<?xml version="1.0"?><rss version="2.0"><channel><title>Colette O'Neill - Tri247</title><link>http://www.tri247.com/index.html</link><description>Latest articles submitted by Colette O'Neill on Tri247</description><item><title><![CDATA[Healthy competition]]></title><link><![CDATA[http://www.tri247.com/article_2879.html]]></link><description><![CDATA[Since my last blog, my training has been steady. I managed to fit in a week&rsquo;s training in Lanzarote in November. Out there, I raced in the aquathlon and triathlon against Jenson Button, finishing first lady behind him. This must have fired up my motoring competitiveness as shortly afterwards I went to a big Christmas party that had bumper cars. I had great fun driving around in my high heels, remembering the time I&rsquo;d won a go-carting trophy a few years ago. The poor bloke I was in the car with got out looking a little pale and said &ldquo;Blimey, you&rsquo;re competitive, aren&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;. However, my F1 efforts a little later brought me down to earth as I was flashed in East London, driving 36 miles an hour in a 30 mph zone (I hope they got my best side). When I received a letter, offering an SAS training day, my initial excitement of some hardcore exercise challenge was dampened by the realisation that this was a Speed Awareness Session. I can&rsquo;t help thinking though that if you&rsquo;re going to get a ticket, you really ought to go for it rather than just managing a paltry 6 mph over (only joking, officer). Ever competitive, I&rsquo;m going to try and be the slowest one on the course!

My running progress has been tested in a few races, including a hilly half marathon in wind and sleet, and Cliveden&rsquo;s stairway-to-heaven (or was it hell) run. That&rsquo;s the race where you have to run up 140 steep steps twice plus climb another set of steps so steep most people walk up. This should have prepared me for the nine flights of stairs I have to run up and down between wards of the hospital I am currently working at, but so far it just feels like my quads aren&rsquo;t my own. But I&rsquo;ve declined using the lifts so far. I&rsquo;ve joined another gym close to the hospital &ndash; very nice, but just metres from where someone was murdered last year! I realised how used to my old gym I was when I found I had to concentrate on staying aboard the wobbly treadmill and not hitting my head on the ceiling as I ran.

So, all in all, fitness is improving and as I said out in Lanza, I&rsquo;ve got my mojo back! So much so, that I&rsquo;ve started to set myself other mini-challenges. When the cashier in Sainsbury&rsquo;s asks if I would &ldquo;like help with my packing?&rdquo;, I am ready &ndash; to get all my shopping packed the right way up and credit card ready before it is asked for. A chatty cashier can cause distraction or an unusually speedy one may result in mild panic as you fumble to open bags (sorry, not green enough just yet to have my own reusable ones). Don&rsquo;t try this with a self-service checkout though, or you&rsquo;ll be haunted by an &ldquo;unexpected item in bagging area&rdquo;.

It&#039;s good to see that the government have changed their tune on children and competitiveness. In their new plan to improve community sport, they state that &ldquo;competitive sport is a perfect meritocracy ... everyone has the chance to do their best. That is the beauty of sport: to fulfill our potential.&rdquo;  Or, as Vince Lombardi once said, &ldquo;If winning isn&#039;t everything, why do they keep score?&rdquo;]]></description></item><item><title><![CDATA[Coffee stop...]]></title><link><![CDATA[http://www.tri247.com/article_2411.html]]></link><description><![CDATA[One of the things that gets me out of bed on a Sunday for the club cycle is the thought of the coffee stop. The social side is an important part of training!

Cycling to Marlow a few weeks ago started off with pleasantries and chatting about things tri, and not. The rare sunny weather had brought out other cyclists in abundance. When I realised that the conversation had dried up, it was apparent that the race was on &ndash; we had speeded up and were going too fast to talk. All to reach Starbucks. Funny how energy surges can happen when you actually need refuelling. Departing Marlow after a few buckets of coffee, we passed a number of other groups heading into town. Invariably, there was a leader out front, with the followers and stragglers behind &ndash; the whites of the eyes of the unshielded displaying their efforts to hang on. It reminded me of horse riding whilst on holiday. A big group ride with a range of abilities on wiry little horses. The outward journey was calm and fine with sedate ambling, then a canter along the beach for those willing and able. But on the return, the horses knew the ropes - they&rsquo;d soon be able to put their hooves up over some hay. The jostling started and soon turned into pack mentality, with eyes rolling in a race to the finish and no pony wanting to be left at the back. As for the riders, well the ability to canter or do rising trot is somewhat beneficial &ndash; apparently if you are a bloke wearing beach shorts it&#039;s like being repeatedly bashed with a cricket bat down there&hellip;

