The fog that caused the swim delay had not really lifted at this point so sighting was going to be a beast. I was in the first wave after the pros and there was only a 3 minute gap between the two waves so we got shuffled down to the starting platform quite quickly. I jumped in to find that the water was about 15 degrees warmer than the air temp (it felt amazing!).

There were about 90 people in my wave and we were all huddled together in a mass, treading water next to the start platform. Everyone knew this was going to be a brutal start but there wasn't really anything you could do about it. Luckily, they didn't give us much time to think about it as the starting horn sounded about 30 seconds after the last guy jumped into the water.

It was just as brutal as anticipated. Every stroke brought my hand down on someones head/back/arm or found my feet hitting who knows what. The fog prevented anyone from seeing the sighting buoys easily for the first few hundred meters so you were dependent either on the guide-line that was ~6 feet under the water or following the person in front of you and hoping they were going in the right direction. I swung out wide to the right to stay away from the guideline and had a pretty peaceful trip out to the first turn. I got off track a few times but it was fairly easy to sneak a peek over at the pack on my left to make sure I wasn't wildly off course.

It is amazing that even after 900m or so the turns still get incredibly congested. The two turns were very close to each other and at each one there was a mass of people slowly working their way around the buoy. I tried to latch onto someones feet coming off of the second turn but that didn't last very long.

Coming back in I was intent on staying near the buoy line to make sure I took the most direct course possible (I realllly wanted to make my swim goal time). This was a pretty terrible idea as by this point the faster swimmers from the M30-34, M35-39, and later waves were starting to catch up and they were all following the line. I held my course for the most part but it was much harder to hold good form with people coming up on you frequently. At one point on the return trip I ran face first into one of the big orange sighting buoys and actually backtracked to swim around it on the correct side to make sure I didn't get DQ'd or something silly like that.

Right near the end I decided to follow someone for the rest of the way into the boat ramp and when I finally looked up to see how close we were I noticed that this guy was swimming way off to the right away from the finish. I corrected and came in a bit above my goal time but fairly happy with the swim.

Sight every once in a while even when there is a buoy line. Running into buoys doesn't make you faster.

There was a pretty long run from the swim out to my transition area which helped get my legs going again after the swim. Due to the cold I had bought some arm warmers to wear on the bike. I had practiced putting them on a bunch of times but it was much harder when my arms were wet.

I go to put my bike helmet on and it doesn't want to go on my head... I look at it and nothing is obviously wrong with it so I try two more times and it will just not fit on my head! Somehow it had gotten tightened down overnight and it took me a few seconds to figure out what the issue was.

My sunglasses also fogged up completely as soon as I put them on. I had to take them off again and run with them until I was actually on the bike.

Make sure my helmet fits when I get to transition in the morning.

I have ridden this course 8 or 9 times in training so I knew exactly what to expect and how hard I could push myself while still having enough energy for the run. People who have done the race before had also made a big point about taking it easy on the first loop of the bike course. My pre-race plan even included taking it fairly easy on the first loop of the course. However, I threw all of this out of the window as soon as I got on the bike and threw up a 1 loop split that is 3 minutes faster than anything I have done in training (even on my 1 loop only rides). I was a few minutes ahead of my bike time goal and I was getting pretty excited.

Besides being fast the first loop also exposed me to what a bad bike crash actually looks like. The first fast descent is 15 miles or so into the course. I am coming down it at about 40mph and see a woman rush out into the road and start motioning me to move over to the left side of the road. I slow down a bit and notice that there are two bikes laying in the road (or maybe just 1 bike split into two pieces) and a guy sitting in the ditch. Supposedly someone hit a dog around this portion of the course... I am not sure if this was the same accident but it looked really bad.

The first loop caught up to me in a big way as soon as I hit the flats going into the second loop. My right calf was on the verge of cramping and I just wasn't able to hit the speeds that I normally can sustain on that portion of the course. More and more people started passing me and I started changing my time goals for the day into more of a survival strategy. I tried to push through the pain for about 5 miles and then decided to give shot bloks a try to see if the caffeine and extra electrolytes would help. It did and I was able to get back up to a somewhat normal tempo. The calf cramp didn't completely go away but it stayed dormant enough that I was able to ignore it.

