Heart of a Champion by Patrick Lindsay

Author:Patrick Lindsay
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2016-07-13T04:00:00+00:00

HOWEVER, DESPITE THE JOY OF BEING IN LOVE, things were not all rosy. In the altitude at Boulder, Greg had learnt a painful lesson. He had badly miscalculated the amount of rehydrating needed. In the low humidity at altitude the air was much drier than it seemed. An athlete’s recovery took much longer at altitude than at sea level and it demanded much more rehydration than usual. Greg was known as ‘the camel’ because of his ability to go for a long time without water. ‘In races, that probably made me who I was because I was very efficient. In fact, in races I’d be very good at rehydrating, but in training I’d just go and go and go.’

Greg knew hydration was important to an athlete. He was about to find out that it could be critical. Water comprises about 60–65 per cent of an elite athlete’s body weight. Most resides in the body’s cells and is known as intracellular water. The balance, extra-cellular water, is either in the bloodstream or between the bloodstream and the cells. When an athlete sweats, he loses water from the blood first, then from the fluid bathing the cells and eventually from inside the cells. Dehydration reduces blood volume and causes the heart rate to jump as the heart tries to maintain the body’s demand for blood to supply its overworked muscles and vital organs. It leads to fatigue and overheating and, of course, it impairs performance. Tests have shown that even a drop of 1 per cent of body weight through fluid loss can impair performance.

Training at altitude, Greg misjudged the amount of fluid he was losing and the amount he should have been drinking to replace it. Unknown to him, the problem gradually became more serious. By August, just at the time he and Sian were starting their relationship, he was experiencing mild discomfort in the stomach. By September it had worsened. ‘I passed blood but I didn’t do anything about it, and by the time I went back to San Diego I was just in excruciating pain. I was staying at Paula’s, getting ready for the 1992 Ironman, and only two weeks out I just had to go and see a doctor. He booked me in for a colonoscopy straight away and found that I had burnt a small hole in my colon—just through dehydration. After the colonoscopy, I went home, had a few days’ rest and flew to Kona and did the race.’

In addition to the breakdown in his intestinal wall, the dehydration caused Greg to suffer severely from haemorrhoids. They required painful operations and involved subsequent major soreness, not to mention a severe case of constant mirth from his friends. And this was happening less than two weeks out from Hawaii.

Nevertheless, and against his doctor’s advice, Greg decided to compete in Hawaii. He kidded himself that he would race but wouldn’t push himself. He took a few days off, rested completely and concentrated on making sure he was getting the best nutrition.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.