Triathlete regroups after “deca disaster”

After running 78.6 miles, racing 336 miles on a bicycle and swimming competitively for 7.2 miles in central Mexico last month, Bill Greineisen decided he was done.

Frustrated by baggage issues with Delta Airlines, Greineisen, 62, the Volcano resident who specializes in long distance challenges, had to cut off the event he had prepared for during most of 2015 because he had no equipment with which to compete.

Greineisen was competing in a Deca Ironman, that is, a 26.2-mile run, 112 miles of cycling and 2.4 miles of swim competition each day for 10 consecutive days, but Mexican customs officials held up his baggage and would not release it.

Remarkably, Greineisen competed for three days in old running shoes with no tread that he uses at home to mow the lawn, and a few borrowed items to get him through. It wasn’t nearly enough to allow him to continue.

“A complete, absolute nightmare, my deca disaster,” Greineisen said of his body-beating experience as one of 19 contestants in the world one of three from the United States — who signed up for the competition. “Nobody else had any issues with their stuff, it was all some kind of lesson for me, I guess.”

It all started in Kona when the Delta employee wouldn’t allow all of Greineisen’s baggage on the plane.

“It was taking forever,” he said of the check-in experience. “Of course, they had to open my bags and go through everything, bicycle parts, all the shoes and stuff, and then I was told there was a luggage embargo and Delta wouldn’t let me take all the bags — there was no way, she said, company policy.”

Following the ordeal, last week, Greineisen was able to track down the facts and found the Delta embargo on extra bags is in December, around holiday travel, it wasn’t even in effect when he was trying to get to Mexico.

They used FedEx to send the extra equipment the next day but an employee there warned that Mexican customs holds a lot of bags for an extended amount of time, which is what happened. The event began on a Sunday, his equipment arrived on Friday, but customs wouldn’t release it.

“You can’t attempt something like this without the right equipment,” Greineisen said. “The key to everything is staying dry so you don’t develop rashes between your legs and other places, because those can get nasty, they turn into open sores and can knock you out. I had all my stuff, new shoes for running, good cycling shoes, my trunks for swimming, all my zinc stuff I use to keep dry, I had none of it.”

After three days, the rash was rubbing the skin off his body, he developed a hot spot on the ball of his right foot, which he knew would soon be a major blister if he continued to run on the old shoes.

“I said, ‘I can’t continue, I’m running, essentially, on worn out flip flops,’ there comes a point when you realize it can’t be done.”

Not that time, anyway.

Greineisen has set his sights on another deca Ironman next August in Switzerland. He’s almost fully recovered from the destructive impact of the Mexico experience, and it isn’t as though he will just be sitting around, waiting. He will compete again in the Hilo-to-Volcano 31-mile run in January — “That’s fun, he said, “it’s a nice little run” — and he’ll do the Honu Ironman, mixing them in with his regular training.

“As bad as it was (in Mexico), the people I met were fantastic, I really would have loved to have been able to get through it all, but that’s my next goal.”

He was smiling, thinking of the challenges to come.