Author: kennettron

Disaster struck at 10 p.m. The night before my flight to Atlanta, our (myself and Colin Laughery’s) Airbnb host canceled. I spent a half an hour arguing with the host—who only said she was going to cancel on us (because of an alleged broken hot water heater) but didn’t actually follow through with it. This is apparently a tactic unscrupulous hosts use to get their would-be guests to cancel so they don’t have to give a refund. The next hour was spent haggling with a half dozen Airbnb employees based in India to give me a discount for a new place, since all the cheap options were long gone. The new house ended up being twice the size and five times nicer than our original house, so the late night stress was worth it in the end. 

But as usual, the stress didn’t end there. After a full day of travel to Augusta on Thursday, the next two days were somehow jam packed with rides, swims, grocery runs, the stupid waste of time pro meeting, bike drop off, driving all over town, etc. As I finished my third bowl of ice cream on Saturday night, feet finally up on the couch, it felt like I’d barely sat down since we got there. 

The race started in near pitch-black, because that’s the best time to swim in cold, fast-moving water, and my day was off to a good start. Thanks to the current, I exited the swim just a minute and a half behind the lead group. I fumbled with the visor as I got my helmet on and decided, last-second, to ditch it in case it decided to fog up. That was my first mistake, as everyone knows that a visor shaves off 40 watts, about three minutes per 40 kilometers, I believe. 

Next, my legs made sure to waste the down river swim bonus by feeling like absolute garbage for the first 15 miles of the bike. At first, my quads seized up and I had to essentially soft pedal off and on for five minutes. Then my glutes cramped up. When the cramping/seizing was over with, I gloomily  realized I also just didn’t seem to have it today. The power wasn’t there, and even if it did come later, the hilliest section of the course was upon us. I had to take advantage now. As part of a large chase group, I was at least getting a benefit of being in the draft. Someone on the side of the road—this is always a super trustworthy source of information—hollered that we were two minutes back on the leaders. But how many leaders? And did that guy say two minutes, or three? I began hoping the large group I was in might just catch whoever was up the road without me having to do anything.

As we approached what I felt like might be the first longish hill, the itch to leave them behind grew. I said the hell with it and put in a long surge, getting away by myself, briefly, before I was joined by Trevor Foley, who apparently just learned how to ride a bike last year. This should make all of us feel pretty shitty about ourselves since he had the fastest bike split of the day (beat me by a second) and had enough left in the tank to run a 1:08.

I forced my legs to do some work, still not feeling good, cresting and descending small risers for 20 or 30 minutes. We passed a few guys but the gap to the leaders wasn’t coming down very quickly. Eventually Foley came around and got us the rest of the way across to the group of five in front: eventual winner Jason West, Martin Ulloa, Filipe Azevedo, Justin Metzler, and Dylan Gillespie.  

It was late in the bike leg (mile 40 or so) and the road was essentially dead flat but Foley and I put in some digs in the next 15 miles to get away from those guys. Nothing worked. I just got more tired. With a few miles to go, I decided to just sit up and take it easy. And by Jove it was easy! I know there’s a huge benefit, but it’s always shocking how big of a draft you get four or five people back in a line like that. 

The seven of us came off the bike together, but within a mile of the run I was by myself. I’d dreamed of coming out of T2 with a big gap and running a 1:14, but I was missing 20 watts (I only averaged 311) and now it seemed that my legs weren’t going to run as fast as I’d planned either. The streets were too quiet. Too wide and monotonous. At least there weren’t any hills.

I had a burst of hope when I passed Gillespie and began making up ground on Ulloa, who was in 5th, but that’s as far as things went before my momentum was zapped by a momentary urge to vomit. I choked nausea back and slowed down for a minute or two. Content with 5:50 pace, my legs weren’t able to get back up to speed, then Ulloa was out of sight.

I spent a good couple miles wondering why I do these miserable races before I refocused on maintaining 6th place, which would at least pay for the trip and a couple new house plants. My thoughts and emotions (fear of getting caught, contentment with 6th, self-doubt and disdain for being content with 6th, anger and confusion about my poor bike performance, and then finally elation for the pain being over) were a rollercoaster until I crossed the line. In the end I ran a 1:16, which wasn’t great, but more importantly it wasn’t a catastrophe like the first half of my run at Boulder 70.3.

I’d say I’ve recovered fairly well since Embrunman. After a long-ish rest period, I managed to get a solid week and a half of dedicated training in leading up to Augusta. In fact, I had my best training performance about 10 days ago (it’s too bad the race wasn’t that day) during a five hour ride and a short, fast run off the bike.

Things are looking fine for Ironman Arizona. But I definitely need to focus on the run though. And the bike. And the swim. Fuck. 

My dad and I flew to France on a Monday. The race was the following Monday. From Monday to Monday, I had one single night of good sleep. During that jet-lagged, sleep-deprived week, I ran a total of five, leg-aching miles. Six would have snapped a tibia or two. And the day before the race, I was still in the dark about how we were required to handle the bike feed zones. Stop and unscrew our bottles to be filled by volunteers, or were we able to ride through like normal and grab a new bottle? Confusion, fatigue, and less-than-confidence-inspiring-runs were mounting. Things were not looking good, except for our cheese selection in the fridge. The cheese selection (my dad is an amatuer cheese maker who happens to focus on French alpine cheeses) was fucking spot-on. But everything else was sliding off a cliff, like a plate of Tomme cheese…sliding off…a cliff I guess.

Yet, somehow, I managed to finish what would end up being the hardest race of my life. Just 41 seconds behind the winner.

Embrunman did not begin like other races. The men’s field started all at once—pros and amateurs together—ten minutes behind the women, in a line 30-meters across on the beach. There was pushing, elbows, more pushing, more elbows. We crept forward as the seconds ticked by. The first buoy flashed from a red blinky light. The others were lost in the predawn darkness. Or maybe there were no other turn buoys. It was impossible to tell.

