I didn't know what giardia was until last Wednesday. The nice folks at the Boulder Med Center kindly informed me of the parasite that was hanging around and totally wrecking my system every 2-3 days.

I suppose that most onlookers would have encouraged me to go to the doctor as soon as I felt ill the second time (as opposed to the fourth). The problem was that I was having good training sessions once I recovered from every shalacking. That made me question actually having an illness (much like folks questioning if they are really overtrained). Given the diversity of GI problems in the population I thought that perhaps mine came from anxiety, dehydration, nerves; whatever.

Well all those justifications were clearly incorrect and I'm currently finishing off a prescription of meds to kill the sucker. I cannot guarantee the source, but I would imagine I received giardia from open water swim training in the Boulder Reservoir as I got sick for the first time shortly after swimming there.

Kind of amazing to think that I trained_and_raced with a parasite in me. No wonder everyone kept commently that I was thinning out. No nutrients were getting to me!

My training has been a bit up and down this week. I imagine that the meds, the illness, and the training-I-did-while-ill has buried me a bit.

7.5 weeks to IMC and I feel relatively confident about my fitness. Even with these setbacks it has been easy to make adjustments since I'm not spreading myself thin with races. That allows more time for patient progression.

no thoughts today, just updates.

cheers,

justin