So here I am at the starting line for my first long distance race. The atmosphere couldn't have been better, they are playing good music to get you pumped up and the crowds were huge. You really got the feeling that you were a part of something special. So my swimming had improved quite a bit over the last 6 months or so. Heck, about 18 months ago I didn't even know how to swim. I could tread water and swim ok enough to get away from somebody in a pool if we were playing marco polo, but thats about. Now here I am getting ready to swim 1.2 miles in a lake with hundreds of people around me in the water thrashing about. To be honest, I wasn't nervous, I trusted my training and knew I was in good enough shape to line up at the start of this race and really compete and give it my all. My wet suit is zipped up, my race cap, goggles, and earlplugs are on and its time. I decided to line up at the front of my group, roughly 150 people, and thought that the fastest guys would pull away from me and the slow guys wouldn't catch me so I would have a bit of a buffer zone. It worked out perfect for about the first 200 yards when all of a sudden I got whacked pretty hard by somebody. It knocked my goggles clear off my head. By some miracle, my right arm was coming over top of my head to complete a stroke and my goggles flew off my head but I caught them in my right hand. AMAZING!!! I don't think my day would have been over, but swimming with no goggles would have been a nightmare start. Especially with over a mile of swimming still to go. I wasn't out of the clear yet though. I had to stop swimming and put the goggles on which was not easy with about 100 people directly behind me swimming at full speed. I got hit and bumped quite a bit but managed to get my goggles back on. I got back into my groove and found some feet to follow and draft off of. Did a pretty good job of that for a few hundred yards until I drifted directly behind the guy and sped up a bit which in return brought me right into this feet were he kicked me in the nose with his heel. Nothing major, enough to startle me but it was my fault. I got to close and he didn't know I was there. From that point on the rest of the swim was relatively uneventful. About 200 yards from the swim exit I had to pee real bad. I didn't want to waste the time in transition so I tried to pee in my wetsuit but I just couldn't get relaxed enough. I thought for a split second about grabbing onto a paddleboarder (safety people) and going then, but thought thats kind of an awkward feeling for both of us. Me grabbing onto their board and they ask me if I'm ok and I just say "yea, i'm fine, just peeing". hahaha. I decided to wait for transition. I finally feel the ground under my feet. Stand up and run over to the wet suit strippers and have them yank my suit off. I head up to transition, hit the first porta potty and run to my bike.

Hard to say, I survived, swam pretty good and other than a few bumps and knocks, I thought it went well. Maybe learn to pee while i'm swimming?

This went ok. I was trying to be under 5:00 total time for this stop but The porta potty probably cost me almost a full minute when you add in the time running there and actually going. One thing to note, I have pictures that I'll try to post but I was sitting down putting on my bike shoes when somebody next to me grabbed their bike and started to run out of my row and they stepped square on the top of my bare foot with their cleats. I have 3 nice little holes where their spikes dug into me. Not time to worry about that though. Had to go.

Well, this was supposed to be my time to "get my sh!t" together. I'm not the fastest biker so I decided I would just take this portion of the race a bit easier. I knew I would be out there on the course for roughly 3.5 hours. Pushing hard in the beginning would likely lead to me walking on the run. My only goal besides finishing the race was to run the entire run portion of this race. With that being said, I hopped on my bike out of transition and head out on the course. I had pre-ridden the course once already so I knew where the big hills were and knew what to expect. I was moving a long pretty well, averaging about 17-18 mph for the first 15 miles or so. I was taking in nutrition and drinking right on time. I had my garmin watch set to alert me every 20 mins and I would eat and drink. Somewhere between miles 15-20 things started to go horrible wrong. My right hamstring right above my knee cap was twitching like crazy. it got worse quickly and before I knew it, any time that I tried to coast and straighten out my leg, it would completely lock up. Not good. I started asking every person that went by if they had salt pills to help the cramping. Found a lady probably her 50's that finally had pills. I took 2 and told her that I hope the karma gods rained down on her from here on out. I took the pills and about 10 mins later I felt a bit better.

