I always tell my athletes to make smart decisions during a race. Today, during Ironman 70.3 Chattanooga, I listened to my own advice. Today, the smart thing to do was to stop.

This past week, I had a recurrence of my acid reflux issues.  This resulted in my trachea becoming very irritated.  In turn, this made breathing aggressively during exercise, very hard.  I have been taking medication to fix it, and was hopeful, that it wouldn’t impact my race.

In reality, it impacted my race quite significantly.  I had to swim very conservatively, to avoid further irritation. Then on the bike leg, I started to experience wheezing and coughing, which got progressively worse. By the time I got to T2, I knew that I was in trouble.  I started the run, but it was obvious that I needed to pull the plug, and end my race.

I will share full details of my experience in an upcoming race report, but for now, we all need to remember. Sometimes, the smart thing to do in a race, is to stop.