Holy Moly! I am an Ironlady 70.3!
Last week I completed a half Ironman. I don't really know what they call half Ironman finishers. Saying I am "half of an iron-person" doesn't feel exactly right. My finisher stuff says "Ironman 70.3," and I don't really want to be an IronMAN, so I think I will just say I am an Ironlady 70.3.
Not to be confused with the first female Prime Minister of the UK, though if you wanted to confuse me with her, that's fine too.
Anyway...y'all. It was hard. Like, really hard.
A half Ironman is 1.2 miles of swimming, 56 miles of biking, and 13.1 miles of running. The running was the only piece that did not concern me.
When I started this journey back in February, my friend Tia, her daughter Nina, and I were supposed to do a full Ironman. That's right, double all of those distances. And when I told Tia I would do this, I was sitting at a bar, drinking prosecco after couples therapy, as one does. (Or maybe it was before therapy...)
I figured in February that I should probably get into the pool and see how well my swimming was.
Let's be really clear. Before February, I had never swum with my face in the water. I had learned, in some fashion, to move my body across a pool without drowning. I knew how to kick, and I knew how to do some version of the doggy paddle. I have some posts about swimming that document this journey.
Also, prior to March, I had never had a bike with clip-in pedals. I knew how to ride a bike, but had never done anything remotely fast or competitive.
So fast-forward, and thankfully, the full Ironman that Tia and Nina were eyeing sold out. The Universe saw me and said, "Nope!" And so we shifted to the North Carolina Half Ironman.
This course is labeled as fast and flat. The swim takes place in the Intracoastal Waterway, where the tide can help carry you along. On a good-weather day, even if you do nothing to propel yourself forward, you should get a good current from the tide and float along.
On a good-weather day...
Saturday, October 17, 2026, was anything but a good-weather day. The day started in the 65-to-70-degree range, but a storm was moving in. Winds were picking up, and the Weather Channel app had a warning for Wrightsville Beach: Gale Force Winds. The temperatures dropped all day, and by the afternoon it was approaching 50 degrees and below...and raining.
Somewhere deep in my body, I was hoping, at least a little, that they would cancel the race. Or that I might fall down the stairs and get hurt just a little bit so I would have an excuse not to start.
None of those things happened.
So start, I did.
I had a plan. Swim front crawl for 30 to 50 strokes, breaststroke for sighting, and backstroke to recover. Repeat. That is what I had been practicing in the open water in Raleigh and, eventually, in my final pool swims as race day neared.
I got in the water and took a deep breath. A friend had told me to remember that I didn't need to start swimming right away. Get a feel for the water first.
The water was choppy. Front crawl felt impossible against the waves. I decided to shift to breaststroke until I could settle in a bit. The benefit of the tide was nearly negated by the wind. I was moving so slowly in what can only be described as a pure fight with the water.
I struggled, every stroke a battle. I switched between breaststroke and backstroke, with a sprinkling of front crawl. At 1,000 yards, not even halfway, my right calf seized in a cramp. I hung on to the side of a kayak and worked my foot back and forth until the cramp eased, talking to Jay, the volunteer on that kayak, who I decided must be a social worker or at least trained in crisis management.
I started again, the finish line not yet in sight, knowing I was likely not going to make it out of the water within the 70 minutes allotted.
And then I made a decision. Swimming for over an hour in open water was already more than I had ever thought possible for me. I had no idea whether I would be allowed to continue, let alone finish. But I could keep swimming.
So I did.
I met Perry along the way. We ran into each other multiple times as we swam, and we talked the rest of the way while backstroking toward the end. He was telling jokes. I was questioning my life choices.
As I climbed onto the dock, I was waiting for a race official to tell me I could not continue. I got out of the water eight minutes later than the allotted time, but nobody stopped me. I thought maybe I should stop and ask, but decided that if I was allowed to continue, I would need to make up time in the transitions. I did not have time to stop.
After a volunteer stripped off my wetsuit, I ran barefoot, carrying it, for half a mile to where my bike was racked. I put on my helmet, dried my feet as best I could, put on my bike shoes, shoved my wetsuit into my transition bag, and rolled my bike to the start of the bike course.
It was immediately difficult.
I knew what pace I had to ride to make the course cutoffs. I was not meeting it. In the first two miles, I nearly quit. Seriously. I asked myself things like, "Who will be disappointed if I don't finish?" and "Who cares that I am even doing this?"
Then I decided to hunker down and continue at least to ten miles. Once I made it to ten, fifteen seemed manageable.
I still wasn't riding at a pace that would get me to the cutoff in time.