I counted down in my head, guessing when the gun would go off, wondering if my reaction time would be better than 0.1 seconds. It was not. The gun boomed, we sprinted, I reached the water and dolphin-dove into third or fourth position, my right google filling instantly with water. I didn’t veer to the right quickly enough, and a dozen more guys were suddenly in front of me. From there, chaos ensued as incredibly slow (relatively slow) swimmers were now dog paddling in my way, cutting me off from a fast, easy swim on the feet of the three or four leaders, who already had a gap. I made my way around the slower guys and eventually fell into a decent rhythm a few hundred meters into the race, only to be intentionally pushed under water by someone behind me. I came to the surface, beyond just mad, and doubled down on revenge. From there, things finally settled. 

Things settled too much. The pace became pedestrian, or whatever that translates to for swimming since a pedestrian pace of three or four miles an hour would have been pretty damn good. What we were doing felt half-assed. I moved up, realized the pace was okay, and sat in, telling myself it was fine to have a slow swim because it was going to be a long, solo slog for the next nine or ten hours. There would be no big bike pack to bridge up to today. The bike course was 116 miles with 12,500 feet of elevation gain over rough, technical roads, summiting a 7,700 foot peak, and more turning than every single triathlon I’ve done, combined. And the run was longer than five miles.

I got out of the water at some point and found myself pedaling up a steep climb out of town between a thick throng of spectators. Spectators? At a triathlon? It was weird. And welcomed. In fact, spectators were out in force at every little town we passed through. 

The first climb had pitches of up to 22%, but was mostly undulating and peaceful. The air and my worries were still chilled. I looked down and saw an average power of 350 for the first 20 minutes. Totally unsustainable. Totally dumb. I’ll regret this later, I informed myself. But it doesn’t even hurt yet! My dumber self replied. And I probably swam like an hour! I felt like I had to make up serious time. (Later I saw that I swam 51 minutes and was 5th out of the water).

The first descent ensued and I began botching corners left and right, unable to commit to the outside line, which may or may not have contained an oncoming vehicle since the road wasn’t closed. One guy, who had been sticking with me for the past few miles, passed me and was instantly 10 seconds up the road, screaming down the descent. I lost more confidence in my descending when he vanished out of sight. The road became increasingly technical, and turned directly into the rising sun for what must have been four or five miles. I shielded my eyes with one hand off the bars to scan the upcoming turns. By the bottom, the guy who’d passed me was almost a minute up the road, and had connected with another rider for the flat section of the course that followed the lake. In hindsight, I realized that this race attracts good cyclists (obviously), and that my performance on the bike wasn’t quite as bad as I felt like in the moment. However, if I were to do this race again, I’d practice these damn descents. 

I continued riding too hard, angry with myself for not descending faster. If I can just get up to those two guys ahead, I’ll have someone to work with as we make our way up to the ten other guys that must be five minutes ahead by now. Eventually I did catch them, right as the original guy (Kevin Rundstadler?) was forced to stop when his chain fell off. I rode around the other guy (former winner William Meneson) and put in a pretty good surge to gap him. No reason to tow a better runner than myself along up the road.

But then I found myself alone again. Damn. Not ideal since the next 20 miles were relatively flat, though still hilly compared to most races. And by this point in the race I was getting feedback from the side of the road that the leaders were three minutes ahead, down from four when I was in pursuit of William and Victor a few miles prior. It was progress, albeit slow. 

The highlight of Embrunman is the col d’Izoard, an above-category climb that tops out at 7,743 feet. I’d climbed it a few days earlier and met my dad at the top. I think I told him that it “wasn’t particularly hard,” considering we have plenty of steep, high-elevation climbs in Boulder. But mid way up (the categorized section of Izoard is something like 13 miles) I began feeling it. I was approaching threshold and a cyclist out on a training ride was keeping pace with me, uncachable just a few bike lengths ahead, for well over two miles. In my defense, she looked pretty damn strong. 

I choked down a power bar from a feed zone (I’d finished all my other food by then) and finally passed her. Earlier, it was confirmed that there was only one guy ahead of me (not the five or ten I assumed), and I’d narrowed the gap to two minutes. I pushed on as I approached the switchbacks. Just 8K of climbing to go. My power meter had gone haywire less than two hours into the race, so I went by feel. Which wasn’t ideal, since I felt like catching whoever it was up the road. At all costs.

I summited about 90 seconds behind him (eventual winner Niek Heldoorn), stopped to refill on food and water, and began the agonizingly technical, switchback descent. I tried staying focused as I approached each corner, but no matter what I did, I braked too much, or took a shitty line, or both. I simply wasn’t used to this kind of descending, which requires a ton of braking at relatively slow speeds. It didn’t help that I was riding a disc wheel with rim brakes. But that’s no excuse. I lost over a minute to Niek on the descent, and there was plenty more descending to do even after I rode through Briancon and got back, briefly, onto the highway.

This next phase of the bike leg was all doom and gloom. I needed water, but none was to be found. One of my bottles got ejected from my rear cage on the Izoard descent, and the other one had only been filled half way. I had now come to terms with the fact that I’d pushed way too hard the first few hours, and I hadn’t gained any energy from coasting down the Izoard. I was still losing power with every pedal stroke, and even though I had plenty of food to eat, my legs were growing weaker and weaker. But what made me really get down on myself was the realization that there were still 50 miles to ride and at least 4,000 feet of elevation to climb. And a marathon. It was all beginning to feel a bit impossible. 

The remaining climbs were long and steep. The roundabouts were incessant. The traffic in the roundabouts was also incessant and I was damned if I was going to slow down for anyone. I made up for the risks I hadn’t taken on the Izoard descent, passing cars on the inside of the roundabouts at times. My stomach was queasy from the high quantity of sugar I’d already consumed. But I had to keep eating. I forced down gummy candies and caffeinated Cliff Bloks. I felt worse and worse, yet the gap somehow remained stagnant at four minutes. While I didn’t think I’d be able to finish the marathon (in fact I knew that I wouldn’t be able to finish it) I vowed to give the remaining bike leg a solid effort, and pray that I wouldn’t get caught by too many guys. Being re-passed on the bike would be pretty damn embarrassing. There must have been a mounting hoard just behind me at that point, I assumed. 

