Five Races

IRONMAN 70.3 Oregon in 2022 was my fourth 70.3 finish, and by then I’d already completed a full IRONMAN (Arizona 140.6, in 2018). I have not finished a long-course triathlon since.

Victoria, 2023: a bike mechanical, then I hit the run cutoff. Arizona, 2023: I DNFed on the run, in the second half, in heat I still believe should have ended the race. Washington Tri-Cities, 2024: withdrew before the start. La Quinta, 2025: withdrew before the start. Oregon, 2026: withdrew the morning of the race, before transition even opened.

One finish. Two DNFs. Three withdrawals. Five races in a row I did not complete. I registered for Oregon again this year because it’s a course I know and a course I’d already beaten once: a fast downriver swim, a bike that’s mostly flat, a run that’s flat and shaded. I told my wife before the race that I intended to retire from long-course triathlon after this one no matter what happened. Five consecutive races I did not complete gave me no reason to plan a sixth.

The count is the least interesting part of this, though. Here’s the rest of it.

At the end of 2019 I was 49 and in the best shape of my life, heading into my age-50 athletic year. I was planning to run fifteen, maybe twenty half marathons. I was in position to podium in my age group at local trail races. It was going to be a banner year.

Then COVID happened, and then long COVID happened, and it did real damage. Before 2021 I had DNFed exactly one race in my life: my first attempt at IM 70.3 Coeur d’Alene, where I hadn’t fully recovered from bronchitis and pulled out during the swim. That was the outlier. From 2021 on, DNFs and DNSes at races I’d have handled easily a few years earlier became the pattern instead of the exception.

In late 2022 I had rotator cuff surgery on my right shoulder. The repair itself went fine, and my shoulder was physically ready to race by Victoria in 2023. I don’t think the rest of me was.

Then Arizona. On October 22, 2023, at nearby Phoenix Sky Harbor, it was 94°F at 12:51pm, 96°F at 2:51pm, and 98°F at 3:51pm; relative humidity fell from 17% to 12%, with almost no wind. I DNFed on the run in conditions I believe were genuinely dangerous. I know I’m in the minority in believing IRONMAN should have modified or stopped the race, but I still believe it.

Arizona shaped the next two years of my racing.

I registered for Washington Tri-Cities 2024 at the Arizona finish line area, before I’d even left. When it came time to race, I could not get anywhere near clear of the headspace Arizona had left me in. I withdrew.

I registered for La Quinta 2025 after withdrawing from Tri-Cities, thinking two years would be enough distance. As the date approached and the forecast firmed up, it was clear what I should have expected: it was going to be hot. I couldn’t handle the thought of it. I withdrew again.

This year’s training cycle for Oregon overlapped with a stretch of unemployment (since resolved) and the worst mental state I’ve been in for decades. I’m being treated for depression and anxiety, on fluoxetine and hydroxyzine, and still working through it. In practice, “training” meant Orangetheory, Pilates, and watching my weight. Almost no bike. No swim at all.

I still went into the weekend thinking I could finish. Not fast, not well, just finish. My plan was built entirely around margin: in the water by 7am against a 30-minute swim and a first bike cutoff hours away, a bike leg I planned to ride easy, a run I could walk most of and still beat cutoff with time to spare. On paper it worked. I’ve stood on thirteen triathlon start lines, including seven IRONMAN 70.3s and one full IRONMAN. I know what a conservative, defensible plan looks like, and this was one.

After Victoria, I bought a new bike: an A2 Bikes SP1.1, the bike in these photos.

Friday we drove from Spokane to Salem, left at 6am and got in at 2pm because of traffic and EV charging. Got the bike checked at Playtri, picked up my bib, bought the shirt, rested.

Saturday morning was an 8-mile shakeout ride, my first real ride in longer than I want to say, and it went fine, because that kind of thing doesn’t fully leave you. Afterward, the front brake squealed loudly when I applied it, so I went back to Playtri. They fixed it, then I went to the athlete briefing, checked my bike into transition, and returned to the hotel to lay out my gear the way I’ve laid out gear for fifteen years. Early dinner, bed, alarm set for 3:30am.

Sunday morning I woke up in the blackest, grayest, darkest haze of depression and panic I’ve felt in years. I took my meds, had food and caffeine, tried to run my normal morning routine anyway. It didn’t move. I talked to Jen. I tried breathing exercises, tried to meditate. None of it touched what was happening.

At 5:38am, transition already open, I should have been prepping my gear. Instead I opened the IRONMAN app, found the race contact, and wrote an email titled “cannot proceed.” By the time I went looking for that address, the decision was already made. Writing the email was just paperwork for something I’d already decided in my body hours earlier.

I took an extra dose of medication—something I reserve for extreme circumstances—and went back to sleep.

We got the bike back as soon as checkout opened at 12:30, packed up, and drove home. We’d planned to stay one more night for a celebratory dinner. Instead we left that afternoon and got back to Spokane a little after 9pm. I mostly avoided finishers on the way out, which would have been hard to be around, and saw exactly one car with race stickers on the whole drive, hours later and already back in Washington. The drive itself was long and uneventful. If I didn’t hate crating my bike so much I’d have flown instead.

I’m retiring from long-course triathlon. Not from the sport: I’ve got a local sprint race in September and I intend to do it. But 70.3 and up is done. Five consecutive races I did not complete form a pattern. I don’t see anything a sixth attempt would tell me that the last five haven’t already.

I don’t yet know whether Arizona broke something or simply exposed something that had been building for years. I don’t need to solve that question before deciding what comes next. The long-course chapter is over. In September, I’ll start a local sprint and see what remains when the distance is no longer the point.