I want to tell you about the night I finished an Ironman and thought I was dying.
Not in the dramatic way athletes sometimes say that after a hard race. I mean the actual medical kind, where a doctor looks at you in a hospital bed and tells you your kidneys are starting to shut down and that you need to stay on the IV drip until your numbers come back.
That was Cozumel. November 2023. And honestly, it was entirely my fault — not because I did not train hard enough or because I had a bad day. I had no idea what I was doing with nutrition. None. And I paid for it in a way that took weeks to recover from and years to fully understand.
How I got there
I had been building toward a full Ironman for a while. My background was not swimming — I grew up running and lifting, did the Army, spent years rebuilding my body after a serious back injury. When I found triathlon it felt like the right kind of challenge. The kind that tests everything at once.
My first few races went okay. Rough around the edges, terrifying in the water, but I always managed to hold it together on the bike and run. I figured the full distance would be more of the same. Train hard, show up, suffer through it, finish.
I trained all summer. Long rides, long runs, brick sessions in the Florida heat. I felt ready. I flew to Mexico, racked my bike, and went to bed the night before the race feeling genuinely confident.
Race day
The swim got canceled due to conditions. Disappointing, but out of my hands. So it was just the bike and the run, which sounds easier until you realize you are still covering 112 miles on the bike followed by a full marathon in 99-degree heat on an island with no shade and wind that feels like it is coming from every direction at once.
I got through the bike. Barely. Six hours in the sun, pouring sweat, drinking what felt like plenty. By the time I got to the run I was already in trouble, I just did not know it yet.
I kept moving. My goal was to run the whole thing and I held to that longer than I should have. Somewhere around mile 14 I passed a jokey sign on the course — one of those "smile if you peed your pants a little" things they put out to keep athletes loose. I laughed. Then I stopped.
I had not peed once all day. Not on the bike. Not in transition. Not in the first two hours of the run. Eight-plus hours of racing in brutal heat and my body had produced nothing.
That sign probably saved my life. Not because of what it said, but because it made me stop and actually think about what was happening inside my body for the first time all day.
I tried to use a porta-potty. Nothing. Just pain. Something was very wrong.
The finish line
I finished the race. I am not sure that was the right call looking back, but I finished. My wife was at the line. I remember her face, excited and proud. I remember telling her I was not okay before I even said hello.
Within minutes I was cramping so hard I could not stand up straight. Dry heaving. Someone nearby put salt on my tongue trying to help and my body rejected it immediately. The medical team came fast. One look at me and they skipped the tent and took me straight to the hospital.
Rhabdomyolysis. Severe dehydration. Kidneys beginning to shut down. They got two IVs going and kept me there through the night. At 3am I was lying in a hospital bed in Mexico, starving, exhausted, and unable to eat because the roof of my mouth had swollen and cracked from the electrolyte crisis. I could not chew. I could barely swallow water.
That lasted almost a week.
What I got wrong
Here is the honest answer: I treated the race like a long training day. Drink when thirsty, eat a few gels, push through. That approach might work for a half marathon. It does not work for eight hours of full-effort racing in extreme heat.
I had no sodium plan. No electrolyte strategy. No understanding of how much I was losing through sweat versus how much I was taking in. I knew nothing about the relationship between sodium and water retention, or why your kidneys need adequate sodium to keep processing fluid. I just drank water and assumed that was enough.
It is not enough. Not even close.
After Cozumel I spent a year reading, talking to sports dietitians, and obsessively tracking my own sweat rate and electrolyte loss. I learned how to calculate sodium needs by the hour based on temperature, effort level, and body weight. I learned why carbohydrate intake matters beyond just energy — and why most athletes take in far less than their body actually needs during long efforts. I learned that the gut is trainable and that race-day fueling is a completely separate skill from fitness.
Everything I now coach around nutrition came from that night in a Mexican hospital.
The redemption race
In 2025 I did Challenge Roth. Full distance, proper swim included, and I finished in 11 hours and 20 minutes feeling completely fine. Not crawling to the finish line. Not in the medical tent. Fine. Hungry, tired, proud — but fine.
The difference was not fitness. My fitness was similar. The difference was that I knew exactly how much sodium I needed per hour, exactly how many carbohydrates my gut could process, and exactly how to adjust both based on conditions. I had practiced the whole nutrition plan in training until it was automatic.
That is what good preparation actually looks like. Not just the miles. The fueling.
Why I am writing this
Every athlete I coach now gets a nutrition and hydration plan before they race. Not a generic one. One built around their body weight, their sweat rate, their target pace, and the conditions they will be racing in. I will not let someone I coach end up where I ended up.
If you are building toward a long course race and you have not thought seriously about your race-day fueling strategy, that is the place to start. Not more miles. More planning.
Feel free to reach out if you want to talk through it. That conversation is free and it might save you a very miserable week.