Cruelly, the bike course ends with one last 15 minute climb. Right as you get back into town, you’re diverted up, up, and away. Then, when the climb finally tops out, you’re awarded with the worst pavement of the entire ride for the technical descent that follows. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. Because this was the type of racing I’d been seeking ever since I started the sport.

I came off the bike with just a three minute deficit to Niek. I wasn’t sure what the gap was back to third (Andrej Vistica, another former winner), but let myself believe (falsely) that the gap was 15 or 20 minutes. Right away I could feel  that I was going to be able to run fairly well. My chest and lung cramping were minimal. My legs felt wobbly and weak, but not achey or dead. The main issue those first few miles was getting enough water on myself to cool down. Unlike Ironman, the aid stations weren’t every mile, and the early afternoon heat was baking in.

The first lap went by without too much agony, and at the turnaround to lap two, the gap to Niek was still exactly three minutes. I noted the average pace on my watch (6:30 per mile) and knew that it was unlikely that I’d be able to go any faster this next lap. In fact, 6:30 pace was way faster than I thought was possible. But I was only going to get slower, so my one chance at catching him was if he slowed more than me.

The details of the second lap are already growing hazy. The moment I remember most clearly was when two spectators yelled, “Go Kennett! We met your dad and he’s very proud of you!” This brought a smile to my face, and I briefly sped up. I continued looking for any chance to smile—and refocus my brain away from the pain it was dwelling on—whether it was through feed zones or giving high fives to little kids. It seemed to work for a while.

The gurgling in my stomach grew throughout that lap, and I eventually decided it needed to be dealt with. Now. Not later. With no porta potties in sight, I peeled off the top of my tri suit and stepped off the dirt path into a field. Out came liquid furry. It was over and done with in mere seconds, though my gap to Niek increased from 2:30 back up to three minutes.

The third and final lap was the hardest, obviously. My legs had absolutely nothing in them as I climbed the switchback hill that headed up into town. I didn’t dare look at my pace for that entire mile, knowing it would only be depressing. I was pretty sure I was going to be caught by Andrej at this stage of the race. He’d narrowed the gap to three minutes at the start of the lap, and I was frequently informed that he was coming. “Third is coming! Third is coming!” As if he were winter.

I kept drinking, kept forcing disgusting caffeinated gels down my throat, kept dumping liter-and-a-half bottles of water over my head whenever I had the chance. Kept telling myself that I could hold him off. And you can still catch 1st! I tried to convince myself with around five miles to go. I didn’t believe it, but a few miles later, when Andrej had cut the gap to less than two minutes, my body finally cooperated. I’ve never caught a second wind that late into a run before. With four kilometers to go, I dropped the pace by 30 seconds per mile. Then by nearly a minute per mile. I was no longer worried about being caught. I was running so fast, at least compared to before, that I actually thought there might be a chance to win. It felt as if all the sugar and caffeine had finally made it out of my stomach and into my bloodstream. The pain disappeared. I let rage take over, sporadically yelling and grunting like a wild boar. I’m sure I was not a pretty sight. 

As I approached the transition area, I could hear the crowd cheering Niek down the finish chute. There was no chance at catching him, though I pushed all the way to the end anyways, filled equally with relief and regret. Relief that I hadn’t been caught, regret that my body hadn’t cooperated until it was too late. I crossed the line in nine and a half hours, less than a minute behind Niek, which must be the closest this race has ever been. 

By far the most important aspect of the trip was having my dad there. It was the first big trip he and I have done together since I was in middle school, and capping the adventure off with such a huge result made the experience unforgettable.

Until next time, Embrunman! 

I completed part of a race this past weekend, which unfortunately falls in line with the last race I wrote a blog post for: Lake Placid, which was about a year ago (it’s been a while since I’ve updated this blog, and I’ll get to why in a minute). Like Lake Placid, I didn’t finish Oregon 70.3. Finishing was never the goal. That should be the title of someone’s memoir. 

The swim was over as soon as it started thanks to a ripping current on the Willamette River, likely caused by the entire population of Eugene flushing their toilets at the same time. And unlike most triathlon swims, this one was actually pretty darn fun. At certain shallow sections you could see the rocky riverbed rushing by at nearly running pace. If only swimming was more like running. And running was more like riding a bike. And riding a bike was more like eating really, really good Mexican food with a self-serve salsa bar.

I exited the water in 16:30, just a handful of seconds down on first. About half the field was only a handful of seconds down. They must have taken a short cut. I must have too.

I hadn’t run in a month, but I managed to reach the bikes first in transition. Typically—particularly in the last few injury- and illness-plagued years—almost all the bikes are gone by the time I get to mine.

Within a few miles, I was on my own and off the front (after somehow accruing a mysterious penalty, probably for being too good-looking—though I’ll never know what it was actually for). Kyle Buckingham and Justin Metzler led the chase with a group of a dozen forming a minute or so behind them. The first 12-odd miles of the bike course were slightly rolling, shaded, and even somewhat technical in a few sections. The good times were not to last. The main chunk of the bike course was on flat farmlands—still picturesque, but not my favorite terrain. 

By the turnaround I had about 2.5 minutes on Kyle and Justin, and an additional minute or two on the main group. My power was still high at that point—346—and my legs were feeling okay; a sub two hour bike split seemed likely (though it didn’t happen). 

As I rode back in towards transition, still with 25 miles to go, innocent, unjaded age groupers—who were doing the sport for at least some of the right reasons—began cheering and yelling for me. Their enthusiasm was wasted. I didn’t deserve it, because I hadn’t even put running shoes or my race bib in transition.

Two months ago, my right patellar tendon flared up, and despite taking it somewhat easy it refused to heal and I was diagnosed with some minor tendinopathy (degradation of the tendon). Because I suffered through three years of painful running with a torn left patellar tendon, initially caused by tendinopathy on that left side in 2018, I felt that it would be wise to do everything possible to let this more recent knee injury heal. And that meant getting a PRP injection (platelet rich plasma) a week before the race, and opting out of the run to let that PRP do its job. Normally I would have dropped out of the race entirely, but my parents live in Oregon, and the trip was more about visiting my dad and making excellent homemade chili rellenos than racing anyways. 

