It’s 7:05 pm on Tuesday.  I wrote this post during the day and was going to release it tomorrow morning.  I was in a pretty good mood while I was writing.  This morning was a sweet 8-miler, in the afternoon I had an excellent voiceover job and about 30 minutes ago, I ate a good dinner.  Then the race photos came out.  I could make you hunt for my number but I know you’ll find them anyway.

It’s 7:13 pm on Tuesday.  I’m sitting with a huge glass of wine and will get very drunk tonight.  I can now see exactly what happened on Sunday, or at least, the finish line portion.  There was a preamble preceding that part of the horror show that I will conveniently get to forget because nobody was taking photos.  But there is the afterwards: a fake smile on a twisted body.

It’s 7:22 pm on Tuesday.  I’m thinking about the nice man who helped me across the finish line and whose own finish photos are completely ruined and will be in the Lost and Found section since you can’t see his number.  He’s too busy helping that stranger get to and across the finish line.  A very nice man.

It’s 7:28 pm on Tuesday.  I want to find a hole and sink into it for a long, long time.  Who is this person?  It’s me

Earlier that day…
First off, I seriously cannot thank you blog readers, Facebook friends and 3:20 buddies enough for all the kind and insightful comments you’ve left.  After reading through the responses, particularly those coming from doctors (so handy to have 3 online Dr. friends posing as normal people) I’m convinced that it is indeed something in my body not working properly.  So I made an appointment with my doctor for Thursday evening and will let you guys know what’s up on Friday’s post.

Witnesses
I could not believe that in that sea of race humanity, 3 people who know me saw me stumbling to the finish.  And I’d only ever met one of them!

Jenn, my local friend who was volunteering saw me at the finish line, saying in the last post’s comment “I was really scared for you when I saw you starting to sag, stumble and almost go down 15 feet from the finish. Thank goodness that guy was there to bolster you.”

Then Peggy, a Facebook friend and new gal to Philly whom I only just met today (though in a strange turn of fate, she also saw me that day I had fallen after seeing the dead fox) was there to see me stumble in mile 13.

And lastly, Cathleen who reads this blog (who should have introduced herself to me at the Expo!) ;-) emailed, “I just read your race report … I’ve been waiting for it because I unfortunately saw you go down right after mile 13.  What I saw happen out there today looked like someone fighting with their body & their body was winning.”

Thank you ladies for adding onto my impressions of what I felt and saw.  There’s something comforting in the thought that I wasn’t all alone in the midst of that.

Noake’s “Central Governor”
Julie brought up a great point in a comment, that of Noake’s “Central Governor”.  He contends that our brain knows when we’re going into redline mode and automatically adjusts to protect our organs from failure.  I mentioned that it seems like I’m missing the “red danger signal” , but when I spent real time going over how this happens and what happens beforehand, I realize I’m not missing this at all, I react the same way everyone else does: I slow down.

That’s the Central Governor at work, the mechanism Noake’s speaks of that naturally protects us from overload.  That would make the loss of leg control and collapsing a separate issue since, if my body was like everyone else’s, my paces would simply fall further and I’d continue at the lowered speed.  What’s more, if it was a matter of stubborn determination causing these “spells”, I’d have lots of company stumbling along with me, since I’m positively not the most determined runner out there.

So What Could It Be?
It’s good that dehydration and excessive heat are not part of the picture this time as it removes those variables.  Btw, I don’t believe 70 degrees was excessive for me, I’ve been running hard all summer in much hotter weather than that.  Also, I looked up blue lips and it’s not tied to dehydration or heat sickness.

I’ve had a couple comments and an excellent private message from sufferers of exercise-induced asthma – the symptoms seem to fit well: labored breathing, excessive sweating, even blue lips for some.  This makes sense to me because the way my breathing sounds is like someone about to bonk, though I can keep going for miles like that.  The only thing that doesn’t compute for asthma is then why doesn’t this happen during workouts?  It seems as though I’d experience it at least occasionally during a hard workout.

My 3:20 doctor buddy Dan says the lips and sweat point to an inability to control temperature and he and Melissa (yet another doctor pal) are insistent on a treadmill test.  I will definitely ask for one, though I’m not convinced it’ll find anything, only because A) this happens after some time and I’m not sure they’d keep me on there that long and B) When my ex, Nick, got a stress test, they didn’t find some truly serious heart blockages that only days later required an operation to have 3 stents put in.   But I’m game for it and will insist when I speak to my doctor.

What It Isn’t
I got a private message from a well-meaning Facebook friend saying this was all in my head.  I realize that our online world is a strange place, none of us really knows one another, though the one thing I think is clear from my writing is that I’m about as pragmatic and self-investigative a person as you are likely to find.  I consider every angle including the ones that don’t leave me in the best light and this includes psychological components.

No way in hell was this is in my head or, as he suggested, a vestige of post traumatic stress from June’s 5K.   It’s a physical matter of blood or oxygen not getting to where it’s supposed to. I am sure of it.  The question is, why?

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