The last time I had a really good
run was in July 2016 in Tershelling Island, The Netherlands. I recall most of that
run - it was on a flat terrain, sea level, barely off-road, fresh island air and
beautiful surroundings – really fantastic setting. I did the 20 kilometres
without much effort in 01H55 and this was not really surprising. Weeks prior to
that, I had been consistent and focused in my training as I had set my goals to
running Comrades 2017 in under 10H30.
The training ahead of that has
been going so well that I recorded on the morning of the 30th April
2016 a personal best pace of 5.08 min/km over 10km. My hard work was paying off
and it was really great. For the first time in a while I was feeling like my
sweat was actually yielding results, unlike in the past where the link between
hard work and results was often a huge blur. I had accepted some time ago that
my level of talent as an endurance athlete requires me to train a lot harder than
others only to just make the cut into the back end of the field. It was a
fact of life that I had no issue accepting.
In hindsight, with my level of training,
especially in early 2016, I should have been showing a lot more decent
performances. In essence, my training was for some time, sufficient to just beat
by a small margin, the effects of a condition that was brewing in my arteries.
For many years I had no reason to
believe that there could be a much more profound explanation for my “slight”
underperformances. For starters, I could still enter ultra-distance races and
complete them. In February 2016 I entered the 7 stage TransCape MTB and
finished, but right at the back of the field and taking maximum stage time almost
every day. At the beginning of every stage, I always noticed how everyone
seemed to be riding fast; yet I would catch up with the last groups and
sometimes even drop them before halfway.
It turns out that I have been
suffering from a condition called External Iliac Artery Endofibrosis and unlike
many athletes that developed the condition, it took me about a year to get diagnosed.
Others took as many as 5 years and many professionals were forced to abandon their
careers just as they were taking off – serious matters of full potential never reached;
dreams forsaken – but I think the worst is not knowing what is wrong and being
forced to abandon your aspirations under those circumstances.
My story is not at all unique – I
and many others share identical stories of a long, difficult road of
misdiagnosis, painful physiotherapy sessions, dry needling, expensive scans,
endless blood tests and referrals to a wide range of medical specialists. What
we also have in common are stories of DNFs, despair as performances drastically
deteriorate and the gloom every time we reach a dead end. But the most common
thread is that out of desperation we’ve all had to spend many hours doing our
own research to get to the answers. I have come across many stories of athletes
that took piles of journal articles to their sports medics to shed some light;
and yet many others who were still told “Impossible!”
This
is because a fit athlete is not supposed to have symptoms associated with what
is called Intermittent Claudication. This is a vascular condition more common
in the elderly, people that smoke, people that are overweight and those that
have high cholesterol. The least understood cases of intermittent claudication
are those that appear amongst fit athletes that train for and participate in
endurance events such as ultra-marathons, long distance cycling and triathlons.
The condition is often described as rare, but I think it is a matter of serious
under-diagnosis, especially amongst recreational athletes. I think that athletes
that are not professional simply choose to move on given that the stakes
associated with giving up on endurance are not high.
I still fantasize about my return to my normal self;
I cannot wait to go on long runs and rides across the mountains, on rocky single
tracks, in the forests, crossing the rivers and up the steep hills. I would
like to take a second shot at climbing Aconcagua and then move on to conquer climbs
over 7000 metres . My Comrades Marathon medal counter came to a scratching halt
at number 7 in 2015 – I would like to get my green number and now that I have
been diagnosed, I am optimistic and upbeat. But in the mean time I would like
to share my story in the next few blogs – with the hope that many other
athletes learn from it and that no one has to go through the trial and error that
many like me have experienced.
