May 7, 2022 / St. George, UT
Instagram: @megangranichtri
Ironman World Championship 1.6 (The 4 and the 0 of the 140.6 apparently weren’t meant to be).
Before I go any further, my biggest congratulations to all who finished the race! You all are amazing athletes who should take such pride in that accomplishment. I know it was a brutal day out there but you grabbed the bull by its horns and kicked it’s ass! Well done all!
Ok, so, what happened to the other 139 miles?
Everyone who has ever attempted a full will tell you it’s “the journey” leading up to it and getting to the start line is the hardest part. The race itself is a “victory lap”. Unfortunately, my victory lap got cut short. Very, very short.
I’m not going to go into the “Woah is me. I worked so hard for months and months…boohoo”. This can happen to anyone – and Saturday it happened to me.
The week leading up to the race had gone as well as can be expected. I hadn’t been doing much running at all due to nagging ankle and calf issues that just wouldn’t die down even after 10+ days of rest. But as they say, “the hay was in the barn”. I decided to focus on the swim leading up to Saturday. The plan was to go to the practice swim first thing Tuesday morning when it opened, but the high winds had a different plan and it was cancelled.
I got up first thing on Wednesday, jumped in the wetsuit (complete with a space blanket wrapped around my core, 2 caps + neoprene cap and hand warmers in my back kit pocket. Don’t knock it until you try it) and drove down to Sand Hallow.
The main goal was to mimic as much of race day as possible – including trying to swim as close to 2.4 miles as I could. I wanted to see how long it would take and how my body would adapt to the cold. Long story short, I jumped in the 58-degree water, did four loops of the practice course they set up and hit just about 2 miles. I wasn’t too cold when I got out and it was a HUGE confidence booster.
Fast forward to race day, my sherpa team (Lou, Mom and Dad) wrapped me up the exact same way as Wednesday. I was nervous, very nervous in fact. But knowing how great Wednesday’s practice was, I leaned on that experience and “trusted the training”.
It was almost go time. I had 12 minutes until our wave started going in, or at least I thought. Mike Reilly was off to the side and announced the water temp was 64. 64!!! I couldn’t believe my luck. I even walked over to him and confirmed he said 64 and not 44! He confirmed it, wished me luck…and then I heard the beeps starting. My immediate reaction was “WTF? It’s 7:35. We aren’t supposed to start until 7:47.” Before I knew it, I was in the water.
My first thought was “Wow, this water is a LOT warmer!” It was so warm, I didn’t even get the ice cream headache. My second thought was “Ok, Megan, do what you did on Wednesday. Focus on ONE buoy at a time and tick them off!”.
I was swimming along, buoy to buoy…1, 2, 3…and even thinking the first thing I was going to say to my team out of the water was “I’m never NOT doing a practice swim again. That was huge!”.
But then I started not to feel right. Shortness of breath and the feeling of constantly having to clear my throat. My exhales underwater turned into the opportunity to try to clear my throat. Then I noticed that I was starting to wheeze. I figured it was just anxiety and it would pass as soon as I slowed my breathing and focused on just ticking off those buoys…and thinking of funny things friends had said leading up to the big day and things I wanted to use for motivation. It worked for a little while but then the shortness of breath got worse, the chest and throat felt like I was hit with sudden onset bronchitis or some shit and the wheezing was getting worse.
Now I was going buoy to buoy, yes, but having to stop and hang on to each one to try to catch my breath and cough. Then it became not just buoy – stop – buoy – stop. It was now buoy – stop and hold on to a kayak – buoy – hold on to a kayak – buoy…(I was less than a mile from the finish and knew that even though it would suck, I had to keep moving forward!)
It was just getting worse and worse and worse. Clearly, the medical staff on the inflatable pontoon was watching this. They came up to me while hanging on to my 507th kayak and asked what was wrong. I told them the deal. They said “Well, we can clearly hear you wheezing and since it’s only getting worse and you can’t clear your chest, why don’t we take you over to the medical boat and get you checked out?” I asked “Ok, well if you check me out and I’m ok, can I hop back in?” They said “No, I’m sorry. That would be the end of your day unfortunately”. I immediately said “Well, I guess I’ll just keep plugging along at these buoys then.”
