When I said the odds weren’t in my favor for completing Arrowhead, I at least assumed I’d be starting the race. However, the universe had other ideas, and unfortunately I didn’t set foot on the race course at all this year.

We drove up to International Falls on Saturday, enduring a hundred miles or so of ground blizzard conditions which made things stressful. When we arrived at gear check things proceeded smoothly and I got to chat and hang out with a few folks before we headed to the hotel. I felt a little off most of the day, but I assumed that was due to anxiety and the stress of the drive. A nice dinner and cocktail should fix things right up!

After getting settled we headed to the bar to enjoy some food and relaxation, and ended up spending a few hours chatting with other participants who were there as well. It ended up being a really cool time, but by around 8pm or so I felt like things were not sitting right. I headed back up to the room and collapsed into bed feeling really crappy. And thus began the rest of the weekend.

I woke up on Sunday feeling meh, but decided to keep pressing forward with packing and prep. I got all my food put together, the sled packed, ran some last minute errands, etc.,. However by mid-day it was clear that I was sick. Upset stomach, sore throat, headache, general blahs. I took another nap hoping it would help, but it just kept hanging on.

Arrowhead is not an event you take lightly. You’re alone in the middle of nowhere, in the cold. Especially as a rookie you need to go into this event as close to 100% as possible. I was sitting at around 60%. Not sick enough to land me in bed, unable to move, but enough that starting an event like this would not be smart. And so I made the call to pull out from the race on Sunday.

I did consider going to the start line and trying a few miles just for the heck of it, but the logistics were getting too complicated with some other factors that we were dealing with and so we opt’d to cut our losses and head back home to recuperate.

There’s lots of thoughts in my head right now about this, and it’s going to take me some time to fully process it all. It’s difficult when you spend so much time training for something, and then get taken out by something out of your control. For now though I’m going to just focus on going into my reset for the year and start looking ahead to what might be next.