COLORADO SPRINGS — Like the other nearly 1,300 competitors in Saturday’s Colorado cross country championships who endured sun and heat like it was the middle of July and not late October, Luk Platil said he left everything out on the course.

And while so many others left something else a few steps beyond the finish line in the sand at the Norris-Penrose Event Center upon completion of the 3.1-mile (5K) course, the Horizon senior wasn’t one of them.

And that was tremendous.

Platil, who finished 16th (17 minutes, 26.3 seconds) in the Class 5A race, suffers from a bizarre condition, cyclic vomiting syndrome, and it’s exactly what you think it is. He starts to vomit and keeps on going.

“Lovely, huh?” said Bill Stahl, who coached Platil at Horizon when he was a freshman, is now at Littleton and works with Platil whenever he can. “This kid has more heart than any kid I’ve met.”

Platil estimates he has had 15 episodes of the condition in his prep career, which includes finishing third in skiing classical nordic a year ago. However, he has been working hard to keep it to a minimum, and it’s not easy when running as many as 80 miles per week.

“I haven’t put myself in the hospital through training since last year’s regionals,” Platil said. “But I still have problems. I can still wake up feeling the same symptoms, and I take medications.”

The symptoms, Platil added, include “sudden, paralyzing nausea and migraines that leave me not able to function. Some days it’s pretty bad. … I just try to learn to train with the problems.”

Stahl said Platil basically throws up stomach acid, beats up his esophagus like he’s hitting it with a baseball bat and has heaves as dry as the Gobi Desert.

When he has an episode, Platil said, “I’ll puke for, like, two days until they sedate me. It will go in intervals.”

As a distance runner, Platil also has additional physical oddities — he’s 6-foot-4, 180 pounds.

“I’m not a scrawny runner,” Platil said.

PHOTOS: Colorado 2014 High School Cross Country Championships

And he has taken to distance running, he said, because “I like the idea of being able to make yourself better every day and being able to push myself a little further and see how far I can take it. Working toward a rewarding success is fun.”

He placed eighth at the Liberty Bell meet, second at the Pat Patton meet and sixth at regionals after taking it easy so he wouldn’t have another episode of vomiting. Platil said that he was running “super cautious” late in the season so he could let it hang out at state.

Platil will again ski this season, then plans to take a year off from school to train in Sun Valley, Idaho, so he can maybe land a scholarship to ski at Utah, Colorado or New Hampshire.

“It’s legendary how hard he works,” Stahl said.

After the 5A race, an exhausted Platil said he was pleased with how he did because he’s not that great in the hot weather but was glad that he gave it his all.

And how was he feeling concerning his condition?

“I don’t know,” he said before leaving. “We’ll see in the next 20 minutes.”

Neil H. Devlin: [email protected] or twitter.com/neildevlin

2014 state cross country results

Boys results: 5A | 4A | 3A | 2A

Girls results: 5A | 4A | 3A | 2A

Best times regardless of classification