Setbacks

Basta's father passed away. He had a massive heart attack while sitting on the couch watching tv in the evening. He was 80 years old.

Basta comes from a very large family and he's been talking to friends and relatives from around the world. All have been wonderful, offering condolences and kind words. He's been trying to contact as many people as he can who knew his father and would like to know about his passing. It's been busy.

We are incredibly lucky to have family that live near him in Holland who are willing and able to handle his affairs. One cousin in particular had made it a point to keep in contact with him regularly, even when he got difficult and argumentative in his old age. For him and his kind and gracious wife we are forever grateful.

Basta's father had been in poor health for some time and had prepared for his passing pretty well. One of the things he had arranged was to donate his body to science. He had met with people at the University that was going to take him and had the intake documents completed.

This donation to science has meant that the typical funeral arrangements will not take place. There is no rush to fly to Holland. We can and will go to Brazil as planned.

So Basta will do Ironman Brazil and dedicate the race to his father. That will make for an even more emotional day, I'm sure.

We leave in 5 days. Packing and planning the last details this weekend. As is typical with Basta, "tapering" to him means not working out at all, despite my best efforts to keep him on plan. He did go for a short run two days ago, but that's been it. No bike ride today. A friend wants to swim with us tomorrow so that may actually happen. But otherwise, no taper. No peak. Just, 'I'm ready, let's get there, let's get this done.'

We leave Thursday morning. Long long loooooong 18 hours of travel and four airports later, we arrive in lovely Florianopolis, Brazil. Lax to Miami, then to Sao Paolo, then a short jump to the island. With luck the bike will arrive at the same time, too.

The "Setbacks" title was about me and my dramas. I've fallen off the wagon. I've eaten bad things. Rather, good things that I react badly to. You try and avoid everything on that list and see how long you can do it.

I've been calling it, 'testing' and 'seeing how I do' but that's a load of bull. I'm just being undisciplined. And now, I feel normal. Which is such a sad testament. Normal for me is tired and weary and itchy and achy. Feeling great like I did felt like I was on some kind of happy/perky drugs because I just haven't felt good in so long. Must work on that. Normal needs to become feeling great and energetic.

Part of it is also knowing that I won't be able to eat very restrictively in Brazil. I'll have to eat what's available. That's part of the joy of travelling, anyway - enjoying the local cuisine and experiencing new foods. I'm going to do that. I'll avoid the major problem ingredients (sugar!) whenever possible, but I'm going to eat.


In the few days left, though, back on the bandwagon. I want to feel as good as I can when we're there and so I must cater to the fussiness of my delicate little system while I can. Because I realize now that I've been suffering the effects of these problems for quite some time now. Years. It just got worse and started to affect my heart and breathing when I stepped up the training and started consuming a bunch of sugar & chemicals in the form of sports drink, bars, and gels. The good part of that is it put me over the edge and made me find out what was wrong.