West Nile Virus Slows Up Byrne

After cruising through his summer triathlon circuit, winning three straight, Jim Byrne hit a roadblock - one in the form of the West Nile Virus.

On pace to participate in the Tobay Sprint Triathlon in the final week of August, the Chippewa Elementary School teacher and freshman football coach at Sachem North, was bit and out of commission for 10 days. The downtime put a damper on his training, took him away from life guarding and football practice and more importantly, depleted his health to the bare minimum.

"Aches, shakes, terrible headaches, nausea, fever, vomiting," said Byrne, "you name it, and I had the symptom. It was 10 days of hell."

It progressed so badly that he took himself to the emergency room to receive an intravenous.

Slowly, he worked his way into the Mighty Hamptons Olympic Distance Triathlon in Sag Harbor last week. This was longer than the sprint triathlons he trained for most of the summer. He logged a 1-mile swim, 24-mile bike ride and 6.2-mile run and finished fifth out of 900. He was 1:26 from first place.

"I didn't have the burst of energy I needed throughout the race that I'm used to," he said. "Not working out much, my body was trying to get back its strength. If I didn't get sick I would have been real close to winning this thing. I really think I had a shot at winning this. It would have had a good race at Oyster Bay too."

By week's end he'll decide if he's participating in the Mt. Sinai Sprint Triathlon October 10 at Cedar Beach.