Know when to say when!

I was working the finish passing out medals at IM Wisconsin this year from nine to midnight. I hung the medal around the gentleman to the left after he crashed through the finish line. He was in bad shape. I didn't realize how bad of shape he really was until I read the story below. Sometimes it's better to listen to your body and call it a day. This guy went face down and had to be carried away. I hung his medal around his neck as he was being carried away in a horizontal position. They were yelling at me to give him his medal and I asked where? They told me to hang it around his neck. It was the weirdest thing of the day for me as I hung his medal around his neck. I hope all is well with him.


Bill Enright was the last official triathlete to cross the finish line at this year's Ironman Wisconsin crossing the line in a time of 16 hours, 56 minutes and 28 seconds.

With just under three minutes to spare before the race closed you would think that he would be over the moon to finish the Ironman in the nick of time.

"I sort of just reached for the ground -- it could've been broken glass and I would've laid on it," Enright said.

But while the Ironman took the 43-year-old Madison insurance executive and father of three, just under 17-hours to finish, the stay in the hospital that followed the race took 35-hours and almost killed him because his serious condition could have led to permanent kidney failure.

Enright suffered from rhabdomyolysis, a muscle breakdown caused by strenuous physical exertion, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.

Rhabdomyolysis is rare, serious and preventable, Dr. Lee Faucher, medical director for Ironman Wisconsin since 2004 said. It's a condition he's seen at ultramarathons but never at the Ironman. "A person gets that because they don't take in enough fluids to compensate for the loss of fluid," he added.

"It was a great accomplishment completing the Ironman, but in retrospect I wish he had stopped earlier," Dr. Cate Ranheim, who treated him, said. "The system is set up to encourage people to go, go, go and make it to the end, but people like him can potentially suffer lifelong consequences."