Ironman 70.3 Miami - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

Well, the swim is where the day started to go south - but I didn't know it at the time.

After jumping in the water for the start, I got lined up for the swim by going to the inside of the course lane and about two rows back. I had a few people around me, but I was where I normally am. In my previous races I'm usually right in the thick of it speed wise for a wave and I usually can get in the gap between waves and catch previous waves, so I figured getting to the inside for that first turn that was not far away would give me a fighting chance to get some space.

The gun goes off and the guy next to me starts off with a couple of breast strokes and kicks out and right into my ribs on my right side just as I get started. It was a big hit (more on that later), but I popped my head up fast to find a new way and I continued stroking fast to see if I could get on the lead wave. I managed to get into the front edge of the pack until the first turn. I made a great turn and was in the leading edge still of the pack when I felt like what was a pretty horrible side cramp and my pace slowed pretty significantly and started losing the pack. As well, I misjudged the early morning cloud cover and after turn 1 the sun was right in my eyes making sighting an issue and I did not bring my tinted goggles to the start. At this point I was doing a bit of a weave on the course and I lost the pack.

Turn 2 has a hideous amount of sargasso and it was like crawling through wet hay. Mentally I got distracted by that and my form went to hell at that point. And the pain is increasing in my side.

The rest of the swim was pretty standard, but on the last leg I was definitely having problems with pulling to the left as I was having to resight almost every other breath.

Hit the swim stairs and immediately my left calf cramped up. I chalk that up to nutrition in the morning, but that's not the first time that happened, so I need to figure it out. Not hugely worried as it went away, but it was a pretty nasty cramp.

The run from the swim exit to the entrance to transition was painful as it felt like my right side was on fire. My wife ended up taking a picture of me and I was clearly in more pain than I knew at the time. I actually racked that up to the fact that I thought I had just a bad side cramp to match the cramp in my left calf.

Get more space around myself at the start.
Do more non-wetsuit swim training for races that have a chance of no wetsuit
Make sure I'm adequately fueled before getting in the water - especially if there is as much time as there was between my wave and the start (a hour).
Spend more time visualizing the swim course at the time of day I would be swimming it - figure out where the sun will be and what will be challenging for sighting
Make sure to down the gel I was carrying in my tri top on the run from the swim exit to T1

My T1 went long for good and bad reasons. I took a little time and worked out the calf cramp. I also helped a guy that was one rack over and up from me who was freaking out because he had a flat and he couldn't find his CO2, so I unscrewed one off the back of my bike and tossed it and one of my tire levers to him so he could get going. I'd never raced with my tri bike before, so I had a hard time getting it under the rack because I put an XLAB Super Wing on the back and had never experienced getting my tall-ish bike and the rack under the transition rack.

I had a max allowed time of 8 minutes (ya, I know that's obscenely long, but I was also thinking I was going to have to tape an old healed blister area on my foot, but it turns out I didn't)

Practice unracking the bike with equipment on it.
Maybe keep water bottle off the tail rack until I've got it off the rack and then slam the water bottle in and go
Go faster!

Oh, my. This is where the story of my day went off the rails.

Came out of T1, swung my leg over, and got going. Had a little trouble clipping in on the right side which also happened on the test ride the day before. Need to get the cleats and pedals checked to see what is going on. I never got the loud positive click I'm used to even though I was definitely in.

Got going out of town and although my legs felt weird (the normal swim to bike feelings I think), my side still really hurt. I figured it's just discomfort and decided to push through and tough it up. I've trained for the last 15 months for this race and a side cramp isn't going to stop me!

After we cleared the narrower sections and got out towards the airport, I started trying to drop onto the bars after I'd taken in some additional nutrition (blue sludge ... a concoction of CarboPro and Blue Gatorade). My legs were starting to feel ok. I got to about mile 10 when I really started to notice the headwind.

At this point I really wanted to spend time in aero, but every time I dropped down into aero it felt like someone was stabbing me with a knife in my side and then I could barely take a breath. I really thought I was just suffering from side stitches or something because when I was up on the pursuit bar I could breathe a little easier and I was in pain, but less so. The headwind was really difficult when I couldn't drop into aero, but I adjusted my shifting pattern to compensate for the higher resistance in the wind when I couldn't stay down. However, when I looked at my watch at about mile 10, I was ahead of my target pace by about 1.8 mph on average and the average was going up, so I was higher than that.

When I hit the aid station, the pain was now constant and high even on the pursuit bar, but I kept telling myself that it would ease up some when I hit the turnaround and that wind would turn to tailwind and then it would get a little easier on my side. I got water downed it fast and then I ended up deciding to pull over fast and see if I could stretch out whatever was (I thought) cramping me up. I stretched and while I was there one of the medics came over and asked me if I was OK. I told him I was, remounted and pedaled on.

The next 7 miles were agony. Every downstroke on the pedal was like a knife in my ribs. I couldn't take a full breath (and hadn't been able to for a while). I stopped taking nutrition and was focused on trying to just keep my HR down and cadence up to just get to the next aid station and the turn around. Finally I just decided I had to stop and try and stretch out my side again (still thinking it was a cramp).

I pulled over and the next thing I clearly remember was two police officers standing over me and someone holding onto my hand and telling me I was going to be OK. I heard the siren of an ambulance and then there were medics. I kept telling them to just help me up and I'd be ok and wanted to keep going. I think I tried to get up once and the medic just sort of put a hand on my shoulder and said let's get you figured out. He asked me what had been going on since he saw me (he was the one who was at the previous aid station). I explained the pain and the breathing and that I got kicked and couldn't get rid of the side stitch. He started poking around on my side and I think I may have screamed when he hit my ribs.

Then I heard the words that caused me to break down in tears. "2050, DNF. 2050, DNF". One of the medics said as I tried to argue that my day was done and to relax while they took care of me.

And so ended my day.

I now know that I fractured two ribs during the swim and have a partial fracture of a 3rd. My doctor actually told me that I was lucky because if I had ended up with a high speed crash on the bike or a severe fall on the run, I could have ended up with life-threatening injuries. I already posted some of this in Tri Talk looking for help on how to handle the emotions of the DNF, but I thought I would just get my day out there as part of the therapy of dealing with this.

My swim was below my target, but my bike was shaping up to be better than my target. I was on track to finish probably ahead of schedule and in plenty of time before the cut offs. I was excited.

I don't know ...

I'm not exactly sure how to rate this race since I only got to participate in about half of it, but I thought it was fine for what I did witness.