Now in the last 15 miles of the bike leg, my power was dropping significantly. I’d hoped to set a huge power record for myself, yet despite the knowledge of not having to run off the bike, I wasn’t able to dip into threshold and average something crazy like 340 or 350. I guess I just don’t have that type of power anymore, which makes sense since I haven’t trained it in the past seven years. 

I was able to reach T2 with a five-and-a-half-minute lead, being cheered on by spectators and volunteers, unsuspecting of my lazy and sly intentions of dropping out. It was undoubtedly an odd sight as I took my time getting off the bike, then slowly walked away to talk to my dad.

Uh, does this chump know he’s supposed to run? 

In hindsight, I sort of wish I had put my run gear in transition. Of course, I would have ridden a bit easier in the last 10 miles so the gap wouldn’t have been quite so large. And I still would have had that penalty for briefly being within 100 meters of another athlete. So in double hindsight, it was probably the right call to not fuck my knee up and attempt an all-out half marathon with zero run fitness. 

I had a great weekend with my dad (the chili rellenos turned out fantastic) and hopefully saved my knee for some run training that will allow me to finish my main race goal of the summer—Embrunman. My bike fitness seems to be coming along, and if I can trust the result of a downcurrent swim in which everyone swam 9 miles an hour, my swim is right there too. 

Now, for those wondering why I essentially let this blog die, I apologize. But as I’ve stated in past race reports, I’ve been using my good words to complete my novel, and one only has so many good words. Best not to waste too many more on blog posts. The Good Lord knoweth I’ve squandered millions of them over the years, ranting about pet peeves, races not won, and funny racoon jokes. In all seriousness though, I think we really do have a limited capacity for writing, and 

It was a warm, gray, drizzly morning. I slipped into the cold water of Keystone Lake and swam easily for a few minutes before bobbing in the water, taking in the smell and taste of a dead skunk floating somewhere near the shore. My alarm had gone off at 4am, but only now was I fully awake.

15 minutes later, the start gun went off and the normal chaos ensued. I fought off someone on my left, unintentionally knocking him on the head fairly hard with my hand. Lost the feet we were both fighting for in the brown murk, saw that the majority of the field was veering left, away from me, and redirected my course back in that direction until I eventually fell in behind someone for a few minutes.

Despite the 56 or so starters—possibly the largest ever pro Ironman field ever assembled—I didn’t get in any major fights during those first 300 meters, which probably meant I wasn’t being agro enough. By the first turn buoy, maybe 500 meters into the swim, I found myself near the front of a medium sized group, and saw that we’d been gapped off from the next large group. Fuck. Definitely didn’t sprint hard enough in the first few minutes. I knew that the gap, which was 10 or 15 meters, wasn’t possible to close at that point. I was already at 90% effort drafting on someone’s feet. Closing five body lengths would have been doable, but not 20 or 30.

After a few hundred meters swimming in second (within my group), I went to the front and pushed hard for what felt like 10 minutes, but was probably just five, and ‘sat up’ (I can only think in bike racing terms even in swimming races) and waited for the next guy to come around. Maybe we could organize somewhat and keep our losses to a minimum.

Basically just one guy did the remainder of the pulling after that if I remember correctly, and we did hemorrhage time. That’s what happens when you only swim 10K a week. I need to rejoin masters.

The rest of the swim was agonizingly long. I kept telling myself not to estimate the distance, or time left, but couldn’t stop. We must have been swimming for at least 40 minutes by now, I caught myself guessing. Just 10 or 12 minutes to go! This was probably at the halfway mark. Maybe.

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Eventually we reached land and ran to our bikes. Dizzy, disoriented, not having any idea what the gap to the leaders or the next group was, I pulled my helmet on and set out for four-odd hours of uncomfortable bike riding.

I exited T1 a few seconds behind Sam Long and a few seconds ahead of Joe Skipper, and within a mile we found ourselves working together, riding hard into a thin, misting sheet of rain that made seeing through our fogged visors nearly impossible. I felt good, and pushed well into the mid 300s and low 400s when I was on the front. The hilliest section of the race was in the beginning, and we used that to our advantage to claw back time on whomever was up the road. I, personally, didn’t really have any clue where we were in the race, position- or time-wise. I knew that a group was maybe five minutes up the road, and that we weren’t gaining on them, but that we were gaining on, and passing, others as we worked, each taking five minute pulls at the front of our little trio.

The road surface was good at times, and complete shit at others with half of the largest potholes haphazardly marked with orange spray paint, and others submerged in three inches of rainwater. Before major descents or corners, I used my index finger to wipe away the fog inside my visor for a pinhole view of the world. I enjoyed the rough conditions. A smooth, flat, straight road is the absolute worst.

Eventually we caught sight of an enormous group up the road on a straight section of the course as they climbed a gradual hill off in the distance. I hoped that they were the leaders, but deep down knew that they weren’t (a few miles earlier I heard that the leaders were still somehow five minutes or so ahead of us).

Joe was in the lead, with myself in second, when we caught that huge chase group of 20 riders. We bombed past them on a straight, fast descent, light rain still coming down from low-hanging gray clouds. Joe slid out in the corner and crashed, either taking it a bit too fast or braking too late. As I exited the corner, I surged the rest of the way to the front of the group and attacked, hoping to get away with Sam, Chris Leiferman, and a few of the other strong cyclists that I’d noticed were in the group.

Sam and I got away eventually, with him countering my original attack with a massive pull of his own. Unfortunately, the course flattened out here (and remained pretty flat for the rest of the race) and we were reigned back in by Bart Arnout and, among others, surprisingly, Joe—who’d made a superhuman effort to get back on his bike and work his way through the field of strung out riders.

For a number of miles, I continued pushing the pace, hoping to cause some sort of split, before I finally conceded and fell back to fourth or fifth wheel. I hadn’t brought enough food with me, and with no special needs service at this race, I had been rationing calories for the last hour. I could feel my energy fading, even though we’d only been riding for around two hours and 40 minutes. But with an average power of 315 at that point in the race, I’d been burning through glycogen at a rapid rate. I sat in and tried to conserve energy, hoping that I’d be able to make it on the 400 calories I had left, and Gatorade from feed zones.

