PF native anticipating next Ironman

Two days after finishing his first Ironman competition Sunday, Cameron Chesnut’s stomach was still in knots.

“Food looks good. Food sounds good. But I just haven’t been able to eat,” Chesnut said Tuesday.

A second-year medical school student and Post Falls native, Chesnut was the first local athlete to cross the finish line of Coeur d’Alene’s three-course Ironman competition.

His race time catapulted him into the top 2 percent of the 2,085 contestants who finished Ironman Coeur d’Alene. And it qualifies him for the world championship Ironman on Oct. 13 in Hawaii.

But things got off to a rocky start. Chesnut didn’t sleep the night before, he said.

At 7 a.m. on race day, he had to claw his way through a flailing school of fellow swimmers, enduring a 2.2-mile swim in frigid water with lots of choppiness.

After that, “I started throwing up on the bike ride,” said Chesnut, who washed salt tablets down with liquids from aid stations along the 112-mile route.

Usually, the 24-year-old sails through similar but shorter races. But he’d cut his Ironman training short to attend funerals of close friends, who have been on his mind a lot lately.

Chesnut dreaded the 26.2-mile run, he said. Sure enough, he was plagued by cramps.

“I’d never done a marathon before,” he said. “I checked my time at every mile marker. And I had a really, really good run even though I was cramping and hobbling and just nuts.

“The last five miles of the run, I was pretty delirious,” he said. “I was just chasing a number.”

The number was five.

It took him five minutes longer than he’d planned to complete the course. And 5 was the number on his late friend Jordan Johnson’s basketball jersey.

“It’s kind of a special number. It was neat,” said Chesnut, who said thoughts of his friend had buoyed him in earlier races.

Chesnut hurried to the first-aid tent, where he spent the next two hours receiving IV fluids and anti-nausea medication.

Now that’s he’s got one Ironman under his belt, he says he can’t wait to do another.

“It’s going to have an open-ocean swim,” he said. “I’ll have to get used to it.”