Somewhere between miles 15 and 20, riding an average speed of 11.4 miles per hour in the rain and wind, I decided that all I could do was pedal as best I could. If all I could manage was 11-ish miles per hour, that would have to do.
It meant I would probably be swept from the course. But it would still be more than I ever thought I could do. After all, eight months earlier, I had never even swum with my face in the water.
I stopped trying to make the numbers work. I stopped looking at my pace. I stopped checking the time. I couldn't control the wind, the rain, or the cutoff times. All I could do was keep pedaling.
At mile 32, we turned off the highway and onto back roads. Immediately, there were no headwinds. My pace started to increase. I started passing people, and it began to feel, dare I say, easy. Okay, maybe not easy, but "easier" is probably fair.
And then another turn gave us the almighty tailwinds.
I was flying at speeds I had never been able to reach. I felt good. My legs had settled in. I started doing the math.
I was going to make the cutoff time.
I approached the final aid station around mile 47. I wasn't going to stop, but I wanted water. I slowed slightly to 19 mph, held out my hand, and snatched a water bottle from a volunteer. I went to start drinking, only to discover that the volunteer had not opened it for me.
I did the most natural thing I could think of. I ripped it open with my teeth, spit out the cap, and drank that water like I was the most badass cyclist who had ever lived.
I made the mile 47 cutoff with ten minutes to spare.
Finally, I had made it into downtown Wilmington and reached the run transition. I still felt like I needed to make up time. My transition from bike to run took five minutes, and I was out of the transition area and running immediately.
I did intervals and decided that at mile seven I would reassess and see if I had time to take a little extra walking time. I had a blister on the bottom of my right pinky toe that was very unhappy.
Run 75 seconds. Walk 45 seconds. Repeat.
My first six miles were all around an 11:30 pace. I felt good, and I felt strong. I took a slightly longer walk break between miles six and seven to refuel and hydrate, then decided to walk the entire eighth mile. I would resume my intervals after that and finish within the eight-and-a-half hours allowed for the race.
Mile nine was a little slower, hovering around an 11:57 pace, and my pinky toe felt like it was on fire.
And then I saw them.
Sometime just after mile marker nine, I caught up with my friends. They had made it to the bike transition a full 21 minutes ahead of me. But my quick transition and interval strategy had caught me up to them, and I could not have been happier to find them.
Ten weeks before the race, Tia had torn her meniscus. This was the first time she had run in more than two months. When I caught up with them, I adjusted my intervals. We walked a few extra stretches, but the three of us crossed the finish line together.
My official time: 8:25:51.
I made it across with four minutes and nine seconds to spare.
Tia's family and friends were waiting for us at the finish line. They snapped so many great photos of us coming through the finisher chute. I was screaming as I crossed the finish line, high-fiving every spectator who held out a hand.
We had done it.
I am getting teary-eyed just writing this and thinking about what a huge accomplishment it was.
And it was. More than 600 people did not finish the race. The conditions were wretched. People were down everywhere. Emergency vehicles were all around. People were huddled in the backs of vans under blankets.
There are so many metaphors in here that I will write about eventually. About perseverance, determination, grit, and the gift of knowing what you can control and what is totally outside your control.
I have done several endurance races. I have run in conditions most people would believe are insane. I have run distances that the majority of people on this planet are not running. But this event changed me.
In the hours following the race, it was all I could talk about. A week later, it is almost hard to talk about it.
The first thing people ask is, "Will you do it again?" I don't know why this question bothers me so much. But it does.
While I was out on the course, there was no part of me that could even think about doing it again. All I could think was, Don't stop. Keep moving forward. (Except for the 84 times I thought I might quit. Then I thought about quitting.)
And I didn't quit. I swam as well as I could, biked as fast as I was able, and kept putting one foot in front of the other.
And I finished.
This is going to sound a lot sadder than I intend it to sound, but nobody was there for me at the race. I had friends running the race whom I knew, but they weren't there for me. Tia's family became my adopted support team for the weekend, and they are now part of my forever family.
None of my own friends or family came. And I didn't ask them to. Did I even want them there? I don't know. It's a lot of pressure to have someone waiting for you at the finish line, I think. Sometimes, when I have people there, I'm thinking, "I need to hurry up and finish so they don't have to wait for me."
What I will say is that, at the finish line, falling into the arms of Tia's family and sobbing into their hair and shoulders was absolutely what I needed. I needed to be held by people who were happy I was there, who had watched me do this thing, and who were waiting to celebrate with me.
Something in me shifted that day. There is a part of me that will never be the same. And to answer the earlier question about whether I will do this again...I don't know.
There is a small voice that is saying, "You know what to expect. You know where the gaps are. And you did it in super-hard conditions. See what else you have in you."
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