By hour three, as I sat in the pack of 13 or 14 that were left after our attacking, I realized how futile it would be to go back to the front and pull (especially since I was just about out of food). Nearly everyone in the group was a faster runner than myself (on paper anyways) and seemingly only four guys were doing any work (Chris, Bart, Sam, and Joe). Everyone else was just sitting in, getting 20 or 40 watts for free. With such a huge field, having these types of flat courses makes no sense if Ironman wants a ‘non draft’ race. It is truly incredible how little work you have to do when you’re eight or 10 guys back from the front when everyone is 5-10 bike lengths separated from each other. Every Ironman event either needs 8,000 feet of climbing or more to break things up, or the draft zone needs to be doubled to 12 bike lengths.

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At last, I managed to grab all three gels a hero of a volunteer held in his hand as I went by in one of the final feed zones—this was the first volunteer I saw all day who was handing out gels. I knew in that moment that my race was temporarily saved. Note to any future volunteers out there: be like this guy! A fist full of Maurten gels at mile 90 is much prefered than a fucking quarter of an unpeeled banana. I downed two of the gels (each with 100mg of caffeine), finished the last of my Clif blocks, and continued to be as lazy as possible. I needed the sugar to hit soon, otherwise I’d be screwed when we came off the bike. 15 minutes later I took the final gel and continued forcing down the last of my Gatorade as we came into the final half hour of the bike leg.

I came out of T2 in third (within our group) and immediately felt the race slipping away from me as a chest cramp burrowed itself deep into my rib cage. I’d forgotten to turn my watch on to find satellites before we got off the bike, so I couldn’t see my pace, which was a good thing because it would have only disheartened me even more. Sam passed me as Joe, Bart, and Jan Van Berkel began disappearing up the road. Miraculously, as we made our way beneath the skyscrapers of downtown, the chest cramp began to fade. I surged back up onto Sam’s heels, passed him, and continued the surge past Jan, Bart, and Joe. I began feeling stronger and stronger, and threw out any previous race plan I had of “just” a top 10. The new plan was to win, or get on the podium, as crazy as that was.

By mile three or so I heard that I was gaining on everyone except Patrick Lange in first place (in hindsight I’m not sure if that was true), and that the gap to him was around four minutes. Excited, I carried on, somehow unfearful of blowing up. The first few miles of virtually every race I’ve done have been the worst miles due to chest cramps, and I guess I had it in my mind that because those miles were behind me, I was somehow capable of running a 2:37 marathon (or thereabouts), which was the pace I was currently on. In retrospect, this was idiotic.

A mile later, Joe, Bart, Sam, Jan, and Kristian Hogenhaug caught me. Joe quickly organized everyone into a reverse Indian run (I’m not sure if there’s a more appropriate name for this now in 2021), with the leader taking a one minute pull before falling to the back of the line. We fought a very slight headwind as we ran along the mostly empty bike path that paralleled the Arkansas River, the few spectators that made it out there that early yelling splits and encouragement that we were gaining on 2nd through fourth place.

My sunglasses had fogged over immediately out of T2 but I kept them on. Like blinders of a racehorse. Focus. Breathe. Relax. Fight the new chest cramp that’s forming and growing rapidly like a tumor near your heart. Breathe. Stare directly at the feet of the person in front of you. Stop clipping Bart Arnout’s heels. With rain still drizzling down and my mind tuning out everything but the sounds of our panting breaths and wet shoes slapping the pavement, I finally found the feeling that I’ve been seeking for nearly two years.

By mile seven-ish, shortly before the turn around, Van Berkel broke up our group and I found myself still on his feet. We got a glimpse of Lange, now five minutes ahead, as well as positions two through four (Florian Angert, Antony Costes, and Daniel Baekkegard) all of whom were looking somewhat ragged. We’ll catch them, I realized. At least, if I could sustain this pace. But obviously, I could not.

By the turn around at mile 8.5, I’d fallen back 10 seconds and latched onto Joe as he passed me, desperation setting in as my legs started to weaken. Less than a mile later he dropped me and I was on my own. I’d been fueling just fine on the run so far, but I felt my quads losing strength at an amazing rate. Not cramping, but just seizing up, the muscles no longer working properly. I stubbornly continued running somewhat hard. Maybe if I’d slowed to 7:00 pace for the next five miles, I could have recovered and salvaged my race for 9th or 10th. But I doubt even that would have saved me. Running those first 9 miles at 6:00 pace was a huge mistake.

I didn’t truly fall apart until mile 15, at which point I began jogging. Not too long after that, I began walking. My legs were brittle bricks, so weak and fatigued that even walking was difficult. I shuffled and walked my way to the finish line for 10 more miles, getting passed by age groupers, on their first lap, both young and old, wondering how things could have gone so wrong so fast. Wasn’t I just up there battling for 5th place or better? Proper fueling on the bike was a bit of an issue. Not having enough run volume in my legs the two months before the race was a bigger issue. But it took until yesterday, as Adelaide and I drove home to Boulder, for me to fully realize that the major blunder was simply trying to run a sub 2:40 marathon when I’ve only done one other marathon (as a race) in my life, and that was two years ago, and it was 2:50 something (albeit at altitude).

So let that be a lesson to all. Be realistic. Be cautious. Never believe in yourself that you’re capable of greatness, because you will almost certainly fail! What you’re currently doing in life is probably the highlight—your peak—so just appreciate this next decade before climate disaster collapses civilization as we know it.

While agonizing and utterly demoralizing, walk-jogging the final two hours of the marathon was a good lesson. Maybe not a good lesson, per say, as I did make a conscious decision to risk it all for a chance at the podium, but certainly a good fitness marker of where I’m at. You never truly know until you race.

I plan on doing Lake Placid, which has some actual decisive-looking hills, at the end of July, which will give me enough time to recover and do a full buildup—this time with more than just two 50 mile run weeks. By then I’ll have forgotten any pacing lessons I learned last weekend, so look for another summary just like this one in eight weeks time.

Thank you volunteers, Ironman staff, photographers, spectators, the competition, and everyone else that helped make this event so memorable. And to Adelaide and Maybellene of course.

