Coronado, California United States Navy Seals 75F / 24C Sunny

Total Time = 5h 41m 50s Overall Rank = 113/190? Age Group = 40-44 Age Group Rank = 18/35

My race report:
A long day. Up at 3:45am, 75-mile drive to Coronado, and at the check-in at 5:30am. It was fairly empty still when I got there. Had my bike checked (loose extension!!), and got all my schwag (some cool stuff in there, including free goggles, and anti-perspirant...nice combo...oh and the Home Depot trucker's hat...lovin' it!). Got an end rack spot since I was so early, and got all set up. 3 or 4 trips to the porta potty, and the sun was coming up.
No clouds today, so a gorgeous day for racing on tap! They had tons of film crew guys filming everything from people stretching to guys' nose hairs. The chopper overhead and a crappy sound system made it kind of hard to hear Moki Martin's briefing and the Navy girl's rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" (always thought America the Beautiful would be a better anthem since it's not about a battle in the War of 1812!), but finally, after some delays, it was time to start.
Once on the beach, it was another 30-minute wait for the Physically Challenged division to do the swim (those guys rocked!), and then we were off. One big wave of probably 70 people? I stayed way outside and barely contacted with anyone the entire time. Just tried to work my glide and seemed to stay in the top 3rd of the pack through the first lap. The waves were like waist high, so easy to get into the water, and just enough to bodysurf one in. Ran 200 yards up the beach and did it all over again. Getting out, my watch indicated about 32 minutes. Seems fast which leads me to believe the swim was a touch short, but maybe I'm just faster in my DeSoto T1.
Jogged up to transition and had an average T1, and then off on the bike.
Pretty perfect conditions on the bike. Very light west wind, flat, straight road, nice pavement virtually the entire ride. I was holding 19 and 20mph for most of the ride, which is good for me for that distance. With no hills to speak of, I had to stand from time to time and pedal just to stretch the back and give the taint a break. Around mile 40, I started running out of juice a little, but downed a Clif Bar and by mile 45, I was good again. That was my 4th and final lap of the 7-mile strip to Imperial Beach.
On lap 3 (I think), I'm riding along maybe 15 inches from the right shoulder, with about 6 feet of space on the left, and the leader comes up behind me without a word and slips through on the right shoulder. This was on a straightaway, so he wasn't cutting the apex. Kinda dangerous if you ask me. What if I had decided to move right? I didn't even hear him coming!!!
Anyway, I powered on the last lap and decided to stop at the portapotty at the final turnaround. They had a rack next to the john, and when I racked my bike the freaking thing toppled over on top of my bike, knocking the chain off. Arrggg! I jumped in and peed, and then quickly righted my steed, and put the chain back on. Time lost? About 1:20 I'd say. I was getting passed a fair bit on the bike, but on the last 7-mile run back to T2, I was passing others. Sorta of a second wind. I was a bit concerned my pacing was going to leave me without enough gas to finish the 1/2 mary. This race was a "training race" for IMFL for me, but I couldn't help myself to try to finish as quickly as I could. Damn ego!
T2 was pretty quick, though I fumbled a bit with my gels, but I was off and running. Felt good right away and set a decent pace, but backed off a bit shortly after that. Something about the crowds around transition cheering that make you want to run fast, but once out of site, I went into reality mode remembering I had 13.1 miles to run! About 1/4 mile into the run, it turns sharply onto the beach and down to the water's edge where the sand was nicely packed. By now, the wind had picked up and swung to the NW, so it was at our backs. That was the best part of the run. About 2 miles south along the packed sand with a tail wind. Sweet! The aid station 1/2 way down had COLD water and a SEAL with really short, tight shorts handing it out. Not that I cared about the shorts...just trying to paint a mental picture for you. Then, at the end of that 2 miles, the fun began! You turned left and headed over the dune line and to the back of the beach where the sand was nice and soft! The run turned north back to transition featuring a calf-searing, spirit-breaking, demoralizing mile of deep, soft sand. I swear running in that stuff was like running on a damn treadmill. You'd look up and you just weren't getting any closer to the end! Plus, we had to do FIVE, count 'em, FIVE laps of this sadistic stretch! After lap one, I quickly figured out that my only hope was to just put my head down and focus on putting one foot in front of the other, and try to think about anything but my legs, which were SCREAMING at me silently by lap 3. Back on lap one, a lady was cheering us on through the back stretch and I told her "only 4 more of these to go!", and she replied with, "you only have to do 4 total!". Suddenly, I was buoyed with hope that I could have a PR for 1/2 iron (even though the bike was 2 miles short of a 1/2...which brings up another point...why didn't they just add a little 2-mile loop?". Ah, whatever..., so I'm running along thinking how I only have a couple more laps, but I decided to check with the lap counter guys, who assured me it was indeed 5. It was at this point on lap 3 that I, for a bried nanosecond, thought about how easy it would be to...bite my tongue...QUIT! "NO, NO JAY, PRESS ON! IF YOU QUIT, HOW CAN YOU EXPECT TO DO AN IRONMAN IN 6 WEEKS?". So, that fleeting thought was replaced by "think about ANYTHING except what you're doing right now and you can block the pain!". I kept telling myself, "I can, I can" (insert Al Trautwig voiceover here). Before I knew it, it was the final lap. By now, my run pace was at a shuffle that any BOP Ironmaner would be proud of. In training, I run 13.1 in about 1:55 on average. Today, it took me about 2:10. I managed to unload everything on the final 1/4 mile and sprint to the finish in 5:41 and change.
That was good for like 18th in my AG, which was about MOP I think.
All in all, I'd say it was a great grassroots event with a VERY safe swim and bike course. For sure the easiest, fastest half IM bike I've done (this was only my 4th), but the run made up for that with 5 out of the 13.1 in soft sand. I celebrated my finish with two cheeseburgers and a Pepsi...hey, it was for a good cause!