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And my baby, is she the only one left when it’s dire?
She said a change is gonna come, but it’s all on us
‘Cause it’s ruthless and don’t tell me you’re ruthless too

Mt. Joy

After my first 70.3 (69.1), I returned home feeling proud, relieved and tired… mostly tired. I finished in 7 hours 4 minutes and 9 seconds, was 44th out of 44 for my age group, 1,338th out of 1,354 out of my gender, and 2,117th out of 2,176 overall. A one way ticket to New Zealand for the 70.3 world championships was not in my future any time soon.

The following morning wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Sure, I was sore, but I felt strong and nothing hurt nor ached in an alarming way, so I tallied my first race as a success and was ready to settle into a Summer and Fall filled with training without a looming race date on my calendar…and then the fire nation attacked I got an email from IRONMAN.

I don’t know if it was a delayed endorphin rush or the knowledge that a body in motion tends to stay in motion, but I signed up for IRONMAN 70.3 North Carolina in Wilmington, NC, which would take place October 19th. I figured racing in October, returning to Eagleman in June 2020 (RIP), then returning to the same course later for IMMD as my first IRONMAN would allow for a great year of racing with enough time between events to allow for solid training/life/work balance.

I threw myself into my training and planned the logistics for the weekend (all which went undocumented because writing this blog felt stressful instead of cathartic at the time, v sorry) and waited for October.

Heading to Wilmington

Due to the impulsive nature of going to NC in October for a race, my family wasn’t going to be able to come with me and serve as my sherpas, but luckily, my roommate Dylan was down for the adventure. After the obligatory road-trip montage filled with Spotify playlists, grumbling about work frustrations, and talking through my pre-race jitters we arrived to Wilmington and unpacked the car. We stayed in a hotel and not in an AirBnB which was a learning experience all-together, filled with questions like: “how will I fit all of these Powerades in this tiny fridge?”; “Do I leave my bike in the car of bring it up to the room?”;”How am I supposed to make my race morning peanut butter and banana bagel with no cutlery or toaster?”

After we figured out 90% of the questions related to unpacking, we got back in the car and headed to the race expo and packet pick-up.

Expo at an Expo Hall

Here is where the differences between Eagleman and NC 70.3 became apparent. To get to the Expo Hall we had to drive over bridges and a quaint downtown area to an actual Expo Hall as opposed to a series of tents in a field. There were even banners on lamp posts welcoming us to Wilmington.

Athlete check-in proceeded as usual now that I knew what I was doing after Eagleman, but still did my best to enjoy interacting with the volunteers and other athletes who were also going through packet pickup. In the back of my mind, I started to think about something I likely should have thought of weeks earlier… the weather.

I realized that mid-october can be quite chilly and I hadn’t prepared (or changed) my race gear since Eagleman which was in mid-June. After much panicked deliberation (which Dylan can likely attest to) I chose to buy some sleeves to use during the early portions of the bike and the run if I was chilly. So in typical pre-race fashion, I spent most of the time in the store buying sh*t I didn’t really need, but thought would be cool…

Point-to-Point-to-Point

At athlete check-in we also received our bags for the different transition areas as this was a point-to-point race. There are two main kinds of triathlons: those that use 1 transition area for all transitions and those that use 1 transition area for swim-to-bike and one for bike-to-run. This race was the latter of the two so I would be required to pack all of the items that I would need at each transition in a bag and leave the bag at each of the transition areas the day before the race.

After getting back to the hotel Thursday night, I began to get my gear and all the crap cool new stuff I bought at the store in order. As this was my first point-to-point, I was understandably nervous and anxious to make sure everything was packed in the right place so that we could drop the bags off the next morning and I could focus on resting instead of freaking out.

Friday came around, we dropped off my bike and T1 bag, dropped off my T2 bag close to the expo hall – where the finish line was also located – and I focused on getting enough sleep and enough rest by reading Haruki Murakami’s What I talk about when I talk about Running with my alarm set for 4:45am.

