What do you say to a DNF?

I think a general "are you ok?" email would be appropriate. He might actually be hurt/sick so it might not stir bad feelings from the race. Thats really unfortunate.

I think by now he might be calmed down, maybe send a note tomorrow to be sure.

He'll respond back with a little summary about what happened at least, if not more. 

What? The curmudgeony Bear worried about his friend's feelings? No "suck it up, buttercup"? No "obviously you left your red bike at home"?

Seriously...a little humor might be just the way to broach it.

I take care of my friends. It's just the black-bike buttheads on here whom I treat badly.

Humor might be a good approach. Personally, I'd get really sick of the "its ok, you did great for even trying" crap. Really, I'd throw my computer.

What about nekkid bikes? I feel left out of the cook kids club now.

That's more like it.  

You know I love nekkid, spend most of my time on my nekkid lady. Red is faster, not necessarily better.

So when you say "ride lots"...

Heh. 

The less verbiage the less chance you stumble across the one thing that might tick him off.  I'd just send something like "Are you ok?" or "How you doing?".

I'd probably stay away from "WTF?" or "So how'd you f- up this time?"

Actually, he just called me. Pre-race, I had mentioned to him that IF I was going to do an IM, it would be CdA, but probably not until 2008. He called expressly to talk me into signing up for 2007, which is what he is doing this evening. getting right back on the horse that threw him.

He said everything was going fine. He had a nice, almost leisurely swim. Bike course was pleasantly less hilly than he anticipated and trained for, stayed within himself the whole way, backed off when it got warmer. Ate a sandwich for lunch at about Mile 90, finished the bike and got through T2 in great shape, feeling on top of the world.

Then, about 3 miles into the run, he developed bloating in his stomach, like an intense feeling of gas, like he had to belch bad and couldn't. Feeling got worse as he ran, made it impossible to drink more than a few sips of fluid at a time. By Mile Fifteen, in addition to the hurting he was probably dehydrated as well. Stopped a volunteer, told him he was going to surrender his chip, then spewed what was left in his stomach, He thought that might make him feel better, but no such luck so he called it a day.

Anyway, he was in good spirits, ready to sign up for '07.  He said he's barely sore, so he's confident his training didn't fail him, just a fluke stomach thing. The only cause he can think of is that his Perpeteum was out in the heat for seven hours before he drank it.

Anyway, he's alright, ready to get back at it, will be doing River Cities and two HIMs later thsi year.

Also it's worth mentioning that race had over a 12% DNF rate. There's no room for shame left in you if you can step up to the start line of an IM, but there's even less for pushing it through 2/3 or more of that race.

The heat got a good number of us in one way or another, and the ones that know when to stop are the ones who will live to race another day. That shows not only the body, but the mind of a great athlete.

-Harry

A good friend of mine worked his a## off getting ready for IMFL last year ( a guy with marathon and ultra-marathon background).  Somehow he blistered his feet during the bike leg.  It got worse and worse on the run until it affected his stride and caused him to cramp up.  He sat down at the special needs stop and literally couldn't stand up again.  Think he would have tried to crawl the rest of the way if his wife and two teenage sons hadn't interceded and convinced/forced him to drop out. 

The next week when I saw him I just asked him how he was doing and then let him talk.   He was okay with it all because he knew he had trained adequately and had given it his all in the race.  It was just one of those things.  The down side was that he didn't know if he would ever be able to make the physical or psychological commitment again necessary to train for an IM.

A thousand different unexpected things can go wrong in a race, but in my view none of it in any way diminishes the commitment, sacrifice and effort goes into just preparing for an IM. 

Mark