The day the music died!

July 7th....Great White North Half Ironman.... was the day the music died!
I'd done this race twice before and enjoyed it! I'd done pretty well and was expecting to do so again this year. I definatly had not trained as well, but I thought " I can do it". Was I ever wrong!

There were many omens that the day was going to end badly.
1) I'd forgotten to pack a run shirt in my bike to run transition and it was too late to add it!
2) I didn't untie my shoe laces so when I got to transition, I had to undo laces tied 3 times!
3) It started raining during the swim
4) While swimming at what I thought was a decent pace I was pasted by a back stroker
5) While riding along I noticed the guy ahead of me had a camelback ( no offense Mark) and tube socks
6) When I got to bike to run transition Mike ( count chocula ) was not there with my shirt

So the swim was dreadful, even though in my mind it felt like I was going super fast!
The ride was good, I past lots of people and averaged about 30km/hour. Then I started the run, usually my best event, and I ran along and at 8 km I just couldn't go on! MY stomach hurt, my leg hurt and my mind was absolutly dreading the boring run course. Never before have a just quit a race but thats what I did...I ran into the bushes, took off my timing chip and ripped off my race # and started the long hard journey back to the finish line. Of course I didn't want to walk on the run route so I dodged in and out of residential areas until I finally found my friends.
When I quit I felt like all the pressure in the world had been lifted off of me and I felt good! I was sad when I saw my friends because I felt like I had let them down. In hindsight I think I should had tried to finish the race, even if it took be until the cutoff time. But I didn't and it is too late now to change anything.
Its a wake up call to swim harder and do more transition runs!