OUCH.. more like WTF just happened to me? Swim was going fine for me. It's my worst event and that shows, but whatever. What happened to me 20-30 feet from shore just before the finish of my swim was my own personal nightmare in the making. I was in the breakwater and guess I thought I could run the rest of the way in. I went to touch bottom with my left leg and it wasn't there... too deep. In my sweeping motion, I induced a massive cramp in my left calf. If you have ever awoken in severe pain with a calf cramp, this was exactly like that. I immediately rolled to my back. The water was too deep to stretch it out by pulling my toes and I was in pain, but that was only the beginning. I have no idea how long it was, maybe a minute when finally, the cramp started to ease. I began to roll back to a freestyle position when in creating the power to turn, my right calf went into an equally massive cramp. Again, I rolled onto my back and had to wait for this new cramp to ease. I was in total agony, but remained composed. I was however, at a total loss as to what was happening. There I was, at essentially the beginning of my first half IM, and BOTH of my calf muscles are in total cramp. I thought my day was over. I mean it's not I didn't need my calves for the additional 69.1 miles that were ahead of me. Anyway, a minute or so later, the second cramp eased as well. I carefully finished the swim and proceeded to do a light jog up to T1 trying to determine if my physical state would allow my day to continue. For the first time in my racing life, I entertained the thought that a DNF was very possible, and at that point, almost probable.

I still have no idea what happened. I need advice here. That cannot happen again. I'm planning on signing on with a tri coach for swim coaching, but that is not going to solve what induced those cramps. I just did St. Anthony's two weeks earlier and had no problems in rougher conditions.

Working theorys:
Had a cold for the previous week and a half: The only other race related calf cramping I have ever had came in a marathon following a much more severe upper respiratory infection. That was only one calf, and came at mile 22 or so of that race.

Potassium deficiency: Not that it would have helped, but I ate a banana about one hour prior to the cramping.

Wetsuit compression on the calf muscles: Less likely because I had zero problems at St. Anthony's.

I raced St. Anthony's hard and did not feel totally recovered. This is getting the most attention from me as the possible problem.

Voodoo doll: There's a few people out there who would probably want to stick pins in my calves during a swim to not at least gives this some minor consideration. :-)

In transition I made some evaluations of my situation. My calves were no longer in cramp mode, but the damage was done. They were both burning bad. (I need to research the damage a cramp does). Once I got my wetsuit off, I literally thought to myself. 'F' it.. I can do this. I refocused mentally, but was still way off my game. A very welcome T1 went as well as I could have asked for.

Can't really assess this as my situation was atypical.

Ah, the bike. 56 miles to turn my day around. My calves were doing 'ok' relative to what happeded earlier, and my bike felt great.. one problem though. On a day where I REALLY wanted to pace correctly because of the distance, my bike computer trashed itself, flashed off, then came back on with an incorrect setting or two.. my bike speed read 30 mph when I clearly knew I was not doing any more than 18 to 20 MPH.. and this was at mile 5. For the rest of the ride I had no idea what I was doing MPH wise and had to go by what I thought was the correct speed. In the end, I actually did pretty good, but could have done better. I wanted to do between 18 and 18.5, and my overall pace ended up being 18.2 MPH. I think I could have pulled off a 19-19.5 pace with no problem on the run... on any other day. In the end, my bike distance read 80.77 miles. Stupid Sigma piece of crap that never worked right anyway. Looking back, my calves were sore, but they did not impact my bike in an obviously negative way.

In retrospect, I should have thrown the computer when I had the urge to do so (mile 6 of the bike). It would have been a cheap thrill, but well worth it. Otherwise, Train with longer rides and more bricks. My longest ride in training was 50 with no brick. My longest brick was 20 plus 3. That's not nearly enough. I think a few 60 plus 8's would be good.

This was a strange transition. I have no idea what took me so long. I felt ok, assesed my calf situation further and determined that my day could continue. I was happy with that. I grabbed some sunblock that steamy had given me earlier and applied it where I thought I needed it.

Again, I cannot adequately assess this. I was totally off my mental game and it showed. Mental errors all over the place. Dropping gels, forgetting this that and the other thing, and other time killers to be sure.

The run started fine and contined that way through mile 9 ish. At about mile 9.1 / 9.3, I blew up completely and mostly walked the rest of the way. I did run the final mile, but by that time, the time damage was done. The run should be my strong point, but this time, it was not. I was insanely hot, had a little bit of race anxiety going thinking I was going to collapse, and was just plain miserable. During the run I had thoughts like.. 'never again', 'Why do I do this to myself?', 'well, not everyone is meant to be an ironman', 'maybe I should just stop racing all together', and actually started humming the American Idol bad day song. I was miserable, and nothing but time could turn that around.

I don't know yet. I want to blame the blow up on my cold, then my training, then my calf cramps, then my attitude.. Of course my training could have been better, but I no longer think that was my issue as I did in the beginning. My training is not so dissimilar to my friends who also did this race and they both did well. Rebecca with a 5:34, and Jimmy with a 5:58 +2 min penalty.. (bwahahahahaha) Also, Harris who was less trained than me, did a 6:23. The more I work it out, the more I know that my issues were most certainly not training related.

I needed about 45 min to gain my composure. I hydrated and reflected. I also told my group of friends and truly believed at the time that I had no fun (not true) and that I would never do another half again (also not true). Over the next few hours though, I changed my attitude. I was happy with what I was able to overcome, and decided that I am going to come back next year and redeem myself. That and this setback is not nearly the end of my long course adventures. Although I had a really bad day, in the end I learned more about myself and more from this race than any other race has ever taught me.


Not yet determined. I was shooting for a 6:00, and ended up with a 6:43. I had a lot of issues, but sitting center stage are my calf cramps. I think they played a role I am only beginning to understand. As of this writing, Monday night the 15th, I can barely walk, or even stand up straight because of my calf soreness. I have little to no quad soreness... which tells me that generally, I could have given more.


This is a great event. The volunteers are to be commended. For my race, the water stops on the bike and the run were very well done. The after party is fantastic. I will do this again.