Ironman Coeur d'Alene: The Run

As tends to be typical, I find my run legs almost immediately and hit my stride by the end of the parking lot. I settle in to roughly 9 min/miles and it's completely effortless. The run course, and the bike course, for that matter, is kind of convoluted at the start and was difficult to navigate the day before. It's a bit more clear now, and I soon find myself leaving downtown Coeur d'Alene behind me and heading towards the neighborhoods. Special needs bags are at mile 14 and I think to myself how much I can't wait to get back here on loop 2 and grab my second Delta E flask; I sure hope I still have some leg left in me when I do get here.

The course spends a bit short of 3 miles (2.8) winding away from downtown and through a series of neighborhoods before spilling out into a paved running trail along Lake Coeur d'Alene. There were some pretty loud groups of spectators cheering runners on in the shaded neighborhood section, which was a nice diversion from what would otherwise be a pretty monotonous and likely torturous labyrinth slapped right at the end of the marathon. Early into the run I found, at least for a time, that those with better looking strides tend to get the most support from the crowd. That has never really applied to me before, but I was really feeling the love in the early miles. My favorite spectator was somewhere at the start of the neighborhood. As I ran past, my efficiency left her speechless. All I heard was "Nice stride. Nice. Wow..." which was likely the biggest compliment I could have received at the moment.

Exiting the neighborhood and starting the eternally long, eternally winding lakeside portion towards the turnaround, I prepared myself for my first gel of the run. My plan was to take in a gel every 30 minutes, every 3-4 aid stations, and water at every one. History suggests that off of an Infinit-fueled bike, I have plenty of salt in my system, but rarely enough water. This seemed to be the case again, but I have no signs of cramping just yet. The pace feels great and I keep bearing down for the next few miles until I reach the hill. The crazy hill I had to ride twice on the bike, the same crazy one people complained about all race week, stood looming at mile 5.5. The hill, which took you up 130 feet in a half mile, roughly a grade of 6%, slowed me down quite a bit. But I knew it was coming and kept my effort the same. I've ran plenty of hills both solo and with a group of friends, and I knew just fine how to go about tackling this one.

Cresting the hill, you actually run down the back end of it for about 3/4 of a mile before you hit the turnaround and come back. There was an aid station essentially at the turnaround that you got to pass twice. I pop my 2nd gel and wash it down with two trips worth of water. Hitting the timing mat, I'm well within a respectable pace. The trip up the back end of the hill is longer, but not nearly as steep, and I think a lot easier. The downhill seems to be a bit too steep and could really sheer your quads up if you aren't careful, but I hit level ground once more and start to work my way towards downtown. The pace is becoming a touch more difficult to maintain, but this is likely the hardest section of the course; it's extremely wide open, unsheltered from the sun and generally leaves you with nothing to look at. Luckily, race management thought to put the Ford Motivational Mile smack dab in the middle of it, roughly at mile 10/23. I'm sliding into a bit of a negative emotional pit as I come up to it, but the message lifts me up and pushes me through the final mile along the lake and back into the neighborhoods. A very large, loud, drunk crowd just past mile 11 make it very easy to keep going and I continue to make good time heading back downtown.

Two things are starting to truly manifest themselves in the closing miles of the first loop: nausea and exhaustion. My stomach, despite all its training and prior experience, is growing weary of the constant stream of sugar and salt being pumped into it; but it's doing more threatening than anything else. Much more urgently is the rate at which RPE is climbing. I try my hardest not to get too wrapped up in this bad patch, which is exactly what it was. I pop my 4th gel at mile 12.5 and just wait for it to take effect. It takes a while to get that blood sugar spike, 10-15 minutes even. I just have to hold on until then. So I told myself as I entered downtown Coeur d'Alene and once more became surrounded by thousands of screaming strangers.

As much as I was lying to myself about climbing out of this bad patch, I know I had to look like hell. What was a dull, subtle sense of fatigue had grown into a searing pain all over my body. My left arm, right at the elbow, is slowly eaten away by cramps. Cramps begin to take over my left leg as well, at the back of the knee. I pass Denise, Mom and Denise again and explain my agony. The halfway point is behind me and my Delta E is just up front. If I can just hold it together for a little while longer, I can take in water, take down my energy-in-a-flask and wait this out. I can wait this out. I trained all year for this.

Grabbing my Special Needs bag, I'm able to refill my GU packets and grab my Delta E. I decide I don't need my long sleeve shirt, so I toss the remnants of the bag with all confidence that Denise will come grab it later. I don't take my Delta E right away, figuring it would be a much better idea to wait until an aid station. When I do cross one, I take in as much water as I can stomach and pop my drink. Now all I have to do is watch and wait. Caffeine affects me differently when I'm dehydrated, so I'm not just too sure what to expect. Just wait it out. The effort is feeling marginally better, but still pretty painful. All the exhaustion culminates as I go up a gentle, sloped incline and I start to walk.

