OCC This was a tough one.
OCC 2019 from Richard Ehrlich on Vimeo.
At the start I was stuck in a very slow-moving washroom lineup (c’mon folks, more veggies and less cheese!) so I ended up starting well back.
Traffic was jammed, stop-and-go. I was feeling strong and moving up, despite taking it fairly easy. The big climbs felt easy, and legs were good. I was slugging back Infinit, and had some coke at Champex-lac.
At Trient I refilled my bladder. Given the heat I put more Infinit in for the electrolytes. I had a soft-flask of water to sip too.
Unfortunately my dreaded 6-hour stomach quit right on schedule and the wheels fell off. I couldn’t take more than a couple of sips of the Infinit, and my water flask ran dry pretty soon. We did cross some nice streams- wish I had a filter!
At Vallorcine I finally got some water, and barely kept it down. I lay down in the medic tent for a while, puked a few times, but finally I could keep down some coke and a bite of watermelon, so I headed out. I dialed it back to a brisk hike with some light downhill trotting, but still couldn’t keep anything but water down. The last major climb up to La Flegere was basically a blur of nausea. I took a break there but couldn’t keep a single sip of coke down. Ugh.
I managed to shuffle-jog back down to town, and got a burst of energy from Mari and Ewan (and Lee, Phats and Bash) cheering me on to the finish.
I was toast from running 5.5 hours on zero calories.
It was still spectacular scenery and an amazing race in many aspects.