So, it was a bit of a shock when I was told that I would have to stop drinking coffee &ndash; I recently discovered that underlying my health issues of the last few years is an endocrine disorder, resulting in disrupted insulin and blood sugar. Well, I nearly fell off my chair, then replied &lsquo;But ... I&rsquo;m going to Italy... ...cycling&rsquo;. But being a non-triathlete, she didn&rsquo;t understand my distress. Despite this, we had a lovely week out in 40&amp;deg; heat in the Italian Dolomites as I gradually weaned myself off the black stuff. One day, we attempted the Four Hills of the Nove Colli race (a bit like the Etape). We did it properly, the English way, starting at 11:00am in the heat, instead of the expected 07:00am. The first three hills were fine, apart from getting bored of switchbacks in unrelenting heat, but we forgot to refuel properly before the last hill, Barbotta. I stopped, looked up and pointed with open mouth to John &ndash; a car was driving the way we were going and it seemed to be going vertically.

We set off up, but I reached a point where I thought I really didn&rsquo;t want to play anymore. John had raced this course pre-cancer, but he felt the same. But we couldn&rsquo;t give up. Returning to fitness, I have real appreciation for all the athletes who compete further back in the field &ndash; in my experience, it IS actually harder when you are not trained to deal with the pain and effort, plus you will always be out there much longer than the fitter competitors. At the top of the hill, I saw a mirage of a bar selling cold drinks, plus a lovely gleaming Italian cyclist on a Bianchi whizzing past. I waved deliriously, then fell to the floor exhausted. But he was real, as he&rsquo;d retraced his pedal strokes. As he approached, all toothpaste-ad teeth, tanned lithe legs and sparkly bits, I was conscious that it wouldn&rsquo;t be the best welcome for John, so reluctantly sent him on his way, in what I like to think was perfect Italian (what I probably said was &lsquo;your mother smells of onions&rsquo;).

Prior to Italy I raced Dambuster &ndash; I decided the night before that I wasn&rsquo;t going to try and qualify as I was not fit, and would rather enjoy the race. This I did and only found out that the dodgy mobile calls I had received in Italy was Malcolm Westwood attempting to get my World&#039;s acceptance before the deadline &ndash; sorry Malcolm for cutting you off!

Things are progressing, as I have at last found a physio who speaks my language and is helping me sort out my imbalances. Subsequently, I was forbidden from running from pre-Italy until my pelvis stabilised. At the London Triathlon on our return, I decided to complete just the swim, with cycling legs still tired. Next, a 10m TT was a season&rsquo;s best for me, showing that Italy had paid off. Then, following one pathetic effort back on the treadmill, I raced at the National Relays. Well, I swam and cycled then ran like a donkey. A bit of a mini-Glastonbury for triathletes (obviously without the drugs), I had a brill time in our ladies team, along with the rest of the club members, then we finished off with a takeaway Thai for 15 which we ate in the campsite.

My most recent race was the Rugby Sprint &ndash; lovely weather, lovely race. As this was John&rsquo;s first complete post-cancer race, he wasn&rsquo;t able to remind me of the simple things, since he had his own prep to concentrate on. Hence I forgot to set my gears up correctly plus I ran out the cycle-in with my number the wrong way round. As I eee-awed my way round the run, were it not for the extra weight I am carrying I&rsquo;d have been blown over by Andy Tarry and Hywel Davies as they whistled past me.

So, my body is starting to remember what to do, and things are very gradually picking up. I am still working on my revised nutrition plan, minus the coffee plus a lot of other nice things. Til then, it&rsquo;ll be a tall skinny, no-caffeine tea with soya for me &ndash; but not &lsquo;to go&rsquo;.]]></description></item><item><title><![CDATA[Of hospitals and healing...]]></title><link><![CDATA[http://www.tri247.com/article_2142.html]]></link><description><![CDATA[Since my last blog, I have mostly been doing ... hospitals. Well, while my tummy healed, I studied for and sat my second year physiotherapy exams (one more year to go!).  During this time, my sister gave birth to a baby girl who was rushed in for surgery almost as soon as she was born with a very rare and complicated heart condition. Then my dad got ill, but stubbornly refused treatment or medication, he is a retired pharmacist but he doesn&rsquo;t do drugs... (!).  This resulted in some leg complications so that he was unable to walk. I managed to test my newly acquired physio knowledge in the form of advice, which worked out to be correct. 

This was followed by a much-needed week off warm weather training -- well, OK, a week in an idyllic Caribbean resort -- squeezed in between college commitments and spent mostly playing recovery in the form of catching up on sleep. I did manage some open water swimming, of a warm and lovely kind, and a couple of jogs in the heat. There was also some serious carbo-loading going on, since it was an all-inclusive resort -- I even tried the liquid kind one night, when I ended up dancing with an elderly man in front of his wife (who ignored me for the rest of the week), and I&rsquo;d only had two glasses!

