From today's Vancouver Sun:

Mountain bikers blame mud, bear poop for illness
By Chantal Eustace, Vancouver Sun
Published: Thursday, June 28, 2007
Mud-soaked and exhausted, Monica Anderson felt elated as she pedalled
past the Test of Metal finish line in Squamish earlier this month -
more than five hours of grueling terrain plastered to her bike and
body.

She admitted, she even swallowed a few mouthfuls of the muddy, puddle-
ridden course along the way.

But within 48 hours of finishing the 67-kilometre ride on June 16,
Anderson woke up in the middle of the night, feverish and vomiting.
The Coquitlam teacher was so sick her husband had to rush her to
hospital. "I didn't know what it was," said Anderson, 28. "It was the
sickest I've ever been in my life. It was everything - all bodily
functions."

She was infected with campylobacter, a bacteria, and wasn't the only
racer who got sick.

Within days of the race, online mountain bike forums like NSMB.com
began buzzing with participants reporting similar symptoms.

"I may as well have lived on the toilet the last three days," posted
Spaz. "Not sure what hit me (felt like a truck)," posted Shorelocal.

At least 18 people, including Anderson, have been infected with the
bacteria. Symptoms last up to seven days and include diarrhea,
nausea, stomach pain, fever, and vomiting.

Cliff Miller, the event organizer for the past 14 years, said this is
the first time anything like this has happened. Coincidentally, he
said, this year's wet and rainy race day conditions were the worst
he's seen.

Despite everything, it was a great time, he said.

"I think everybody had fun until they got home."

He's working with Vancouver Coastal Health and the BC Centre for
Disease Control to try to figure out what exactly caused people to
get sick.

There's been a lot of rumours circulating, he said. One suspect? The
mud mixed with animal waste.

"It (the waste) gets wet. It gets washed into a puddle. It gets
churned up with dirt, which turns into mud, which covers everybody,"
said Miller.

Suspect No. 2? The ground water, he said.

"There's been a couple of reports of people stopping and filling up
the camelpacks and water bottles at some of the creeks along the way,
too," he said, adding race organizers handed out bottled water.

It's difficult to determine what the source of the infection was,
said Dr. Eleni Galanis, of the BC Centre for Disease Control.

"Campylobacter lives in the guts of animals and humans," she said, so
infections usually stem from contaminated food, water or
environmental sources.

Along with testing the creeks where the race occurred, she said all
800 participants will be sent a survey relating to what they ate and
drank. They want to find out the cause so it won't happen again,
Galanis said.

"It's a very uncomfortable infection," she said. "Things just fly
through you basically."

People usually get sick within the first 10 days of exposure, she
said, and it is rarely spread from person to person.