For 3 steps.

Then I'm off running down the back side. I jog the next half mile to the aid station and pop another gel. I'm still not really feeling any better, but I'm convinced a high is on the way. Taking off again, I make it a half mile before I have to take another unscheduled walk break. This time, it lasts about 30 seconds. Oh, great. Now I've convinced myself it's okay to walk. Here comes the Ironman shuffle. The is EXACTLY what I came here NOT to do. I REFUSE to Ironman shuffle this in. I took it extremely easy on the bike and saved myself for the entire first loop so that I can run this son of a bitch. If I found myself unable or unwilling to finish this properly than today was a failure.

And so, going through the aid station at mile 15.5, I told myself to run. I willed myself to run. All the way to the next aid station. I didn't expect it to be pretty. I didn't expect it to be easy. I didn't expect it to be fast. But damnit, I was going to do it.

And so after taking a nice long walk through the station, I take off along the lake. It is painful, unbearable, a bit of ridiculous and unnecessary. I want to quit a hundred times. But I make it. I make it all the way to the aid station at mile 16.5. So I stop, take in as much aid as possible and celebrate the mental victory. I'm walking out of the aid station and laying out my strategy for the next few miles. Soon enough, though I'm not sure when, I'll have the big hill to deal with. I figure I'll run to the hill, then do a 2 min walk/2 min run up the hill. That seems to work out pretty well, so I take off.

I make it about 3 steps before my body stops. There will be no more running. This is pretty much over for me. I don't even have the energy to be upset with myself any more. That last running stint took a lot out of me, and I'm happy to walk right now. As I'm walking along, I'm finding the pace to be pretty unbearable. I can feel my body starting to shut down completely. The nausea that started setting in at mile 13 is starting to take control of this vessel and dictating what and how much fuel to be taken in. Most importantly, my mind loses control completely. As it is said in Million Dollar Baby, the movie I, not accidentally, choose to watch the night before every one of these things: "The body knows what fighters don't: how to protect itself. A neck can only twist so far. Twist it just a hair more and the body says, "Hey, I'll take it from here because you obviously don't know what you're doing... Lie down now, rest, and we'll talk about this when you regain your senses." It's called the knockout mechanism."

Round about this time, I decide it's time to go to the bathroom. Whether or not I can really expect to go is irrelevant. I'm just looking for any excuse to get off my feet. I find myself hoping to God that there is somebody in the next porto john that I find. There is, and I think you all know what's coming now...

I lay down in the grass and just stare at the sky.

I'm broken. This is over.

I have no idea how long I laid there. I tell people 10 minutes. Which is probably an exaggeration, but it also includes what happened after several minutes of resting; I drag myself up and into the bathroom. Where I continue to sit, with no plan or even hope of moving and continuing on this stupid hopeless task.

I've taken the DNF and don't have the mental wherewithal to even give a shit.

After a period of time had passed, I exit the bathroom and start walking. I have no idea why I always decide to keep moving forward, but that's the way it seems to work out; my body is hard wired to finish the race even when I forget why I want to finish in the first place.

I start the climb up the hill towards the turn around and have no need or desire to talk to anyone. After some quick calculations, I estimate that it would take my 3 hours to walk the next 9 miles from mile 17 to the finish line, which would put me in right around 10:15pm. I call my cheering section and tell them not to expect me any time soon, shed a tear or two, and start that lonely, cold, embarrassing walk. Oh God, why am I here again? Why does this have to happen every time? What am I supposed to learn from this?

I'm pretty quick to find out that the worst isn't over quite yet. The nausea is becoming pretty bothersome, and I'm trying everything I can to take care of it. After mile 15, I was pretty convinced I could not take in any more gels, so I switched to just cola and water. I had packed some Pepto Bismol pills in my special needs bag for just such an occasion. I had popped two Pepto pills at mile 17, which I suspect was roughly a half hour before the aid station at mile 17.5. So I pop another two in my mouth and try to wash it down with some cola. Only problem is, I gag on them. And puke my brains out.

Don't think the irony is lost on me...

After 4 or 5 good heaves, I clean out everything that remains in my system and the nausea lifts for the first time in hours. So along I walk, up the hill and down again, until I reach the next aid station. I take in a swig of cola and make it roughly 10 feet before I puke that up, bringing me to my knees this time. I start walking and stop again after 3 steps for more dry heaving. Ya know... for good measure...

