Blood on the Tracks

Today we were all about the 15K.  Drank loads of water last night and even though we were tempted to imbibe a bit more than that, we took the high road and resisted all temptations.

Once at the park this morning, there was  quiet confidence exuding from the runners as we all knew what lay ahead.  Lots of long stares down the pavement with runners visualizing the course and the three laps that would make up the 15K.

The start was delayed as one of the runners actually had a seizure.  I felt really bad for this person as they ended up in the cold muddy ditch and they could not move him until it had passed.  Due to this unfortunate incident, the start was delayed by 10 minutes as the medical team sorted everything out.   Tri-Girl and I took advantage of the delay and went for a lap around the formal gardens.

Once we returned, I took time to stretch and to blow my nose.  Without any kleenex, I did what we all affectionately call a "Farmer" and plugged my nostril and blew fairly aggressively, thus clearing the opposite side.  This is something I have don 100's of times while running or biking.  Well, today is caused a nose-bleed.  At first, I was not too concerned, as it did not seem to be much of anything.  Then they announce that there was two minutes to start.  I had not kleenex, so i went over to the First aid guy who was just wrapping up with the seizure and was able to get a bandage to try to stop the flow.  Now there is one minute to start.  I tell tri-girl that I will do my best to catch her and she is to start without me.  The gun goes off and I am left all alone at the start.

I decide that I am going to run this thing, so I walk over the start mat and take a knee in the grass.  I get a Kleenex forma a fantastic volunteer and, for the lack of a better word, fashion it into a tampon and shove it up my nose like I used to do in soccer.  It seemed to do the trick, and I started the race about 2 minutes behind everyone.

I was fine until the last lap.  I mean I was chocking on blood for a bit and spit a ton of it out, but it did settle down by the 5K mark.  But, around the 8K mark, I had felt the blood start to ooze out of the "plug" and wiped my nose to see if I was right.  Well I was not thinking and wiped my hand on my jersey..... my white jersey.   So now I have blood dripping down my face and it is on my shirt, too.

I was feeling okay with this and then I passed tri-girl going the other way and she let out and "ooh" that made me think it was a fair bit worse than I could see.  It was around that point that I started to get light headed.  I ran past a volunteer and asked if they had a radio.  They did and I asked them to radio to the First Aid volunteer to meet me at the finish line in about 8 minutes.

I crossed the line and went right to the First Aid truck.  As I ran, I knew I was elevating my blood pressure and as a result causing the blood to pump a bit more aggressively.  Once my HR had come back down, everything was fine and I was able to get it under control in about 15 minutes or so.

I am grateful for the volunteers for their help, as I would have never been able to get it under control on my own.

The race its self was actually not that bad until I got light headed.  You can actually see  my pace die off at the 1:03 mark.....  then I pushed myself to finish better, which (in hind sight) probably was not very smart.