At the swim start, I had placed myself what I thought would be accordingly; unfortunately I had two small issues that would later turn into one larger issue.

1. I have lost a significant amount of weight when training and for various reasons this year. My wetsuit was not fitting properly, every time I would turn my head to breath, a fresh gallon or so of water would come rushing into my wetsuit. I felt some of it going into the sleeves of the wetsuit and it made my arms VERY heavy. I knew this before the race and went and looked at sleeveless suites. I had one and I called my mother who was leaving Saturday morning asking her to bring my other wetsuit from home. Arriving Saturday night she mentioned that she forgot to get bring it. So I made do. My swim was a lot slower than I would have liked it to be but I made do.
2. In the excitement of the day about 100 swimmers who were REALLY excited to start the race pushed ahead of me to the swim start. Not an issue right? I didn’t think so until I tried to get through the lot. I ended up getting kicked in the nose hard. Not sure how many people out there have been hit in the nose really hard but this was one of those BLAM I see a white light and have a funny taste in my mouth. This was bad; I immediately started to get a headache. But once again persevered because I knew I had Tylenol in my T1 bag.

At the last buoy on the swim, I started to vomit and that was not good, I contemplated dropping out but that was not an option that early in the morning.

Coming out of the water my mom said that I had blood trickling down from my nose :(

Been up front on the swim… I also would probably have been a little more aggressive in making sure that I was in the front.

I would have worn a sleeveless wetsuit that fit properly.

The mount line was about 30 feet from the start of the "down helix" got on my bike and started to head out.

I would have hurried a little more. My goal was 7 min transitions.

I took three Tylenol in T1 and started my nutrition right away; the first loop the head started hurting worse and worse. By the time that I had made it into Verona, I had a full blown migraine. I stopped at special needs to get more Tylenol out of my SN bag, downed those and continued on. I made it to the top of the first hill when I started throwing up. This continued on for the next 4 hours so I will spare you the details.

I saw Tammy on the bike she said some encouraging words then flew by me. I ended up stopping a few more times to let my stomach purge itself. On the way back into Madison, I was starving since I had nothing in my stomach. I stopped and ate my last 4 fig Newton’s and drank some Gatorade then made it back into Madison.


Hindsight being 20/20, I think that I should have dropped out of the race.

Volunteers racked our bikes for us, not a bad T2. I was still not feeling well. I ended up taking a few mins to collect myself.

The run started out not that bad, I was on a decent pace despite having horrible stomach issues and not being able to hold any solids down. Around 14 miles I started to fall apart and walked for a while. I am not sure of the mile marker but by the octopus car wash I started throwing up again. I sat on a rock and watched the race for probably a half an hour then I got up and made myself finish. My mom and her husband were at the finish. It was pretty welcoming to see them.

Once again I think that I should have dropped out of the race.

Finish line catcher was there was looking for any BT'ers but found none. Walked around a lot and it started to rain so I got back to the hotel, ordered some room service tried to adjust the temperature then went to sleep.


There are a lot of issues that I had personally. My only complaint against the race itself was that it seemed to be very "over organized". It seems that there is a lot of confusion as to where to go to do this or that. The signage was small and on a dry erase board this could be done a little better. All in all it is a great race and I was fortunate/dumb enough to sign up again for it next year.