On Reading the Room and Being Alone

As I mentioned earlier, Wilmington has a ton of bridges. This is in large part because its a series of peninsulas and islands that are connected on the coast of North Carolina. Due to this, athletes were heavily encouraged to take a bus from the expo hall to T1 in the morning, where there would be another bus to shuttle us to the swim start.

Dylan dropped me off at the expo hall for the bus to take me to T1 on Saturday morning and I said goodbye to him knowing that I likely wouldn’t see him for most of the day ahead. All the athletes waiting to get on the bus had their wetsuits and morning clothes bags in tow and filed into charter buses, some more bleary-eyed than others. During this bus ride I was seated behind a guy in his mid-20’s who we’ll call… Chad. Chad was an age-group athlete (not a professional) who was trying to earn his pro card that year.

If I’m honest, I haven’t bothered to look at what that means or looks like, but it stood out enough in the calm of morning as he half yelled his introductions to his aisle-mate. As I didn’t have headphones or anything to distract me, I overheard everything going on in the conversation between Chad and the guy next to him… I wouldn’t even call it a conversation really – Chad did 99% of the talking.

As the bus got moving, Chad began to talk about the races he had done that year and one in particular which had happened a month or so prior – now I’ll share more about the bike course for this 70.3 in a bit, but know that it was on major roadways and not country roads like Eagleman. Chad begins to describe in detail the tragedy which had occurred at the 70.3 in Ohio where an athlete lost their life on the course due to an automotive collision as they were on the bike-leg.

Now… its pre-dawn, day of one of the harder endurance events that a person can do, folks are trying to process and relax into the day, and this guy is yelling about how crazy it was that someone had died at an event – like the one we were just about to do – weeks earlier. Now maybe I am over-reacting. Maybe, I’m being to sensitive. Maybe, Chad needed to talk to process his own emotions. All that I was sure of as I left that bus and stepped into T1, with the sounds of Bruno Mars playing from the speakers, was that I hated Chad.

I’m never quite sure what to say or do when I’m in transition areas the morning of a race. If there are folks around my spot in transition, I’ll greet them and make small-talk but I can tell their minds are elsewhere. And mine is too. I think about everything and nothing at the same time. One second I’m thinking about the throwbacks that are playing on the speakers and the next I’m thinking about how chilly it is and then about the feeling of dew on my feet and then about my training and then… you get the point.

I wouldn’t say that I feel lonely at the start of races, but I am aware of being alone. It’s almost like a mental and emotional warm-up for the alone-time that I will be spending in my head for the next 7+ hours and I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it.

See You at the Finish Line

After we were shuttled to the swim start, I swapped out of my comfy morning clothes for the wetsuit that I had been carrying, put on my swim cap, and huddled under signs with our estimated swim times so that we could start in waves, from fastest to slowest. Before I go on further, I should share that this was going to be the first swim I completed with a wetsuit ever and in open-water since I was a kid.

I say that because one of the most commonly shared pieces of advice for rookie triathletes is to always swim in your wetsuit before a race. This is because the constriction in a wetsuit can make your breathing feel labored and the added buoyancy can mess with your form. Due to this, I seeded myself in the 50 minute range for the swim even though I was aiming for a low-40 minute time. I wanted to make sure that I would have enough buffer room to calm myself and ease into the swim as opposed to going full gas from the jump.

After about an hour or so of milling about, the cannon went off and we started shuffling towards the water in our groups. As I was getting close to the water volunteers started hyping us up and making sure that we had our goggles. I noticed a couple in front of me kiss and say “see you at the finish line” and then disappear into the water and about 5 steps later I was in the water and my race had started.

What was conservatively going to take 50 minutes, and ideally take 40 minutes, ended up taking 33 minutes. I felt like a freaking fish in water during that whole swim and could have kept going quite happily. The worst part was the overwhelmingly salty taste in my mouth.

To get out of the water you had to climb up a ladder, run down a pier, and then through a few roads to get to T1. On the way to T1 they had set up a tent with tons of hoses so that folks could rinse off some of the salt from the swim… except that there was no water pressure. So the overwhelming taste of salt would have to stay until I got to T1.