Fast forward about 30 mins and the cramps are back, but now they are in both of my hamstrings and they are painful. Coasting made it worse, so I was constantly pedaling with no breaks at all. Miles 15 to probably 45 had most of the hills on the course. These hills were not big at all, but very painful for me. Putting in a hard effort on the hills made my legs contract badly. Getting up out of the seat wasn't even an option, so I climbed each hill sitting down, At each rest stop I tried to take in chips and pretzels, even tried a banana. Nothing was helping. I stopped at the rest stop at mile 40 and decided to try and stretch a bit and use the porta potty. I noticed my pee was pretty clear, so that told me I assumed i was taking in enough water, but it wasn't helping. I continued to ask people for salt pills from about mile 25 to the finish but did not find anybody with pills until mile 55 of the bike. A guy game me another salt pill and I also wished him a great race and told him I wished that Karma helped him today as well. I came to the end of the bike and did the match and figured that I drank somewhere around 70 to 80oz's of fluids on the ride. I had two 21oz bottles of gatorade and grabbed two bottles of water from the rest stations and drank them as well. Even with all of that my cramps were still horrible. Odd thing was, I NEVER ONCE had cramps in training, ever. So discouraging.

I have no idea. wish I knew why I was cramping but I have no idea. I wasn't pushing hard, I had been drinking a ton of water all week leading up to the race too.

I saw my buddy Earl waiting at "bike in" and told him I didn't even know if i was going to be able to finish the run. He told me to stretch in transition and give it my best shot.

Here we go. I headed out on what I knew was going to be a long 13.1 miles. I started to run and the first aid station was literally a few hundred yards down the road. I stopped to pee, again my pee was pretty clear, at this point I don't think hydration was my cramping issue. I stopped and grabbed chips and pretzels to eat real quick hoping the extra salt would help. I started running and all of a sudden, I felt better. When I say better, I mean, I didn't feel like somebody was stabbing me in my legs anymore, but the pain was still there. I check my watch and i'm at a low 9min per mile pace and was cruising. I'm going to post my mile split on here to help people follow my story.


Split Name Distance Split Time Race Time Pace
1.8 mi 1.8 mi 16:23 4:39:45 9:21/mi
3.5 mi 1.8 mi 21:20 5:01:05 12:11/mi
5 mi 1.5 mi 15:46 5:16:51 10:30/mi
6.2 mi 1.2 mi 15:44 5:32:35 13:06/mi
7.9 mi 1.7 mi 20:17 5:52:52 11:47/mi
9.9 mi 2 mi 27:13 6:20:05 13:44/mi
11.5 mi 1.6 mi 21:17 6:41:22 13:18/mi
13.1 mi 1.6 mi 28:09 7:09:31 17:35/mi


The fist two miles of the run I really started to think that maybe the cramps would die down. At mile 2 I saw my wife's van, I told them to try and get there around the time the run started. They got stuck in traffic but it worked out perfect. I waved my hands and they rolled down the windows (her and the kids) and they started screaming at me and cheering. THAT SERIOUSLY MADE MY WHOLE DAY!!!! When I heard them yelling I figured, why not act like an idiot. So i turned backwards and started moon walking and they laughed and cheered even louder. Wow, just for a few seconds there I forgot all about the pain and everything. It was a great pick me up when I needed it. Shortly after that things took a turn for the worse. Around mile 3 I started having bad cramps again. I actually stopped for a solid 3 mins or so just to stretch. Things cleared up briefly and I just tried to run as much as I could, knowing that shortly my legs were just going to hurt to much to continue. Around mile 6 I was bent over stretching. This time my toes were cramping and my shins. I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW THAT WAS POSSIBLE!!!!!! I couldn't straighten my toes out. they were bunched up in my shoes. This was terribly painful. At that exact moment my buddy Sonny came running by and he saw I was hurting. I asked for some salt pills. He gave me 2 and I told him, don't stop, keep going. He looked really fresh, I felt great for him. I managed to hobble to the next aid station where I could take water and the salt pills. At this point they didn't help.