Going into the last 15 miles of the ride I decided that shot bloks worked so well earlier that I should eat the other half of the pack that I had brought with me. I NEVER do this in training as the extra sugar tends to give me a headache or mess me up in other ways. Go figure, that is exactly what it did in the race also. 5-10 minutes after eating them I started having bad stomach issues. I was burping up more than just air and my stomach felt like it was twice normal size... not good! Maintaining aero position became a constant struggle. I switched to just drinking water (no more gatorade/carb-pro) and it slowly settled down over the rest of the ride.

I would have liked to do a lot better on the bike. I would also like to blame the cramps and stomach issues for my time but I think the root cause of it all is pushing it too hard on the first loop. My splits were 1:27 and 1:39... that difference is far too large.

Dismounted, turned the corner into transition, and almost fell down. My bike cleats were really slippery running to my transition area.

Shoe change, grab watch/hat/food, and I was gone.

Running in my bike shoes was a small slowdown here. However, the run was so long that the time probably would have been close to this anyway.

My toes were numb coming out of transition but that isn't unusual for me coming off of the bike. Within 10 minutes I had all of the feeling in my feet back. Overall, my legs felt pretty good at the start considering the problems I had on the bike. I think the reduced speed in the last portion due the stomach issues & cramps helped my legs recover a bit.

I started passing people right off the bat which was a very welcome change from getting passed a lot on the bike. However, 4 miles in I noticed that I was starting to get a blister on the insole of my left foot. This has only happened once before and it was in the previous half marathon that I had done in June... It doesn't happen during any other run length, just half marathons. I knew there wasn't anything I could do about it so I just kept thinking how sweet it would look if my shoe was all bloody when I finished and ran through it.

I skipped the first aid station entirely but from then on decided that I would do a quick walk through them to get some water/gatorade down and then continue on. This helped a ton as they were spaced just right.

Going out on the out and back I got a "good job" from Linsey Corbin as she passed me which was a nice pick me up. I also got to see Michellie Jones on her final stretch of the run. It was amazing to see how fast the pros are going out there. Tesia also found me at this point and ran alongside me for a while (yeah, it is technically against the rules). It was a big help having someone to talk to to take my mind off of what I was doing.

At the halfway point I checked my watch to see that I was running a 7:47 pace. This was faster than the 8:00 pace I had anticipated but I was still feeling relatively good so I decided to keep it up. By this point my left foot had gone completely numb for some reason. This was good in that I couldn't feel the blister anymore but it also felt like I was running with a shoebox attached to my leg. My form still seemed like it was ok so I went with it.

The hills in the last 6 miles were a real test. My quad wasn't cramping but it wasn't very excited about what it was having to do and it let me know about it. The walks in the aid stations went from a quick race-walk just long enough to down a bit of liquid to a slow jaunt starting 5-10 feet before the aid station. However, I was always able to get back up to speed as soon as I started running again.

Coming into the finish was great. There was music going, hundreds of people standing around, and there was nobody in my age group near me that I had to worry about. I gave a weak little arm raise and a smile as I was crossing the line.

Figure out why I get blisters in half marathons and fix it.

Drank a lot of water/gatorade and waited for my friend Chris to finish who I knew was pretty close behind me. Met Tesia, grabbed a bunch of pizza and cookies and went down to sit by the water to relax for a bit.

Stuck around for the awards ceremony. Clearwater slots rolled wayyy down in my age group. The last slot went to a guy that finished 25 minutes faster than me. Next year!

Usually after a race I will not want to think about signing up for the next big thing for a while. However, within a few hours of finishing I had already decided that the half iron distance was fun enough to warrant signing up for the Black Diamond Half Iron later this year and then graduating to Ironman Wisconsin in 2010.


The bike. I don't know what my time would have been if I didn't blow up after the first loop but it still wouldn't have been stellar. I am new to cycling but I am a bit disappointed in my bike splits relative to the other disciplines. Something to work on during the off-season!