Bridges, On-Ramps, and Winds, Oh My!

Once I got to T1, I dumped everything that was in my T1 bag (bike shoes, socks, towel, body glide, banana, gel, sunglasses) on the grass and rolled up my wetsuit, cap, and goggles into the bag as I would have to leave it behind and it would be trucked to the finish line. T1 was a bustling place, I felt like I had done a great on the swim, but didn’t know at the time how well I had done so I ate a banana, put on my socks, shoes, arm sleeves (bought at the expo the day before), helmet, and sunglasses, and headed to the mount line.

What continues to be an odd sensation for me is how fast the world seems to go by while I stay relatively still at the start of the bike leg. The first couple of minutes on the bike feel like a fever-dream, not because I’m not paying attention to my surroundings, but because there is suddenly so much stimulus that my brain seems to struggle processing all of it. My first (of many) wake up calls during the bike leg was the first drawbridge on the route. It was alarming for many reasons, among them: the sudden incline, the sketchy metal grating, and the sudden realization that I had done 0 to nil training for any sort of inclines.

As two-thirds of the title of this sections states, there were plenty of bridges and even the odd highway on & off-ramp to deal with. With the adrenaline of a man that has only just started a 56 mile bike ride, I attacked these inclines with gusto and very quickly realized the next 4 hours were going to suck as my quads started to cramp after the last bridge before entering a highway.

As you can see from the course map above, this section was shaped like a lollipop with way too much stem and not enough candy. After the first 10 miles filled with bridges and on/off-ramps, I settled into a good rhythm and made it to the first aid-station feeling positive and confident. I topped off on gatorade and water, grabbed half a banana, stretched my legs a little bit, and got back on the saddle ready for the next 15 miles until the next aid station.

Between that stretch (15-30 miles) is when storm clouds started to gather literally and figuratively. The “stem” of the lollipop was an out-and-back, so as I was heading out, I could see all the faster athletes heading back into town. This was disheartening as I still find it incredibly hard to not compare myself and my performance to another person. So seeing all these people whizzing by in the opposite direction was a blow to the confidence that I was slowly nursing after the shock of the bridges and inclines. As these pelotons headed back into town, the weather started to turn, with strong winds beginning to blow. I started to have flashbacks to the torrential downpour from Eagleman and felt my morale sink deeper and deeper into despair.

I got to the second aid-station mentally rattled and instead of being gentle to myself, I got frustrated that all these people were passing me and feeling as if any second spent in that aid station was a further failure and that I needed to get going immediately. This was one of the many mistakes that I committed during this 70.3 — it wasn’t the first and it certainly wasn’t the last.

Before I describe the second half of the bike leg I feel like I should describe a common misconception about long-distance triathlons. If you look at broadcasts from IM World Championships in Kona for example, you’ll see footage of people spread out all over the course. This makes it seem like everyone is equally distanced on the course and are mostly alone. That is simply not the case. A vast majority of folks in a 70.3 finish within the 5-7 hour range, this means that you’ll see huge clumps of people crossing the finish line during those times.

I bring this up because I was not in the 5-7 hour range for this 70.3 and at this point in the day I was utterly alone. I was headed back to town and could barely see other athletes in front of me. The more folks that passed me the worse I felt and the worse I performed. It was a never-ending spiral of despair and frustration.

I wanted to quit. I wanted to quit so badly that I even considered going over one of the set of railroad tracks that was on the course at an angle that I knew would cause my bike to become inoperable. No one would know that I had sabotaged my race. I would get back home and share how unfortunate the day had been and the bad luck that I’d had and no one would have known any differently.

As you are reading this, you and I both know that I didn’t sabotage my race but there’s no easy way to admit or describe how much I struggled for the last two hours of that ride. I don’t know if it was stubbornness, grit, resilience, or any other buzz word, but I kept going.

As much as I wanted the pain, the despair, the frustration to stop, I kept going for the next 25+ miles enduring every pedal stroke that got me closer to T2. By the time I got to T2, 99% of athletes were already on the run course and I was seriously terrified that I wasn’t going to make the time cut-off at 8:30 hours.