I turned around from hanging on the side of the pontoon to start swimming again and one guy grabbed one arm and another grabbed the other (practically ripping my arms out of my sockets) and pulled me into the boat.
And with that. It was done.
They motored me over to the bigger medical boat to get “checked out”. This consisted of them offering me a space blanket and asking how I was feeling now. I told them I was fine but I just needed to get a good cough and get junk out of my chest, stop wheezing, catch my breath and move on. They kept saying that this was happening to a lot of swimmers because of the cold water. It pissed me off because I WAS NOT COLD! At all!! But it was too late. The timing chip was removed, bib number radioed in.
Needless to say, I and two other girls on the boat who got pulled out, were crying pretty badly and holding on to each other to keep from completely breaking down. I won’t forget their faces as long as I live. I’m tearing up just writing this but also laughing a bit at the memory of when the staff made us put on life vests for the ride back to shore. Of all the ironic things they could have asked us to do. We looked at them and said, “Seriously?”.
After I got back to land and re-united with Lou and my parents, they insisted I go to the medical tent. So I went. Oxygen level was low 90s and BP was totally fine. I was now OUT of the wetsuit, still NOT COLD, but still wheezing and trying to clear the gunk out of my chest. It took most of the day to subside but even now, days out, I’m still trying to clear out what feels like gunk in my throat and chest.
It goes without saying that I am beyond devasted. While it’s a “first world problem”, I feel almost like I’m mourning a death. Then again, since Mercury went into retrograde on May 10, I should have known a race on May 7th would be problematic!
So, what’s next? First of all, embrace the suck. Embrace the sadness. Then, it’s time to move on. I’m going to a doctor to see if he can figure out what happened and hopefully, if we can diagnose it right, find a solution so it doesn’t happen again. From what I’ve been told, it was most likely either SIPE (swimming induced pulmonary edema) or cold water/sports induced asthma – I’m hoping for the latter.
I cannot thank everyone enough who messaged and called me to see if I was ok. Every single last one of you made such a difference. A special thank you to Lynn Holmquist who was there and saw me in line to get back on the shuttle and gave me the biggest, strongest hug and pep talk. It was divine intervention to see someone from Tower 26 at that moment.
Then, there was a man who came up to me as I was face down crying sitting at a table, put his arm around me and talked to me for a good 5 minutes. I didn’t say a word, he just talked to me.
There was also a woman whose husband was doing the “T1 walk of shame – spandex edition” as well, who also hugged me so hard and started crying with me.
Add to that, when I walked in to collect my bike gear bag, the volunteers were cheering for me, thinking I was coming to change and get on the bike. When I told them I was out, one after another they came up and hugged me, gave me a quick pep talk and genuinely looked me in the eyes and told me I was going to be ok.
But the most vital people in my life, Lou and my parents, picked up the pieces and tried their damnest to help me cope. They insisted we stay and watch the pros finish (as they know that’s something on my bucket list – but that I wouldn’t have gotten to do if I was racing) and when we finally got back home, they kept the tequila coming. Lou, Dad and Mom…I love you so much.
I know they are just as devastated as I am. They have had to deal with the ups and downs for months during “the journey” and had so much emotionally invested. I feel horrible to have let them down. And horrible isn’t even a strong enough word.
And, a word to my Coach, Jim Lubinski. He prepared me perfectly for this race. I mean, perfectly. When I was worried, he would always say “Megan. Relax. You’re fine”….and in such a way that I constantly heard him saying that in my head on long or hard training days. I even wrote “Relax. You’re fine.” on my leg in Sharpie to look at while riding the bike during the race. Jim, I’m SO sorry that I had the result I did. I know you’ll say we’ll learn from this one and adjust and kick ass the next time…but I’m still very sorry I couldn’t come through and show you just how well you prepared me. Please, don’t let me go as your athlete 😉
Anyone who knows me, knows that I can do some major damage at an Ironman merch tent. So, you can only imagine the damage I did on the AMEX last week. Part of me says “Hey! None of it says ‘finisher’ on it, keep it! Not many people can say they towed the start line at an IM World Championship.” The other part of me says “All this stuff has bad ju-ju!”. Maybe I should take a poll…keep or sell?
Anyway…onwards and upwards and don’t look back! (unless it’s to watch wave after wave of other age groups swim over on top of you).
The Ironman Professor 