Making the quick turn, crossing the timing mat and entering the aid station for the last time, I decide to try some chicken broth this time. This ends up being the worst offender of all. Almost immediately, my stomach decides to expel this as well. Here's the scene: I'm on my hands and knees in a section of gravel just to the side of the walking path, puking up chicken broth that never had the opportunity to even be cooled off; all the while crawling to one side because having my face in the vomit pile is making me more nauseated. Heaving again and again and again until my eyes well with tears and I fall over on my side exhausted from the effort.

Sound like a good investment of $575, 9 months worth of training, $1,000 worth of travel and lodging and a week off of work, huh?

Having finished my 5th stint of vomiting, I decide to stick with plain water indefinitely. Luckily I found that I could, in fact, keep water down and wasn't in any real danger of death. So off I walk, 6 miles to go and as much time as I could ever need to do it. I have a great view of the sun setting from the lakeside walking path. Seeing the sun set may have been beautiful to a normal person, but since my ultimate goal was to finish in the daylight, it's one drawn out slap in the face from whoever was in charge today.

It takes me a while to find any company, and my sob story didn't keep company around me for too long. The rest of the course was simply a progressively colder, progressively darker, progressively lonelier walk. I had no ability, nor any motivation to try to improve my pace. Because today was already done. Every goal I had set for myself had slipped away. The only thing I had left to do was to be an official finisher, and even at my pace I would have two hours to spare.

I eventually start to find an appetite again and start to take in cookies, pretzels and whatever assorted treats the stations had to offer. I run into a fellow broken down racer and we are able to walk and talk for a while, which made the final mile up to the neighborhood go by a bit faster. The large, loud, drunk crowd that had helped me so much at mile 11 just upset me at mile 24.5. They were still out there giving it their all and I had given up 2 hours ago. I wanted so much to just be out of earshot.

At some point I started to feel better, and realized that my walk could be expedited. I shifted from a leisurely walk at 3 mph to a bit of a power walk at 4 mph for equal parts wanting to break 15 hours and just wanting to be finished and off course. Walking a 15 min/mile isn't asking too much of my body at the time, and I had no reason to want more than that. So I power walk through the neighborhoods, past the special needs bags, through the final aid stations and back onto Sherman at mile 26. As I inched closer to the finish line, the spectators became more dense, loud and frivolous with the words "almost there." It dawned on me right around then that this was the first time I'd ever been this close to finishing a race and still walking; still not giving a flying fuck how I looked or what my finish time was. It was a little embarrassing, but I hadn't run a single step since mile 17 and I sure wasn't going to start now. Saving face simply wasn't necessary. Best try to look humble.

The finish line crowd is extremely loud and trying their best to give me the strength to run the last 200 ft, as if I was vying for a Kona slot and about to be overtaken. I waved and gave more high-fives than I had wanted to give. I just wished that people would stop paying attention to me and give some more love to the two women behind me, who were still running, and likely have been gutting it out for the last several miles. I yield the finish to one of them and still manage to cross before 10:00.

And still manage to PR by almost a half an hour. That almost makes it worse.

Run: 6:11:52

Total Time: 14:59:49

I have to be shuttled through the finish line festivities: the medals, the t shirt, the hats, the space blankets. I try to be happy. I am happy. I'm happy I finished the thing. I'm happy I didn't take the DNF. I'm happy I still managed to beat my previous best time.

And yet, I'm not. I didn't deserve what happened today. Maybe I deserved it the first time in Wisconsin. I was happy with that finish. Maybe I deserved it the second time in Louisville. I made some big mistakes and left feeling like I had really learned something. But not this time. This time it wasn't enough to just finish, just to PR by a marginal amount. This time I expected better. This time I expected my plan to work. My training went well. My nutrition went well. My pacing strategy was dead on. I did everything right. And I still found myself completely breaking down, found myself deeper into the pain cave than I'd ever been, so deep that my body took over and ended my day for me. And so early in the race.

In that moment, and in the eternity of moments I had to myself while walking in the last 9 miles, I decided that I was done with Ironman for a while. It had been made pretty clear to me over the last 3 hours that Ironman simply wasn't in the cards for someone like me. All Ironmen need time away from the distance from time to time, and I've never really taken that for myself before.

And why shouldn't I? I invest way too much into this sport to be shuffling in 15 hour, night-time finishes. I sacrifice too much to be humbled to walk in broken and cold every... single... time... I participate in one of these. At that moment, I had become completely self assured that I was finished with 140.6 for a very long time.

And yet, several days later, there are complications. I've already signed up (yes, and paid for) two Ironmans. Is it worth it to take the partial refund? Is it worth it to put my Iron-tour plans on hold indefinitely? Maybe take some time to myself for a change? Maybe divert a little more effort into my family, my friends, my job, or -gasp- myself?

Only time will tell, I guess. Only time will tell.