Supporting – always full of surprises

Once you have been in the supporting role for a few years you could be mistaken for thinking you had seen it all. DNS, DNF’s, great races, not so great ones, temper  tantrums, food tantrums etc. This year’s FLING added another experience to the list!

Thomas started well, great weather and in fairly good shape he was aiming for a new PB. He had given me splits that were slightly faster than last year. Unfortunately for him he got carried away a bit at the start and arrived in Drymen and Balmaha 5min ahead of his faster schedule. And even he said to me then, oh, that’s very fast! By Bein Glass where I was waiting with friends from Germany who were spending their holiday with us he was back right on track of his faster schedule but a bit grumpy. By Carmyle Cottage he admitted he was rather tired but Marco managed to kick him into motion again. Just before the A82 crossing he looked better and was close to last year’s time and would be able to finish only a few minutes behind his PB. So good news given his too ambitious start and a lesson learned about pacing for the WHW Race. So off I went to park the car at the Green Welly and carried his rather heavy post race bag through to the finish. There I met 2 other friends of ours, both retired doctors who would come in handy later! Colette herself just recovering from a hip replacement and out without her crutches for the 1^st time.

So there we were waiting for him to appear at the finish in around 8:11. But the minutes ticked by and he did not appear. And sometimes it is a bit strange, you hear snippets of conversations of others but don’t pay attention. And I had just heard a guy saying, someone had collapsed near the finish. So I just passed this on to Colette who said, oh no, that won’t be Thomas. I heard it was at Rowardennan earlier this morning. So I forgot about it. But the minutes kept ticking until Athol came running towards me. He was waving. And I don’t really like the sight of this. It has happened twice before and it wasn’t good news then. So he said Thomas had fallen only 2-300 yards from the finish and needed my help. What could he have done that he was not able to limp across the finish line himself?! So I sprinted off fully expecting to see blood gushing out from somewhere or a broken bone. The 200 yds seemed rather long but eventually I saw him on the ground by the path with someone watching him. (Thank you by the way. I don’t know your name.) Marco had also arrived. I approached but could not see any obvious injury. It then turned out that he had to jump out of the way of 2 mountainbikers, fell, hit his chest and that triggered off an irregular heart beat! So there he was in the grass with a pulse of up to 240/min and feeling unwell. This is “SVT”, supraventricular tachycardia, which can decrease cardiac output and blood pressure leading to dizziness and numbness of hands and feet. There are a few manoeuvres you can try to stop it or in prolonged cases an injection in a hospital setting might be required. It is something that can last only for seconds and it can come and go like an on/off switch. Or it can be prolonged.

Luckily this was not the 1^st time this has happened so I knew what I was dealing with. Normally it does only last for seconds, in fact it happens very rarely and never when running or exercising. But it was the blow to the chest when falling that triggered it off and it didn’t stop. We poured water over him to cool him down but then he started to shiver and we had to put a fleece on! In that heat! Eventually we decided he should walk slowly to the finish where we could lie him down hoping it would stop. So we made our way to the finish, his time was taken and he had lost 20min so close to the finish. Now this was in fact what bugged him most! He had lost not only 20min but 3 places when he was passed by people while he was on the ground. This meant he had lost his 2^nd Scottish Vet place and 3^rd Scot overall. I was just glad he was still walking! We used the massage table to lie him down but later had to find a new place as people were queuing up for massages. My 2 medical friends and I debated what else we could do as this SVT was not stopping and had lasted for over 45min now. When we were about to get the car he sat up and as quickly as it had started it was gone. His heart was beating in sinus rhythm again and we were all rather relieved! He felt fine then and of course we stayed on until the prize giving. He managed to get a medal for 3^rd Scottish Vet as his time of 8:31 was still pretty good and put him into 12^th place overall.