“It doesn’t seem to be broken,” the doctor said while pressing on my wrist. “Otherwise you’d definitely feel it somewhere here.” He squeezed my wrist again.

“I have a pretty strong pain tolerance,” I replied, thinking to the last time I was examined in an urgent care as a doctor twisted my broken neck from side to side and up and down. I wouldn’t be able to do this if your neck was broken, that doctor had said, quite confidently.

“With a fracture you can sometimes move it without it hurting, but to the touch it’s generally very tender. With a strain or sprain, it doesn’t hurt so much to the touch, but as you described—”

“Yeah, I can barely rotate it like this,” I interjected, twisting my wrist as if I were the Queen, waving at a crowd from a Bentley.

“Exactly. I think you’re fine. We can do an X-ray if you want though.”

“Nah, I believe you,” I said, relieved that I’d be able to race. “And you don’t think I’ll do any serious damage if it gets banged around during the swim?”

“No. You should be fine.”

“I mean, it’s pretty rough. Sometimes you end up accidentally hitting people in the head and stuff. And sometimes not accidentally.”

The doctor laughed, though I wasn’t fully joking of course. “It might hurt, but you won’t do any real damage even if it gets whacked,” he said.

He was young and fit looking, so I figured I could trust that he had some sense of how physical the race might be. Plus, he’d complimented me earlier on how I’d punched the wall, which was the reason I was in the urgent care. “Lots of people end up making contact with the outer part of their hand,” he said a few minutes earlier, pointing to the knuckle of his pinky finger. “That’s how you get hurt. You did it right.” He eyed the large, openly seeping scabs on my index and middle fingers.

I said thanks, paid the 95 bucks, and hopped back in my rental car to build my bike. Maybe I’d have more luck with it than I did the day before.

---

Rewind to the day before:

I clenched my teeth in rage as blood dripped from two jagged flaps of skin on my knuckles, staining the cement floor of my garage a bright crimson. A fresh imprint of my fist lay in the drywall, a few feet below a half dozen exploratory drill holes where, years before, I’d attempted to find the stud to hang a bike from the wall. Found it again, I thought.

As I opened and closed my fist, I sighed in relief that my hand moved okay. My wrist, on the other hand—pun intended—was quickly seizing up. You fucking idiot, I scolded myself. My hand, which moments before was black from bike grease, was quickly turning red as blood continued leaking from my knuckles. I’d like to say that this sort of thing was a one-off, but when it comes to wrenching on my bike, my temper has about a one-hour fuse, and I was closing in on two hours now. Worse, my flight to Houston was rapidly approaching. And not only had I failed to figure out how to change the brake pads and pack my new bike, but I hadn’t even begun to pack race gear, clothes, or anything else I needed for the weekend. Only a fucking TT bike requires that you take the crankset off to get to the fucking brake pads, I grumbled to myself before getting back to work.

---

Adelaide ended up packing for me while I finished adjusting the brake pads, re-installing the crankset four times (it took me a while to diagnose a clicking sound caused by a brake bolt rubbing on the inner chainring), and then break the bike down into my bike bag by completely disassembling the front end.

Because of the packing and bike work fiasco, I missed my bus to the airport, so Adelaide dropped me off.  All the effort to pack my bike into a small (stealthy) bike bag was for naught, as I ended up getting charged $75 for a bike by Southwest anyways. “But it’s a massage table, expo equipment, therapy pigeon, wheelchair bag damn it!” I lied, unsuccessfully.

My wrist continued stiffening up as I maneuvered around unmasked travelers sipping Cokes and cramming overpriced burgers down their gullets in the crowded terminal walkways. The plane I was on ended up being full, which only ratcheted up my anxiety about flying— unvaccinated at that point—during the pandemic. “I thought all the center seats were being left open!” I said, somewhat unpleasantly, to the travel agent before reluctantly getting on—in fact, I almost turned around and took the bus home when I found that the center seats weren’t left open. Going from nearly complete social distancing, aside from the odd group ride, to being packed into a sardine can full of Texans, many of whom wore their old, stained masks like sagging underwear at their chins, almost made me forget about my wrist. Just don’t get in a fist fight with anyone for not wearing their mask, I told myself. You’ll be fighting one-handed. 

I begrudgingly gave my back-of-the-plane seat (which I took intentionally to limit the number of people I was next to) to two women with a small child. The child spent half the flight kicking the back of my seat while one of the flight attendants spent the other half of the flight asking the three of them to put their masks on. Not that it mattered, because most of the passengers were also maskless as they sipped Cokes and stuffed down their leftover burgers. God fucking forbid an American go without a meal for 95 minutes. 

---

We’re just going to abruptly skip to the race now.

A sliver of sun began peeking out from the horizon a few minutes before the start gun blasted, then we were off. With a field of 41 male pros, it was a chaotic start. I ended up finding a pair of feet after a few minutes of fighting in the choss, then decided to make a push to get around that guy and bridge up to the next group, which was just a few body lengths of separation at that point. 

Shortly before the first turn buoy, I chanced a peak over my shoulder to make sure I wasn’t in the last group, and was relieved to see what appeared to be a dozen or more others behind me. While run and bike training had gone pretty well over the winter, I’d only averaged around 10K of swimming per week over the last few months, and wasn’t super confident leading into this race.

I came out 20th, three minutes down on the leaders, but with three strong cyclists—Long, Weiss, and Arnaute—as well as a few other guys I knew were solid on the bike. Turned out they were all quite a bit more solid than me; I fumbled getting my feet into my shoes in the first mile, took a wrong turn and had to squeeze through a barricade a second later, then my quads completely seized up. The quad cramping is something I’ve experienced many times in races—they seize up after a few minutes of hard riding out of T1, during which I’m forced to ride easier for a few minutes until they release. Only this time, when they finally did release, I still couldn’t put out any power. I’d been riding with Tripp Hipple and one other guy at this point, and watched as they drifted away from me down the road.

20 minutes in, after I’d been passed by what felt like everyone who’d come out of the water behind me, I was only averaging 272 watts—a number that I’d been able to hold for over four hours during training earlier in the winter. My glutes were on fire and my knees seemed to be buckling outwards, as if I was on someone else’s bike. And that person happened to be 5’6”. 

