“I had two rounds in my butt. One went through my intestinal tract, bladder and rectum. I still got one round in my hip. And my right scapula was shattered.”


“Only two bones were hit,” Day said. “Everything else was soft tissue. I can’t explain how I had a round go up the length of my thigh and didn’t hit my femur. From what I know of AK ballistics that should have ruptured my femoral artery and it didn’t.”


For his role in the raid, Day would receive a Silver Star (the third highest U.S. military award for valor), a Bronze Star with a “Combat V” (for heroism in combat) and a Purple Heart.


Back in the U.S., Day was told he would be hospitalized for at least three or four months, but once Day discovered he had to make it through a checklist of tasks, that became his focus. He was hospitalized for 16 days.


After his wife, Brenda, drove him home, he said, “I pretty much lived in my recliner for about three months. I couldn’t lay flat.”


Yet four and a half months into his two-year recovery, Day said, he was back to work, teaching a military communications course.


By March 2010, Day retired from the Navy and started working as a government contractor to help other wounded veterans.


Then, last fall, a colleague in Virginia handed Day a 70.3 jersey. “I was like, ‘What is this thing?’” he said. When his colleague explained, Day took it as a dare and signed up for IRONMAN 70.3 Florida.


Last fall, a colleague in Virginia handed Day a 70.3 jersey. Day took it as a dare and signed up for the half Ironman.


Day had completed Tough Mudder races in the past, and figured that SEAL duty — running around in 80 pounds of gear daily, sometimes under fire — had instilled the fortitude to swim 1.2 miles, bike 56 miles and run 13.1 miles.


He promptly started overtraining — swimming too far, running too far — until Marci Gray, a physical therapist, triathlete, USA Triathlon certified coach and daughter of a retired Army colonel, offered to coach him online pro bono. He began following her weekly training plans at home in Virginia.


Meanwhile, in Texas, Jared heard about Day’s half IRONMAN and promptly offered to be Day’s raceday “swim buddy” — SEAL jargon for the guy who always has your back and never leaves your side in Basic Underwater Demolition training.


Jared had already done one triathlon, an IRONMAN in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2012. “Next to Hell Week, that was the worst thing I’d ever done, for sure,” he said. “I swore I was never going to do it again. Till I saw Mike doing it. I was like, ‘Dagnabbit, I can’t let him do it by himself.’”


So Jared signed up for the 70.3 in Haines City, too. In addition, Day aimed to raise $75,000 for the Brain Treatment Foundation to fund veterans seeking care at the Carrick Brain Center in Irving, Texas. By press time in mid-March, Day had met 93 percent of his goal (according to Crowdrise).


But after Haines City, then what?


“I had somebody tell me that I’d probably get addicted to [triathlon],” Day said.


“I don’t think that’s going to happen.”


Why?


“Because it’s painful,” said the SEAL who survived a grenade blast and 27 rounds fired at close range by an AK-47, M4 rifle and Sig Sauer pistol.


“It’s [all] that running; the running really beats me up.”


30 USA TRIATHLON SPRING 2015

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