LongHorn Ironman 70.3 Triathlon Festival - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

I really need to work on open water swimming, but I was extremely happy to find how easy it is to swim when wearing a wetsuit (this was my first wetsuit swim).

Sight better, I swam way off course very quickly almost every time I decided to skip sighting for a second. Also, next time I need to make sure that the wetsuit zipper is not in a position where it is going to rub my neck raw whenever i look up to sight (this is responsible for my poor sighting on the last half of the swim).

I ran through and did everything like it was a sprint and it still took forever, that was one big transition area!

Memorize where my bike is a little better, but I probably only lost a few seconds.

I felt great when I jumped on the bike which I attribute to the wetsuit saving my legs from working too much on the swim. The whole time I just tried to keep a constant high cadence up that wasn't too difficult and stay in aero. Since I started near the back of the waves I was passing people the entire time which was a big constant moral boost. Got stopped at a stop light for a little bit near the end which really ticked me off (particularly since I had to pee really bad!). I was surprised how easy the bike was though comparatively. It still hurt quite a bit and my calves and left hip were threatening to cramp for most of the way while my left toes seemed to be jammed into the bottom of my shoe for some reason and hurting, but my legs kept moving and never burned like they normally do in shorter races where I didn't where a wetsuit beforehand. I think a few spin classes where I just concentrated on spinning at a high cadence for a long time really helped because there were times that I wanted to take a break but somehow my legs just kept moving like they were on autopilot no matter how bad I wanted to take a short rest. Overall, I was extremely happy with this bike split as I didn't think I would be able to even get over 20mph for that long of a distance without a pack pulling me (I only had ridden over 30 miles 3 times before this race)

Think I might include a gu or two on the bike so I wouldn't have to drink so much early on to get my calories. They didn't have gu's until the 3rd aid station so I drank up my bottle of gatorade/accelerade mix and was already into a gatorade endurance by that time. I had one more bottle of gatorade endurance and 4 or 5 gu's in total.

Another LONG transition.

Still need to move a bit faster and remember exactly where my transition spot is a little better.

For the first time I ever I actually got off the bike and... felt good! I couldn't believe it. But first thing's first, I got extremely lucky and was able to grab the first open port-o-potty with no wait at all (there was a huge line for the ones in transition). This still took quite awhile though. I remember standing there for what seems like forever thinking "Hurry up bladder, this is a race!", however, my stream was already at full blast and there was nothing to do but wait until it was all out. Now that that was all taken care of I ran on and quickly realized how painful each step was even though my legs felt unusually "fresh". Somehow my left toes and the bottom of my right foot had gotten rubbed pretty good on the bike portion and were now screaming with every step. About halfway through though is when my legs started to really wear out and I started to promise myself I would never do one of these again, as soon as I got through this one of course. It was getting pretty hot too (low 80's), but there was plenty of sponges and wet towels along the course so I was loving it as I tend to be a good hot weather runner. So I kept plugging away just trying to keep moving and making sure to grab a little bit of something at most of the many aid stations (though I was careful to limit fluids so that I didn't have too much fluid bouncing around in my stomach). I took some electrolyte pills about halfway through in the hopes it would help with my calves and left hip that were threatening to cramp up. When I got about a couple miles out I knew I would make it and finish and so I just kept repeating that to myself while I went back and forth with another runner as I would surge and catch him and then start hurting like crazy and back off. Closing on the end of the race, I wanted to walk so bad I think I actually might have for a few seconds at the last aid station, but I knew the end was close and so I kept pushing until I finally finished!

Nada, I think I somehow must have nailed the nutrition and I had a great run considering my mileage leading up to the race (I had a couple of runs of around an hour and a half...). In fact, based off my the amount of training I had leading in (I started training for triathlons 4 months out and decided to try to do this race 2 months out) and how well I did, I don't think I've ever had a better race overall!

Beer and massage.


Lack of training and not knowing how to pee on the bike.


Pretty decent food afterwards. Finishing in the arena was pretty neat. This was my first big race so I was pretty happy with everything, but I don't really have anything to compare it to.