At the turnaround, I counted that I was in 27th or 28th place (I can’t remember now) and my power was still dropping. I continued getting passed until I eventually conceded and sat up in defeat, wondering what the hell had gone so wrong. 

I thought the problem might just be a seat height issue, but it was more than that. I’d had the bike built up two weeks prior, but had failed to take any measurements from the previous position on my old bike, hoping that I’d be able to get a bike fit the week of the race, which didn’t happen. When I did get a bike fit a half week after the race, we found that my saddle was nearly an inch too low, a half inch too far forward, and my bars were well over an inch too low.

But during the race, I felt like I should have been able to compensate for my position being off. So what if my seat is too low? I should still be able to push 300 no matter what! I began fuming at myself for being so weak-minded, and got back in the aerobars briefly to try one last time to put out some power. There was nothing there and my glutes ached abnormally in protest.

I stopped to pee, got back on and soft pedaled, got passed by a half dozen age groupers. I decided that I should just give up triathlon, but what would I do to fill the void? I’m not good at anything else. I should just go live in the fucking forest and abandon society. Just wander into the wilderness and never return. I figured I could finish editing my sci-fi manuscripts and try to get them published, but would that be enough to keep me satisfied? My rear tire blew out and snapped me out of my self-destructive thinking. After slowing to a stop and taking the wheel off, I saw that whatever I’d hit had ruined the tire—the long, horizontal cut would have to be patched with a “shoe” ( a piece of garbage or pre-cut rubber that fits between a tire gash and the tube). I dug into my bento box and found a gel wrapper and slid it between the new tube and the lacerated tire and crossed my fingers that it would hold. I still wanted to finish the race for the training benefit of the run. And besides, not finishing makes you (me) always feel worse than simply having a bad race and limping it in to the finish line. 

The gel wrapper shoe held. I stopped to pee again a short while later. More age groupers passed and I decided to go aero and match their speed. I got bored sitting behind one guy so passed him and started riding back up to the other guy, who was about 30 meters in front of me when I watched a wind gust knock him off balance. He swerved left, then right, then left again before fully losing control of his bike and hitting the median to his right (the course had us on the left side of the road/median). He went over the bars and slammed into a palm tree before landing back in the road, his bike somersaulting over him and spilling gels and Co2 cartridges everywhere.

If I’d been in the mix for a top 10 in the race and saw someone crash like he did, I doubt I’d stop. Maybe if it looked like someone’s life was in jeopardy…though I guess it would depend on whether I knew them or not. But here, already half an hour behind, stopping wasn’t a difficult decision to make. I set my bike in the grassy median next to him and told him to try and be still as he lay struggling on the pavement. Ignoring my orders, he managed to push himself up into a squatting position with his hands before quickly losing his balance and rolling backwards onto his back. I grabbed his shoulders as he rolled onto the pavement, keeping his head from slamming back into it. Well, at least he probably doesn’t have a spinal cord injury. 

He was determined to get back on his bike and finish, which was more than I could say for myself at that point. Insisting that he was fine, he got up and staggered toward his bike, which lay in the road a few paces away from him. I grabbed hold of him as he started to fall over again and forced him three steps to the grass median, where he sat down heavily—fell down heavily is a more accurate statement. I noticed that his hands were shaking, and his eyes were distant—a combination of shock and concussion that I’d seen plenty of times before.

A couple volunteers who’d materialized on the scene went to go get help while I stood over the guy and explained to him that his race was over, that he had a concussion, that it wasn’t worth trying to finish. “You could do permanent damage to yourself if you get back on the bike and crash again, or even push yourself while running. It’s not worth it. You can always do another race later in the year,” I argued.

Eventually a cop appeared and called for a van to come get the guy, who was slowly coming out of the daze he’d been in. He promised he wasn’t going to get back on his bike, which was broken anyways, and—confident that he was in good hands—I threw a leg over my saddle and pedaled the last three or four miles to transition.

---

Knowing how agonizing it is to “watch” a race on Ironman’s shoddy tracker from 1,000 miles away, and not really knowing what’s going on, I called Adelaide from T2 to tell her that I was alright and that I planned on finishing the race. I wandered through transition, at first jogging the wrong way, until I found the run exit. 

I lucked out by starting my first of three laps as the top four guys (Lioinel, Sam, Ben, and Matt) were starting their final lap, which meant that I had some loud spectator energy to feed off of. I wasn’t exactly being cheered for, but I was sort of next to people who were being cheered for, and allowed myself to absorb the positive energy. I immediately felt better, mentally, than I had on the bike. I even began enjoying myself somewhat.

I ticked off the first four or five miles in 5:26 pace, pretty jazzed about how my legs felt coming off the bike. I’d taken two hours and 45 minutes, about 20 of which was standing on the side of the road, but still—I was running sorta fast!

The motivation to push deep began to fade at the midway point, but I still held things together to come in under 1:15 for the half marathon, and grab about a dozen Maurten gels along the way for a later date. I enjoyed the afternoon with Kevin Portmanwith over a beer or two, then celebrated that night in my Airbnb by myself with a cheap order of fried shrimp and a chocolate bar that Adelaide hid in my bag. 

---

While the race went horribly, I took solace in the fact that it wasn’t fully due to a lack of fitness, just a lack of preparedness, which might actually be worse. Considering my 15 years of bike racing and triathlon, I had no excuse to show up on a bike that I wasn’t ready to compete on. I guess it did feel good to knock out a race finally. It had been a while. Considering that I ran track in high school, and rowed in college, I believe the 18 month gap I had starting in October of 2019 was the longest I’ve gone without doing some sort of race since I was 13 years old.

Next up is Tulsa. 

Next Sunday is the six-year mark of a horrible day. A day that is seared into my mind with unfortunately vivid detail, yet at the same time seems like a foggy, incomplete memory of another person’s, like something I might have simply read about in someone else’s blog, or seen in a movie. I wish I could forget the feeling of dread—the lead weight that fell to the pit of my stomach as I rode over the blood-soaked pavement, heart thudding in my chest as I wondered if it was my girlfriend who had shattered the driver’s side-window of the heavily dented red Fiat, which was pulled off in the grassy corner of Highway 36 and Hygiene Road.

