In-Depth Conversation with Myself.
On the drive back from Colorado, I had a lot of time to contemplate what went wrong in Leadville. Did I go out too hard? I don't think so, my legs felt great, I wasn't even sore the next day, and I was actually 10 minutes behind my predicted time at mile 40. I felt I was running within my capabilities. Was it my eating? Was it the altitude? I believe it was a mixture of both. First, I arrived 3 days before the race to acclimate to the elevation, but I have since learned, that was the worst thing I could have done. I should have either arrived the day of the race, or a week or two before. With just 3 days, my body was constantly fatiguing, trying to recover from the altitude, and it wasn't long enough. Add the fact, I was eating more calories than normal, trying not to bonk, I put my body into the red zone, and I was unable to recover. I couldn't get enough blood to my stomach to digest food, which was then compounded by my pace up the mountain, and that I was going above 12,600 ft. It became a perfect storm and I was relegated to vomiting and dry heaving for 7 hours. To make maters worse, since I was unable to hold anything down, I was dehydrated and my blood sugar was down in the gutter. 13.5 lbs down from the start of the race, there was no coming back from this.
