Sérgio Marques Blog

This is not a race report first of all, because i never raced anyway.

The week in AZ was all about disappointment, after getting sick around Wednesday i wasn’t able to recover. I was with the feeling that i could still wake up in the race morning and pull a decent race but the almost 0 exercise from Wednesday till race day was only enough to fool myself. I was having pain on my rib cage (OK i don’t know exactly how its called) when i had a deep breath, that was of course very close sintoms of pneumonia (been there already) and that was making me very uncomfortable about what would come next.

Anyway after  much laying around and TV (and a lot of CSI) i went for it…

The “race” resumes to:

I was in the water next to Tim Deboom and Rutger Beke, what a duo eh? and the gun went off, i gave like 10 15 strokes and i lost all my strength, i couldn’t breath and was feeling really uncomfortable, not that triathlon is comfortable, its not but you get the point. They’re gone, everyone, and soon enough i start dragging my body through the swim course, i was really slow with a slow stroke and left the water already knowing that i would stop because that wasn’t just a bad swim. After around 59min i was out of the water and needed help to take my wetsuit off, something that i never done. everyone was encouraging me except for the race announcer, that said something like this “its Sergio marques, a student from Porto Rico”… #%#&/(/%, now i was having the worse time in my sporting career and this wasn’t helping at all :(.

When i was running, really slowly, into T1 i had a clear thought that i wouldn’t leave the tent but the volunteers cheered so much that i went for it. I jumped to the planet-x and gave it a shot. The less than 200W AVG from the first 20 min says it all… i pulled the plug and came back to transition area.

Waited somewhere near the Hot Corner and after finding Paulo, Jodi and Sophie i asked if i could have a ride home, end of story.

It was of course a very frustrating week, after so much work, not being able to race is just not fair. i would definitely prefer to have a terrible race, have 20 flats, hit by a meteor while in the bike, bad nutrition whatever.

the following days my ribcage pain got worse and i flew back to Portugal, after a few days off to fully recover from this i got back to some physical work on Friday.

I am in terrible shape right now, i feel (am) slow, I’m sure that 80% of fitness will come in just a few days, its just a matter of how fast i can find the 20%.   

My racing calendar will change a bit now to handle this unexpected situation, will update both my site and blog soon.Its all about taking a deep breath and face what is next :D.

I know that its the other way around, a Peter Reid quote by the way (and everyone knows how i admire that guy) but honestly its impossible not to think like that. I got sick yesterday, how uncool is that? Had a terrible night sweating a lot, almost didn’t sleep and decided to stay indoors the whole day doing nothing or close to nothing (I’m doing something right now). I had some hard headaches during the day and i felt really dead and energy less.

I normally have caution on this period as it is proven that when you peak you are prone to infections (immune system) but seems that wasn’t enough. I actually never felt OK after flying to AZ, normal at first but preoccupying after a few days, maybe this is a result of a bad overseas flight.

I am of course mentally sick too, i am now trying my best to at least wake up at 4am on Sunday. but its very very hard to handle this especially after so much work.

will keep an update on my dreadful condition