From here on out this was a sufferfest. Quads locking up and twitching, toes crunching up and cramping but the worst was my shins. The pain in my pains was unreal. I'm not going to lie, the thought of stopping came into my mind for a brief second. But there was no way I was stopping now. It was just mentally tough knowing that I had to still go almost 5 miles like this. I tried to start doing run / walk intervals. I said, OK, run for 4 mins, then walk for 1 min. So I started to run and it felt like forever, I looked at the watch and 1 minute had ticked off. So depressing. The worst part is that I had so much cardio left. I felt like I could have ran the last 7 or so miles completely if I had no pain. I saw Sonny again on an out and back loop around mile 9. He looked great, running strong. He handed me 3 more pills. I took them and told him to go kill it. I took the pills but at this point there was no return. The cramps were severe. My shins felt like somebody was stabbing me with a knife. I saw Earl again at mile 11 and he walked next to me for a bit. I told him "I'm going to try and run to that sign down there". I took off and started to run. I got about 30 yards or so and my legs gave out and I went to the ground. I tried again a short time later with the same result. I was reduced to walking at this point, although I was stubborn and tried to run after so often only to hobble and stumble and have to walk again. I had Earl call my wife to let her know I was ok, I didn't want her to be worried but her phone had died. The last mile of the race was great as far as support and spectators. My name is on the front of my bib# so people were constantly calling out "Go Rich, you got this". It helps, but doesn't take away the pain.

I made it to the last turn before the finishers shoot. I started to pick up speed and go from a walk to a shuffle. The crowds are getting louder. My shuffle is now a jog. I think I might actually be smiling at this point. The pain is still there, its terrible, but I try to stand up straight coming down the chute. It doesn't look good, it can't, but its the best I can do. Half way down the chute I see Sonny and his wife Karen that I work with on the left side and I go over to high five them. As soon as I do that, I see my wife and kids on the right side. I go to take a turn to head over that way and almost go down again. I stumbled, but kept my feet under me. High fived my wife and kids and headed to the finish. I hear the announcer calling me "Rich Leisner from Levittown, PA.........YOU ........are an ........IRONMAN" I put my hands up for a good picture but that caused my legs to give out again and I kind of stumbled across the line. I had a goal time in mind which was 6:30, but ended up finishing in 7:09. I had envisioned this journey ending differently but I really learned a lot about myself out there today.

I met up with my wife and kids and went and laid down on the bleachers. Tried to get up and get some food, but legs started cramping again so I went back and sat down again. Shortly after that my daughter found a spot in the shade, I tried to make my way over but had to sit down, I think all of the salt was upsetting my stomach. I ended up throwing up a few times. Then as I was sitting there, both of my feet locked up on me really bad. My foot locked in the "up" position. Meaning my toes were pointing towards my calves. It was very painful and I couldn't straighten them at all for about 2 minutes. My wife finally asked if i wanted her to stand on them to straighten them out. She did and the pain relieved. Its so weird to have no control over your legs. I saw Earl again and he was great today as well, he went and got my bike and stuff from transition. I was in no shape to move. I made my way to the medic tent hoping for an IV to stop the cramping but they just gave me chips and water.

In the end I really wanted to thank my wife. She is an amazing woman and supported me the whole time during my training. I don't even know if I could do this without her support. I wanted to thank the rest of my family, friends and relatives that supported me as well. The last thing I wanted to mention came way after the race was over. Monday while I was at bowling (yes I went bowling after all of this), my oldest daughter Hailey 16yrds old sent me a text "You inspired me to go out and run 4 miles. It's hard to even think you did all that yesterday". I got kind of choked up. In the end all you really want to do is be an inspiration to your kids. I'm a happy guy right now


HAHAHAHAHAHA. Seriously???