What is the most you have struggled through to finish a race? No hating in this thread, just good stories.
Discuss.
I’ll start it with a story from 2001. I was doing a local short course race to finish out the season. With nine miles left of the bike I got a flat. Then I blew my spare trying to fix it. Ran the nine miles back to transition barefoot, got my shoes, did the run with bleeding feet, and still didn’t finish last. At one point during the barefoot run I looked back at the white line dotted with red footprints and felt a certain kinship with deer during hunting season - we both leave blood trails.
Kona 2001. Crazy winds that year took out my nutrition plan as I kept my head down/hammered and forgot to eat. Bonked at mile 80 and was sitting at the aid station downing Coke.
Walk/jog the marathon. Very cool running down Queen K in the pitch black all alone. Ran by some people in the dark or I hope they were actually people. Ate a lot of buns and chicken broth. Finally “ran” down Alii to the light. Wept like a baby. Priceless.
P.S. The song playing the at the time I crossed the line…“Whip it” by Devo;)
it’s kind of a blurr now, but it was Kona 1995 I think. Somehow I managed to start the day already dehyrated. About 10 miles into the bike, I came up on a friend that is an Air Force test pilot. He asked what was wrong and why I was back that far and I told him I had a splitting headache. He offered some ibuprofin that he had in his seat bag, but he dropped them trying to get them out for me. Suprisingly he told me to go ahead and stopped to pick them up. A couple of miles later he pulled up again and gave me the pills. Didn’t help much though. I suffered the rest of the bike, but was determined to finish since I had DNF’d a couple of years earlier at Kona. By the time I got to T2 I was a mess. I remember sitting on the bench in transition and a volunteer asking if I was alright. I thought to myself, admit it to them, you’re not alright. I then went to stand up to tell him that maybe I should go to the medical tent and I passed out and fell over. Woke up on a cot in the med tent a couple of minutes later. After a couple of cokes and cookies they said I could get up and go on with the run whenever I felt ready. I looked to my right and my Air Force buddy was there, and then to my left was anotehr buddy I knew so I told the medical guy “why would I want to leave, all my friends are here.” I then passed out again for 30 minutes. When I awoke the next time, my friends were all gone so I decided to get up and go too. Actually felt pretty good when I started running and was hitting 7 minute miles for the first couple of miles. By the 6 mile mark though, it hit again and when I saw the mdical station at that point I figured I needed to lay down again. Spend another 20 minutes waiting for my heart rate to come down to a normal level again. From that point on it was jogging and walking the rest of the way. I remember also stopping and sitting on a volunteers tailgate of his Explorer out on the Queen K listening to part of a playoff baseball game, the Blue Jays were playing. Don’t remember my time exactly, I think it was in the low 13 hour range. The finish line that day was a very welcome sight. I remember getting the flower lei about 200 yards from the finish line and wearing it proudly across the line that night. Not sure why that part sticks out so much, but it does.