Dnf’d at first Ironman

Slight rant here: feeling frustrated after my DNF at first IM attempt in Thun, Switzerland last weekend. Wasn’t feeling hugely confident due to the heat which ended up being about 34 degrees. Though in the end, I’d didn’t make it out of the swim, which I’m very disappointed about after 6 months of training.

Lake was bizarrely choppy come race day, with pro race commentators saying it was kona esque. I had done all my training in pool after being ok during the Ironman 70.3 Turkey ocean swim, and this led me to naively believe I didn’t need to prepare in open water for my first full which was big mistake.

Literally every third breathe I was swallowing wave water and visibility was terrible. Fighting the chop also led to big energy expenditure. These three factors led me to experience a panic attack about 1000m in and for the next 1000m I battled to negate the wave of panic attacks that hit me. The cycle became swim and find a rhythm, swallow water, get hit by foot, gaze into impenetrable water, panic, attempt to calm down, repeat. I finally snapped at 2000m in and dnf’d on paddle board. Other than open water swimming training, what else can I do to make sure this doesn’t happen again ? I changed to two kick beat in advance of increased Full IM swim distance, and I feel this may of made it much harder to power through waves and maintain stability.