Triple Trouble

It's 6 am on a Sunday morning and I'm a mess.

I smell terrible.
Snot runs down my nose and onto my lips and I don't even care.
I'm crying and sobbing uncontrollably as I peg-leg in 2 mile increments.
My right leg stopped working 6 hours ago.

The mummy bag wrapped around my body keeps me warm in the unseasonably cold 43 degree Virginia morning. I look like a crippled Snapple fruit.
A crippled, frustrated, angry, disappointed... Snapple Fruit.

I "walk" past a camera crew and pull the mummy bag over my face. I can't even look at the photographer, but I can feel his eyes on me. Must be thinking "That poor bastard".

I've never felt so low, and there's no way someone's going to capture this moment.
Hard to believe that, up until 6 hours ago, I was clicking miles off almost effortlessly after no sleep for 40 hours.

Welcome to Ultra Distance Triathlon.
A handful of people in the world.
Number of races in the world: count them on your hands, and MAYBE take one shoe off.
They range from Double Iron to Deca Iron distance, although a select number of people(literally a couple) have done 20 Irons at one go.

This one's the Virginia Triple Iron.
7.2 Mile Swim, 336 mile bike, 78.6 Mile Run
46 hours ago, 20 of us lined up on a beach posted with a sign that said "no swimming".
Ironic.


We plunge into the water, but noone's in a hurry.
No point rushing when you're doing a 60 hour event.
The water is fairly calm, but that doesn't last long. As the morning wears on, boat traffic on Lake Anna picks up. Worse, the wind picks up.
Next thing we know, we're swimming through white caps....
The .4 mile swim course is a loop that parallels the beach, and the waves are so bad that you can only breathe on the beach side, or risk lungfuls of water. I remember thinking..If this is any bearing on the rest of the event, it's going to be a long weekend.

4 hours into the swim, I'm scraping sand with my hands...what the heck?!
The waves have started moving the buoys toward shore.
Common sense says the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, which means I can safely say I'm swimming much longer than 7.2 miles while goose-chasing buoys.
On the bike later that day, veterans would tell me that it was the roughest swim they'd ever had at Lake Anna. Ocean-esque.

Exiting the water in a longer-than-anticipated 5 and a half hours, I'm a little dizzy, which is normal, given the length of time in near-weightlessness and rough water.
I make my way to the row of tents that I would come to call Tent City. Each athlete gets a tent to store their gear and food. It's basically a base camp of sorts.
We would pass these shelters a million times on the loop courses of bike and run, and at each pass, we would receive food and drink from our crew.

After a couple timing chip issues(mine wouldn't work) that cost a little over a half hour, I'm on the bike. I didn't anticipate the feeling of holding myself up on the bike after swimming for so long. I feel so weak. My legs are toast. How am I going to stay upright and pedal for 24 hours or more? Self doubt is already creeping in. Time for an attitude adjustment.
I have a strategy for these times...
Whenever I feel less than positive, I eat everything.
Fruit. Comfort food. Sweets. Coffee. Evvvvverything.
Sarah, Sperv, and the parents did an awesome job....almost too awesome. I would leave Tent City sometimes with not enough hands to hold the food. Jeez, each lap only takes 20 minutes! I didn't need all that! Great job!

The Friday afternoon flies by, and soon night is falling. My body is starting to come around after 5 hours on the bike and eating everything.
I am positive again.
I always have this feeling of contentment when night comes. You just come to this realization that you're going to be out here alllll night. Might as well settle in and just get into the zone, and start clicking off miles.
Dad and Justin strap on the light, and I'm gone.

The night blurs together in my memory.
Some hours were hard. Some hours were easy.
Some laps you had to change batteries or lights.
I got to this point where I could tell who was coming at me just by the lights on their bike.

3am hits, and most of the veterans are asking if I've slept yet.
I take that as a cue to hit the tent for an hour and a half, even though I don't feel especially tired. The idea, apparently, is to hit the hay before the sun comes up. The Double Iron athletes(which are to start this morning) would begin arriving and making a raucous.

I hit the tent at 3:30, get an amazing massage from Sarah for a few minutes, then lay in the tent, awake, for the next hour and a half.
In the dark, I "watch" little circular mouths with teeth all around them and tongues sticking out swirl in a kaleidoscope pattern on the ceiling of the tent.
I'd heard about hallucinations, but had never had them until tonight.
I can't help but watch with a strange fascination, being conscious enough to know what they are, but just alert enough to wonder if I should be worried. These would be the only ones for the entire race.

The zzzzzzziiiiiiiipppppppp of the tent at 5 AM comes way too soon.
Justin pops his head in.."Time to get going".

I ask for 10 more minutes... as if 10 more minutes is really going to make me feel better after I've been racing for 20 hours. My body already feels trashed.

