Last year it was close call

This was published in the Wisconsin State Journal... about a fellow Kansas City triathlete

Last year it was close call

Dave Shultz will arrive in Madison this week with an entourage of 20 supporters from his home in Kansas City. He calls it "Operation Redemption."

His wife, Carolyn Shultz, might have a different name for it. Her memories of last year 's Ironman Wisconsin triathlon are "horrible and scary." She was standing in the chilly rain at the finish line with her two young children at midnight that Sunday, waiting for Daddy to cross the finish line and for the announcer to intone: "Dave Shultz, you are an Ironman."

The moment of triumph never came. Back in the hotel, her cell phone was flashing with a message. Dave Shultz had collapsed 136 miles into the triathlon -- four miles from the finish -- and had been taken to University Hospital. When Carolyn Shultz got there, her husband was in a medically induced coma as doctors worked to bring his sodium levels back to normal.

He wouldn 't wake up until Tuesday. "I wondered why my parents were there," he said, of his first thoughts on awakening, "and why I wasn 't running anymore." Actually, Shultz ran for about nine miles that he doesn't remember. His memory of the race, which began with a 2.4-mile swim and a 112-mile bike ride in the cold rain, ends at about the halfway point of the 26-mile marathon. He's had to piece together what happened and hopes his story will warn other competitors in next Sunday's event to be careful to keep their salt intake up, no matter the weather.

Shultz fell victim to a syndrome called "severe hyponatremia," a condition better known as water intoxication. You may have heard of people who died after drinking huge amounts of water. Or may have seen the Gatorade commercial that shows pro triathlete Chris Legh collapsing 50 yards from the finish line at the 1997 Ironman World Championships in Hawaii.

The condition happens when endurance athletes drink so much water that their sodium levels plummet, which can lead to organ failure, and death.

Shultz, 38, thinks his problems began days before the race, when he began hydrating, preparing for the hot conditions faced by competitors in the 2005 Ironman Wisconsin.
"The first mistake I made was sitting in my office all week, drinking from my water bottle all the time," he said. "My doctors think I was already low on sodium when I got to Madison."

Race day was cold and rainy, and while Shultz kept drinking water, he didn't take his usual number of salt pills because he wasn 't sweating. It was a near-fatal mistake.

The symptoms of hyponatremia -- fatigue, weakness, cramping, nausea, vomiting, bloating, swelling and tightness of the hands and feet, dizziness, headache, confusion, fainting -- mimic those of its opposite, dehydration. So the temptation is to keep drinking water.

Shultz, who has completed a number of Adventure endurance races, says he knew something was wrong with him beyond regular exhaustion, but he couldn't figure out what it was. He only learned what happened later, when Wisconsin athlete Hance Anderson tracked Shultz down in Kansas City to see how he was doing.

Anderson, 42, of Monona, was competing in his first triathlon and was running in the dark near Picnic Point.

"It was the most miserable part of the race," said Anderson, who by then was wearing a plastic garbage bag to ward off hypothermia. "It was dark, it was cold, it was raining. The wind was blowing in hard off the lake. Anderson thought he saw someone go down in front of him. He raced to the dark form and saw a man who seemed to be having a seizure. Anderson, a volunteer with the Monona Fire Department, is trained as a first responder. "(Shultz) was not moving air very well and was in distress," Anderson said. "I cleared his airway and readjusted his head so he could breathe more easily."

Someone called 911, and others donated their coats to keep Shultz warm. Sue Wolfe, an emergency room nurse from University Hospital who was helping clean up a nearby aide station, took over and kept Shultz's airway open until the ambulance arrived. Stiff, sore and cold, Anderson finished his race.

But he didn't forget the guy who almost finished. Anderson remembered Shultz's bib number, and looked him up in Kansas City to see how he was doing.

The two plan to have dinner this week, which will be a bit weird since neither man remembers what the other one looks like.

Shultz hopes to thank all those who helped him, and to visit the nurses at the ICU.
"It 's a great city, the crowd was phenomenal, people stood for hours in the rain," said Shultz, who even feels fond of "the guy in the transvestite devil suit who taunts you when you bike up the hill."

But returning to Madison also is about his desire to achieve a goal that he had trained months for, and that evaporated so close to the finish. The registration for the 2007 Ironman Wisconsin filled while Shultz was still in the hospital last year.

But a couple of his buddies, who completed the 2006 race themselves, sent a letter to race officials, asking them to let him into this year 's race. They did.
"I was a little upset with them," said Carolyn Shultz, of the buddies. "They stopped coming around the house for a while after that."

Still, she knows how hard her husband trained, and how disappointing the 2006 race was for him. Doctors have assured them the condition that nearly killed Shultz is completely preventable.

"I knew, when he made it four miles from the finish, that he'd have to do it again," she said. "I was just hoping he'd take a year off." But she'll be here, too, to cheer him on, although this time the kids, Eliza, 5, and Evan, 3, will stay home with the grandparents. She's been watching Sept. 9 approach with dread.

"There will be a huge sense of relief when it's over," she said. So here's hoping that a week from now, Dave Shultz hears his name announced as an Ironman.
And maybe Carolyn Shultz should also get a medal for being an Iron Wife.


Update 9/12:
Dave Shultz, the athlete who wound up in a coma in the hospital during the 2006 Ironman Wisconsin had a much more successful run this time. He finished in 12:25:47, beating his estimated time by an hour, and had no problems with hyponatremia, the water-poisoning that nearly killed him the year before when his sodium level dropped too low.

"My hydration/nutrition/salt plan developed over the last 12 months since last year's scary event worked flawlessly all day and I still felt strong at the finish," he said. "Needless to say, my family saw a dramatic change in my demeanor and every time they saw me they just knew that I was a totally different person than the one they saw in last year's race."