Failure to Launch

California 70.3 Non-Race (Did Not Start) Report…

Short version: I most likely have strep throat, and my brother-the-doctor was worried about it potentially spreading as a result of pushing my body in the race and causing some of the very nasty problems it can cause if it spreads…

Long Version: I’d been feeling up and down early in the week, and finally got laid low on Wednesday with a rather sudden fever climbing to 103.5F. I had all the syptoms of strep throat with the exception of the white spots. Went in for rapid strep culture at a local clinic on Thursday on my brother(doc)’s recommendation (I thought it was flu), and the rapid strep came back negative. Still waiting on results of full throat culture. Felt better every day since Wednesday, but eating dinner the night before race, my mouth continued to hurt a lot (which had been miserable in terms of staying fueled), so I checked again with the flashlight and it looked like the battle of the white spots all over the back of my throat. So I called in to my brother, who said that given that new symptom, he was worried it was strep in spite of the negative reading on the rapid test. I told him that other than the soreness in my mouth, I felt pretty much fine. But he said that he was worried about the possibility of the infection spreading as a result of the obvious stress that your body is put under during a race, and that can be really, really, really bad with strep. So he said no racing. So here I am, instead of being on my bike out on the roads in the beautiful San Diego weather…