Who Needs the Right Socks Anyway?

I got to my spot in transition, dumped everything in my bag and realized that this race had become a comedy of errors. Long story short, I packed the wrong socks. Staring up at me from the pavement in T2 was a pair of socks that I knew were going to give me blisters. So either I got blisters or I would have to deal with the disgusting – and cursed – socks from the bike. I chose to go for the psychological comfort of wearing new socks. I needed to separate myself from the waking nightmare that was the bike leg, consequences be damned, and let me tell you – there were consequences.

The run started in a similar way to Eagleman, slow and furtive. I was experiencing major discomfort and tightness in my calves and wanted to be patient and ease into the run. While I knew the clock was against me, I figured that it would be way better to negative split the run than blow-up halfway through and not finish due to injury.

The course itself was freaking awesome! You run through downtown with a ton of restaurants and shops on either side of the street, so there is no shortage of fans to cheer you on and offer you a kind word. You then go out towards a neighborhood, hug a lakeshore, and then return the same way that you went out.

On the way out of town, I tried not to look at my watch as I knew that it would only cause me to push too hard, too quickly. Instead, I tried to go by feel as much as possible, aiming for whatever a 6-7 out of 10 effort looked like for me in that moment.

About a mile heading back into town, I saw IM staff starting to set up to pull runners of the course as they were not going to hit the time cutoff. My heart rate skyrocketed as I thought that they were about to approach me and my day would be over. I got closer and closer but as I ran by them they simply told me to keep going and that I was looking good. After that scare I started to look at my watch and paces religiously.

After doing some very quick and albeit loose math I realized that with the current pace that I had ran for the first 10 miles, I was going to arrive at the finish line with 4 minutes to spare until cutoff. I breathed a sigh of relief, took two steps, and then my brain realized the crucial error it had made in its calculations.

During races the clock doesn’t stop from the second you hit the water until you cross the finish line and I hadn’t accounted for the time that I had spent in transitions. Suddenly, a 4 minute buffer from a medal and a DNF felt tenuous at best. I should explain – if you cross the finish line while there are still athletes on the course who have not gone over their 8:30 hour time cutoff, but you have gone over your individual 8:30 hour limit, you will receive a medal at the end like everyone else, but when you go to the results page you will see a DNF (did not finish) next to your name.

So with 3 miles to go I had a big choice in front of me. Do I keep up the pace and nurse my feet — that at this point were bleeding due to blisters as it had started pouring down rain on the run, which didn’t help with the aforementioned sock problem — to the finish line were a DNF was all but certain or do I throw down the hammer and lay it all out there?

I decided that if I was going to be in pain and suffer, I might as well make it mean something. I hadn’t gone through that f***ing bike course, swam the best 1.2 miles of my life, and busted my buns on this run to see a DNF next to my name. So I ran…hard.

I dropped over 4 minutes from my previous splits and zoomed across the finish line with a time of 8:20:28, a little less than 10-minutes until cutoff.

Free Beer and Domino’s

Looking back on my state of mind as I crossed that finish line, I think I had some sort of out of body experience. When I look at pictures of myself, it feels like I’m looking at a stranger. After getting my medal and timing chip off of my ankle, I hobbled to the medical tent to get my blisters and bleeding heels looked at.

As I started to make my way, I told Dylan why I was heading to the medical tent and to not worry. I didn’t want him to see me making a beeline for the medical tent and start freaking out that something was seriously wrong.

After getting patched-up and getting my gear from T2, I got dressed and headed to the beer tent. The walk there was harder than the half-marathon run I had just completed. It was cold and rainy and I was sore, tired, and slightly delirious, but dammit, I was going to get my free beer. Later we ate some Dominos and I slept like a baby.

• 

• 

The next day we stopped at a restaurant for breakfast and began the journey back home.

A year later, I’m still not done unpacking everything that I learned that day – about myself, the world, and my place in it. The one thing that was crystal clear then and has only gotten clearer since is that I love this sport and cannot wait to get to my next starting line.