A few panick-stricken minutes later, when I learned that the cyclist, who had been taken to the hospital a half hour earlier, was in fact Adelaide, I rushed toward the driver, red rage focusing on his ugly, pock-marked face—the face of worthless old drunk, or so I assumed (and still do). I wanted to beat him with my fists and cleated bike shoes until he too was “unrecognizable”—the word I created in my head moments before as the police officer hesitantly described the injuries caused to “the victim’s” face after she had gone through the driver’s side window head-first. As I screamed at the driver, who backed up behind his two friends, the police officer stepped forward, preparing to hold me back. Instead of striking Russell Rosh down, I turned and ran to my bike, which I’d left near the side of the road. Fortunately, despite my anger, I still had enough wits about me to realize that getting to the hospital was more important than enacting revenge. From the hesitant description of the crash provided by the police officer, there was a good chance Adelaide would up being dead when I reached Longmont United.

But she wasn’t dead, and I proposed to her that night, despite the fact that she was unconscious. The flesh from the bottom of her lip (including her nose) down to her collarbone had been torn away, and every bone on the left side of her face had been smashed more thoroughly than what could be done with a hammer. One of her surgeons used more than 700 stitches to sew her face back up, and another six hour surgery, performed days later, was required to pin together her splintered cheek bone, jaw, eye socket, and nose. Adelaide remained in a sedated coma for five days during this time, and I passed the endless hours in a state of shock—too dazed to make coherent decisions for myself, make food, or even go on easy runs or bike rides by myself.

Adelaide’s parents flew out from Pittsburgh and spent most of the early morning and day at the hospital in the visitor waiting room, and crying by her bedside. My dad flew out as well to keep an eye on me. How many parents-in-law meet in an ICU waiting room? I took the evening and night shift, often driving home at midnight, and once at 6 AM, to cry myself to sleep in an empty bed—empty save for our puppy Maybellene, who helped lick my tears away before I would inevitably fall into a nightmarish sleep, only to wake up to an even worse, and much more real, nightmare.

I got through those days from the support of my brother and his girlfriend Joslynn. From my dad, and mom—and Maybellene of course. From the support of Adelaide’s sister Lydia and her fiance Jeff, and Adelaide’s parents Kathleen and Raymond. From the hundreds of friends, extended family, ex-teammates, and strangers that sent food, donations, cards, and messages of support to Adelaide and myself.

Eventually, Adelaide woke up. 11 days after she was hit, she left the hospital. That’s when the real struggle began, the long-term pain and suffering that a lifetime of endurance sports had prepared me for. How long does it take for someone to recover from an event like this? A year? A decade? I don’t know. I assume fully recovery is impossible.

Bike riding was instantly ruined for me, and I quit bike racing—the singular passion I’d held for the previous decade—altogether later that year, for a variety of reasons. Bike riding was ruined for Adelaide as well, of course, and she still suffers from PTSD to this day. With time, we began the slow process of recovery, but for every step forward, there was a half step back. I struggled with rage against drivers when I rode, depression from the lack of fitness I’d suffered by not being able to train, and of course anxiety every time Adelaide went out for a ride (or every time I went out to ride, as this would inevitably set Adelaide into tears as I walked out the door). We saw a sports psychologist. We each saw a therapist. Adelaide saw multiple psychiatrists. We tried to move on with our lives through triathlon, but the PTSD, coupled with Adelaide’s previously diagnosed Bipolar II disorder, made life extremely difficult. I’ve since read that people with mental disorders typically suffer extreme PTSD after surviving traumatic events, though despite this, Adelaide never gave up bike riding.

In time, more healing happened, and all throughout this, Adelaide wrote. She wrote about the hospital and the leeches that were delicately applied to her lip to keep it from necrotising. She wrote about the traffic court case, in which the driver, Russell Rosh, was given a small fine and a handful of community service hours. She wrote about how, in mediation of the civil case, the insurance adjusters sitting in a room down the hall threatened to use our blogs and racing results (this was over a year after the crash) as proof of Adelaide’s full emotional and physical recovery in order to reduce the severity of her damages. She wrote about the support from thousands of people in the cycling community around the country, and world. She wrote about her time in the Coast Guard, growing up in Pittsburgh, and years later testifying in front of the Colorado state legislature in support of a vulnerable road user law. In fact, Adelaide only stopped writing this year, when her memoir Degloved: Every Scar Has a Story, finally got published, five years after starting it, and nearly six years after surviving that life-altering, and nearly life-ending, event.

Adelaide wasn’t a writer five years ago. I considered her to be slightly above average when she first started—when putting together coherent sentences, in which one thought led to another, and another, and another until it all ended up back at the beginning to form one fully complete idea—was next to impossible for her. Most people would have quit and tried to move one with their lives, but just like bike riding, Adelaide stuck with it and pumped out chapter after chapter, even after vowing off the project for months at a time. She worked with a writing coach off and on for years, and wrote and rewrote tens of thousands of words in order to get the story just right, all the while continuing to train, becoming a professional triathlete, and working at other various jobs along the way. One of the many themes in Degloved is perseverance. Ironically, the book itself is evidence of that trait. Perseverance: possibly the single most distinguishing trait of Adelaide’s, and the one I admire most.

If you know Adelaide or I, Degloved will be entertaining at the best, gut-wrenching at the worst. If you’re a cyclist, a victim of a bike or traffic collision of any type, someone who has been diagnosed with Bipolar, PTSD, or another mental disorder, or a survivor of a traumatic event, there will be plenty for you to relate with in Degloved, and hopefully something to take away. It’s a heartwarming story, a reminder to pay attention when you drive, and a reminder that virtually everyone carries some form of emotional trauma with them—some carry it on their sleeve, others buried deep inside—but understanding and addressing another’s anguish, when they share it, helps bring us all closer together.

Degloved: Every Scar Has a Story is available online at Bookshop, Amazon, and a select few local bookstores.