Returning home saw me start a hospital placement in London.  During this time, my mum was rushed into hospital, was discharged after a few days, but didn&rsquo;t even get to the entrance before she was rushed back in again.

My placement included working on a palliative care ward (terminally ill patients), which was extremely hard to do, plus treating elderly patients.  This involved quite a bit of lunging and squat thrusts (helping the old peeps to stand up and sit down).  Most of the placements are not local, which means a lot of travelling, being on your feet all day, plus constantly being assessed and tested. This is exhausting, especially as a mature and not quite fit student.

So, training to date has been almost zilch.  Apart from a rather, with hindsight, daft three mile run just a week and a half after my surgery (leading to the following day spent in bed due to pain - I think it was the drugs going to my head!), I either had no time or was too shattered to do more than a handful of sessions.  Nevertheless, I entered into the spirit of the season, and took part in the Milton Keynes open water 1k swim &ndash; shockingly cold to one used to Caribbean temperatures! I then completed a 10 mile club time trial on a new TT bike.  I was nervous of the bar end shifty things and still have muscle imbalances from the ovary-nasty. This had acted like a huge paperweight inside me, changing my body mechanics and tipping me to one corner in standing or sitting, resulting in a leg that is weaker and goes numb and hurts when I run or cycle.  Nonetheless, I was pleased that I finished.  Less than a week later, I completed a second TT on the same course with similar conditions, and was shocked to knock a minute and a half off my time!  Something has gone OK then. 

Choosing to complete just the swim part of the Eton College Aquathlon was sensible, since it attracts surprisingly fast people, including an obligatory non-triathlete posh boy with a ruddy face and big hair from the school, pulled in at the last minute and who usually destroys the field. In fact the race was won by one of the these very boys, who went off for a swim session straight after!

On Sunday, I completed the Windsor Sprint, I swapped down from the full distance due to my lack of training.  I was nervous, but reminded myself that I was going to enjoy myself. The swim was fine, apart from half the course where I was working really hard and the lady next to me was breast-stroking at the same pace!! How rare to hear &ldquo;you are 6th out of the water&rdquo; (I was in the first of two waves). I never got that in a full 1.5k!.  I had a stormin&rsquo; bike &ndash; well, relatively!  I could tell some men weren&rsquo;t happy about being &lsquo;doris-ed&rsquo; (beaten by a lady) as when I was about to overtake, they pushed harder.  I myself was overtaken by 2 gentlemen, one of whom I had the energy to joke with.  Out onto the run, and I heard &ldquo;there&rsquo;s three girls ahead of you&rdquo; &ndash; I managed to pick off one and the other girl then told me she hadn&rsquo;t completed the bike, meaning I was somewhere near the front. (I found out afterwards this was Zoe, the breaststroker, who had punctured but wanted to finish as she was competing for charity.)

When I saw my clubmate, Michelle, storming behind me at the turnarounds, reality hit that this was only one of two waves.  Michelle was in the second wave which started four minutes behind me, and as much as I wanted to believe it, she was definitely not that far behind.  However, I put my head into gear, telling myself that this was turning out a lot better than I had expected.  Hearing Steve Trew calling out my name on commentary was an incentive, as was John, Steve and Dawn on support, popping out all over the place to shout abuse at me, as the Windsor run allows.  I had said that if I was smiling at them, things were OK, which I managed to do most of the time. 

Afterwards, I did the usual thing of hanging around in wet clothes chatting to too many people as my lips start to turn blue.  But after changing, the sun was very considerate and warmed me up while I ate as much rubbish as I could to reload myself.  It was great to watch the elite races, and Mr Stannard looked fab as he finished to raucous applause and cheering.  However, since I had only had about four hours sleep the night before, I was fighting to stay awake &ndash; something I need to get right next time.  Back at home, washing out my wetsuit, a two-inch wriggly thing with pincers fell out &hellip; I really hope that it crawled in after I dumped it in transition.

So, although I am just at the beginning again, it is great to be back doing what I love, seeing old friends and making new ones, in the triathlon community.  It is only when it is taken away from you that you realise how much you miss it and enjoy it.  

