Ironman Arizona: A DNF story part 2 (The Swim)

Attempting to complete Ironman Arizona has been a dream of mine for quite some time. An Ironman Triathlon is a 2.4mi swim, 112mi bike ride and 26.2 mi run within a 17h time period. On Nov 22nd 2009 I attempted and failed to complete Ironman Arizona by falling 5 min short of reaching the 4:15pm bike cutoff time and receiving a DNF.

DNF in triathlon stands for Did Not Finish. But to me, my DNF during Ironman Arizona stands for Dream Not Fulfilled (yet). I’ll be back in Arizona someday to re-attempt making this dream a reality. For now, here’s my account of what happened and what I learned from it.


Part 2, The Swim:

As I jumped into the water and warmed up to get ready for the MASS swim start at 7am, I just didn’t feel like I was doing an Ironman. What I did feel, was that the water was incredibly cold. I knew that the water wasn’t actually cold, I mean hell, I swam in the Aquatic Park in SF in 50-55 degree water and this was only 63 degrees. But for some reason, the water felt EXTRA cold to me. I seeded myself WAY back behind the masses. I wanted to have a comfortable swim. Being a few extra minutes faster was really not worth being pummeled by tons of people swim around and over me in the water. My pacing strategy was to take it easy in the water. WAYYY easy. The swim is the shortest event in the Ironman triathlon. Going harder would mean gaining a few extra minutes at best, possibly at the expense of feeling exhausted out of the water.

But going at that slow pace, I just COULDN’T warm up. I was scared to go faster since my swim endurance was definitely the worst out of the three disciplines but I was SO cold the entire time. It makes no sense to me since I generally LOVE swimming in ~65 degrees water with a wetsuit. All I could think of was how cold I was and how I wish I could JUST warm up. I tried to focus on other things and that helped, but physically, my body was COLD and TENSE. My legs kept cramping up as did my hip flexors and the entire thing was a terribly uncomfortable experience. In retrospect, I wish I had gone faster just to get warmer.

Coming out of the water, the volunteers had to help me up because I couldn’t feel my feet too well. They stripped the wetsuit off me and handed it to me, instructed me to the changing tent and sent me along my way. I was shivering. Shaking. Uncontrollably. And in my head I remember thinking ‘the water wasn’t that cold…I know it wasn’t…I’ve swam in much worse than that during practice swims and still managed to get warm in the water within 10-15 min or so of swimming…WHAT happened?’ I have to be honest. I have no idea. I still don’t know WHY the water felt SO cold. What I do know, is that I wasted ~10 minutes just to thaw out and get warmer and be able to stop my legs from shaking uncontrollably.

10 minutes doesn’t seem like a long time during an event that you’re given 17h to complete, but when you miss the bike cutoff by 5 min, you can’t help but play that numbers game. The reality is, had I trained right for this Ironman, A few extra minutes lost here and there wouldn’t have made the difference between making the cutoff and not making it.

One volunteer draped two mylar blankets around me and directed me to sit in the sun while another rubbed down my feet and my arms to get my blood going and help me warm up. A third volunteer helped into the changing tent and got me dressed. After 16 whole minutes, I was FINALLY ok to go out on the bike course.