By this time, my parents have arrived.

I pull myself out of the tent, and everyone's staring at me. My eyes are blood red and barely open. I'm stiff and tired. I know how bad I look because noone's saying anything. Awful is not the word to describe how I feel. It's easily 100 times worse than I felt before I laid down.

To top it off, I am feeling sorry for myself because I know that I just blew my only chance to get sleep- probably for the rest of the event.
Justin is the crew leader for a reason. He realizes the shit is hitting the fan and basically forces me back on the bike. It's 5AM, give or take.

I spend the next 2 and half hours riding in the dark(figuratively and literally) in absolute misery...planning ways to quit, and eating everything in sight. I know the pending sunrise will lift my spirits. It's a lesson I learned from my Presque Isle to Bangor ride one night...but it seems as though the sun will not come up. These hours are the longest hours of my life.

At 9AM, I'm back in what I've come to call Kale's Manic Mode. I'm always a little too happy when I workout. This is no different today, with Sperv and Sarah screaming like crazy on every lap. They also have Manic Mode of cheering.. I mean who else can cheer for 40 hours straight? Crazy.

By this time, we have our system for fueling down, and there are no stops, just fluid (pun intended) transfers. My ass did not leave the saddle from 5am to 5 PM Saturday, when I finished the bike ride. At one point around 12 or 1PM, the officials miscount my laps.

I'm like 280 miles in, and it's the last thing I need to hear. I am so pissed off that I put my head down and start ripping off laps. I know it isn't rational while I'm doing it, but I am so beside myself with anger that it is the only way to vent. My fastest laps of the bike ride are from miles 280 to 336.

I get a quick shower after the ride, and change into my running clothes, and it's back to work.

By the time I down a couple cheeseburgers and blast 6 or 8 miles out, the sun is setting. The calmness I was talking about earlier comes over me and it's time to settle in and start plowing through some miles. My parents surprise me with Dominoes pizza. I grab 2 slices, stack them one on top of the other and eat them on the go. Best pizza ever. Thanks, Dominoes.

The 2 mile out and back is pretty much uphill on the way out and downhill on the way back. The temperature is dropping hard into the 40s...a stark contrast to Friday's high 80s. People are bundled up, but man, it feels normal to me. Feels good. The miles are blazing by. I'm high on coffee, food, and the spirit of the race. Tent City is lit up and it's awesome to come back in for a morale boost every 20 minutes or so.

I hit the marathon mark, and I feel better than I have the entire race. Meanwhile, the carnage is starting to show for some. I pull up to one guy who's staggering. He's drooling on himself, and proceeds to tell me that he has 14 pairs of shoes....and I never asked him anything. I say hi to almost everyone I pass, but few return the greeting. Maybe it's because I've said hi to them every 20 minutes for the last 40 hours. I bet they hate me. Haha. Manic Mode, bitches.

A few miles later, I feel mentally fresh, but I am starting to stiffen a little bit. A mixture of the cold and sheer volume of the race is taking its toll on my legs. I always do butt kicks to loosen up during ultramarathons, so I do a few. After running a little bit, I realize something's not right. My right quadricep is so tight. What's going on? I half run, half walk back to Tent City and sit down. Sarah and Sperv feed me. Justin can tell I'm thinking hard. "What's up?"

"My quad's messed up."

He makes me walk a lap and goes with me. Maybe it'll loosen up....right? Wrong.

Eileen Steil happens to be crewing for Michael Gaertner, a past Deca Iron winner, in the shelter next to mine. She's a massage therapist and one of the only American ladies to finish the Deca. She comes over and has me get on her table. She tapes me up and we go walking up the road for a lap.

I can barely even walk now. It hurts to pick my foot up off the ground. It hurts to even move my leg a centimeter. It's decision time. The doctor looks at it. Probably a strain...and probably shouldn't keep going and turn it into a tear. It's early morning on Sunday...like 1am. I decide to hit the sack and wake up in a few hours to make a coherent decision.

When I wake up the sun is rising. I keep my sleeping bag on, don't say anything to anyone and start walking. Justin comes along.

A mile in, and I know it's over. I have an angel on one shoulder telling me I did well just to go this far. I have a demon on the other telling me I have to now go home and tell people I couldn't make it. I couldn't even look at the timers when I handed them my chip because I knew I would lose it.

I found it very difficult to cope with the abrupt end of my race. I never expected it that way. Before the race, I figured that if I was going to DNF, it would be because of outright fatigue.

So much learned. I now know what to expect. I know what I need to work on. Some would let a DNF ruin them. Some would dwell on it.

I'll dwell on it, alright. I'll let it simmer and motivate me all winter long.

Here's to Progression.

To the Hunt.

krp