Plans ahead include Dambuster next weekend, although the thought of a full distance is a bit daunting at the moment, plus a few more club races.  However, as my next placement is in East London, meaning a journey almost double the last one, I shall just have to sleep on it.
]]></description></item><item><title><![CDATA[Don’t make me laugh!!]]></title><link><![CDATA[http://www.tri247.com/article_1727.html]]></link><description><![CDATA[I have often said to John &amp;ldquo;that&amp;rsquo;s funny &amp;hellip; for you&amp;rdquo;, whilst having a habit of laughing at my own jokes. But he&amp;rsquo;s either become a comedian overnight or has always been a bit a joker and I haven&amp;rsquo;t noticed. It&amp;rsquo;s when you have your tummy split open then stapled back together again that just about anything is painful, even when you smile! And John keeps making my tummy hurt.
It&amp;rsquo;s even funnier that when I was told I would need my tum sliced open, my response was to smile and be happy - maybe this would put an end to the myriad of health issues that have kept me out of triathlon for almost three years? Well, not quite, as a related condition is going to be subsequently treated, but fingers crossed.
My hospital visits coincided almost to the day that John was diagnosed with cancer a year ago. The CA125 cancer antigen blood test I needed raised a joke about me not possibly being able to have it, as cancer was &amp;lsquo;so last year&amp;rsquo; - and thankfully the test was fine. (John is now in complete remission, plus his mum&amp;rsquo;s cancer treatment has been successful &amp;ndash; a bit of a year that was).
The second scan by another consultant gynaecologist who was also a triathlete made for an interesting scene (I won&amp;rsquo;t go into the details!) whilst we discussed the London Triathlon.
It was a solid ovarian cyst, or growth, that I&amp;rsquo;d probably been carrying round for years, but it was large and interfering and would continue to grow. Pre-Lausanne (Worlds) last year, I did a very Victorian lady-like thing of fainting and falling down the stairs. Post race, well 3-4 hours later, I did a very chavette-like thing of wobbling around and projectile vomiting. My consultant thinks this could be related to my extra lump (to do with vaso-vagal trigger response and stuff to be more precise). Like many triathletes, I know my body well, and knew it would be a case of getting round the course, rather than racing. But since my wonderfully useless GPs had said everything was fine, I thought I&amp;rsquo;d have a go at what I could, rather than couldn&amp;rsquo;t, do.
I only changed to a new GP surgery a few weeks ago and requested a scan myself &amp;ndash; good job, eh?!. 
Well, you don&amp;rsquo;t get wine before an op on the NHS do you &amp;ndash; I did have to pay a lot for it, even though it was on doctor&amp;rsquo;s orders. I&amp;rsquo;d had a run through of the procedure with the consultant, anaesthetist and nurse the evening before and, being a student physio, all the technical stuff made sense. That&amp;rsquo;s when I started to get a bit nervous, but they all agreed that medical staff make the worst patients as they know what&amp;rsquo;s coming. So, I was told that I&amp;rsquo;d also have laughing gas pre-anaesthetic &amp;ndash; happy days! I was cracking a joke as I went under.
I had warned the doc about my low HR (41 bpm) but it caused a constant wave of panic with different nursing shifts, as the obs machine kept alarming. Anaesthetic and drugs can lower your HR and blood pressure even further, so I kept mumbling in a drug haze about being a triathlete and that they needn&amp;rsquo;t worry. Being competitive, when I was told I had a self-controlled morphine pump, I thought I&amp;rsquo;d see how little I could use. So for the first day I only pressed it twice. Then the doc told me that once the pain had set in it is difficult to get rid of it, and the pump should be used as much as possible. At this point I was grinning through quite a bit of pain, so thought I&amp;rsquo;d better get to work then. The pump has an alarm that sounds if you have pressed it too many times, except mine was broken, honest! It kept going off despite me only pressing it 3 times an hour (it was set to 5) and I had to keep explaining to each new nursing shift that I wasn&amp;rsquo;t a druggie as the alarm went off hourly.
Once off the morphine, I was given a different painkiller which unfortunately had another side effect &amp;ndash; the doctor said &amp;ldquo;Look, she&amp;rsquo;s gone cross-eyed&amp;rdquo;!! This meant I couldn&amp;rsquo;t get out of bed for another day whilst they changed me to a different drug.
I had my staples and drains out and one little stitch was left for an extra day, the Comedy Stitch. I named it this after the doctor told me its purpose, which is purely to reassure the patient that they are not going to pop open! It doesn&amp;rsquo;t do anything, just makes you think that you&amp;rsquo;re tied together &amp;ndash; and that is the only reason they put it in &amp;hellip; crazy!
When I was finally discharged, on the drive back from Wimbledon to Uxbridge, we couldn&amp;rsquo;t resist popping into the tri-shop in East Sheen, near the hospital. It took a mammoth effort to shuffle across the road into the shop and I don&amp;rsquo;t know what the poor bloke thought as we bought some elastic laces (forget tying laces when you&amp;rsquo;ve had a laparotomy) before I nearly fainted. 
Blimey &amp;ndash; your tummy muscles are connected to everything. It&amp;rsquo;s taken nearly a week to be able to do anything; it&amp;rsquo;s amazing how useless I&amp;rsquo;ve become, although I now have a lot of sympathy for ladies who have had their baby through the &amp;lsquo;sunroof&amp;rsquo;. But I can&amp;rsquo;t even watch any comedies to pass the time! ]]></description></item></channel></rss>