Monday, October 02, 2006

DOPING SCANDAL (?)

I was relating my sudafed experience today at lunch with a friend of mine who is a serious bike nerd. In addition to being a teacher, he works part time at a bike shop--just because he can--and does time trials for fun. He "loathes" running, and swimming, and says he'd do a triathlon only if it was bike-bike-bike.

Anyway, Bob started laughing and said, "Geez, you were doping! Didn't you know that's a banned substance?" He walked off, cackling, down the hall. Apparently, he thought it was a real hoot.

Nope, I didn't know. As a lifelong battler of the sprint and fall flem seasons, Sudafed is something that's always in the medicine cabinet. I'd taken to using Guifenesin lately because it works better, but yesterday I was out. But I checked, and by golly, according to the US Anti-doping agency, Sudafed is indeed a banned substance. In any case the whole experience sucked - I don't know why anyone would want their heart to race until they couldn't catch their breath, but apparently, it helps somebody unfairly, so it's banned.

Life and learn. Now in addition to the general paranoia about poisoned contrails, I can be paranoid about the USADA coming after me. Suppose I become famous, for something. Like, maybe, being the slowest triathlete on earth.
"Excuse me, but is it true that you once used a banned substances in order to enhance your performance in a sprint triathlon at Holloman Airforce Base in New Mexico? How can you explain this to the parents who entrust you with their precious teenagers, day after day?"

"Um, yes," I'd have to admit, "I was trying to enhance my performance by eliminating a substantial amount of snot--I admit it, and I promise never to do it again.
As for the teenagers, judging by their academic inclinations in the afternoons, it's probably likely that they are popping way more serious stuff than Sudafed at lunch."

Still no results posted, about the results of yesterday's sprint tri, and nobody's answering the phone over at Holloman. Grrrrrr.

Sweet Baboo
has stepped up to be my training coach. I have to give him credit for taking a deep breath and doing this. He has experienced the wrath firsthand of the pissed off and tired Athena, and yet he's mustered up the courage to experience it again. When I had my Soma pity-party last week and whined, "you just don't know what it's like to always be last!" he started working on how to help me feel better and planning my training so that I would be able to finish Soma by the cutoff time. He does that a lot. It's a lot like having a nice, protective bubble around me all the time so that I don't have to experience too much stress. However, I have gone off on him in the past when my fatigue would temporarily pickle my brain and I would accuse him of trying to thwart my training, lying about how big the hills were going to be, and generally just trying to hurt me.

Now, I know he'd never do that. I just get paranoid and weird when I'm really, really tired.

Anyway, I started today with a 1500 m swim at the gym, and then 11 miles on the hill climbing program on the electronic cycle, feeling the burn, which I usually avoid doing, because I hate the burn--the burn hurts. (I prefer the electronic cycling because I don't like riding around Rio Rancho because, 1) The denizens here are insane rednecks who love to run cyclists off THEIR road, 2) there's a lot of heavy construction going on and a solid line of about a dozen large fill trucks running back and forth in the middle of my route who LOVE to come up behind me and blast their air horns at me. Bastards. As well, the bike bath on the bosque is ripe with IBP incidents--just ask Dread Pirate.)

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2 comments:

  1. ha ha ha - it's true! misty is a doper! ow - don't hit me...

    unsolicited advice - the burn will make you stronger. it will hurt like fire, then it won't. embrace the burn!

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  2. i try to avoid the burn at all costs, too...

    and the sudafed thing... yea, in college even if we were sick we weren't allowed to used sudafed because it could render us ineligible to play (basketball) because it was considered a performance enhancing drug. we actually had to have the team doctor certify that we were, indeed, sick, and then he gave us a prescription for something with sudafed in it.

    blegh.

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