res. I curled into a fetal position and waited for the burning to eat me alive. It really was that bad. Gregory was extremely sweet about it and commiserated kindly, but I kicked myself for the rest of the day.

Now as I look outside at the heavy, grey clouds dropping rain from fine mists to bursts of hail all over Boulder, my spirits are as damp as the streets. Mt stomach, however, is just dandy, and my new kicks are beckoning from the door. It sucks to do anything in the rain, but I figure this'll make up for wussing out over the weekend.