Ironman 70.3 Syracuse - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

I was in the 7th wave to go off, So I got plenty of time to allow my nerves to get worse and worse. Waded out into the water for our start, wow that was alot colder than I thought it would be. Horn sounded and off I went. Swam probably about the first 50 yards with my head above water trying to give my body time to adjust, finally managed to get my face under the water and start a normal stroke/breathing cycle. I managed to sight great to the first yellow turn buoy. Made the turn got the next turn buoy and swam straight towards it. Made the second turn to head back to the beach and realized that I couldn't see anything. The only reason I knew which way to swim was by this time I was getting regularly passed by people in the waves after me so I just assumed they were swimming in the right direction. It wasn't a goggle problem or anything, I just could not find the buoys on the return trip. I eventually managed to pick the first one up when I was about 50 yards away from it. From that point I saw the final yellow buoy and managed to swim into shore without any major problems. Swam until my hand hit the bottom, stood up, had one little wobble then high stepped it onto the beach. I was amazed how well I felt getting out of the water.

Overall the swim went great. I need to work more on bi-lateral breathing to even the work load on my shoulders. I breath mainly to the left and due to that I have a tendency to over-extend/work my right shoulder. Normally for a shorter race not a big deal but after 40+ min it tends to get sore. I was shooting for a sub 40 min swim, but still very happy with my time considering how great I felt coming out of the water.

Every race should have wet-suit strippers that was awesome. ran the 400ish yards up to transition, biggest complaint was that this run was on cold hard pavement, my feet did not enjoy it. Took my time in T1, made sure my socks were on right, got shoes on, put two extra GUs under my shorts, took a drink of water. Even with the cold water I felt warm enough with just my Tri Top on so I decided not to put on my arm warmers. I could have gone faster but didn't see the point in it since I was really just racing to finish.

Mounted my bike and got out onto the road without any major issues. I had some issues with nutrition during longer training rides so I wanted to make sure I got a good start on the bike. Took my first Gu about half a mile in, flushed it down with a drink of water, went to put my water bottle back in its cage and woops, due to the wet conditions bottle slipped out of my hand and fell on the ground. I would have just left it there, but I had made the choice to just live from the course on the bike and only had one water bottle on my bike. So I had to stop and run back to pick it up and get going again. Luckily the car that was behind me stopped before he managed to run over my bottle. Got going again with only minor injuries to my pride.

The hills started at mile 1.5. My plan going in was just to spin my way up the hills making up whatever time I could on flats and downhills. It worked wonderfully. Sure I was passed by a fair number of people, but I also passed alot of others. I just concentrated on keeping a steady rhythm and cadence. It was basically a steady uphill until mile 11.5. There were some slight flatter sections which I used to my advantage to get my speed back up. The higher we got the worse the fog got. Towards the top of the climb visibility had to be down to less than 50 yards. I could tell it was getting colder but not bad enough to make me wish for my arm warmers.

Hit the top of the climb, looked at my Garmin and realized I was 10 min ahead of where I planned to be at that point. Over the top I got into my highest gear and hammered my way down the hill. I hit close to 40 mph going down that hill, looking back probably wasn't a good move, road was wet, there was very little visibility, and I was passing people continuously. Could have had a very bad accident but oh well it was fun. At about mile 12.5 I was in the middle of doing a farmers blow right as I noticed the flash from a race photographer, oh well, its only one bad photo.

At mile 19 the road just turns straight down. I hit almost 50mph going down, at the bottom it turned straight back up. I hammered the pedals to try to get as far up the hill as possible, managed to make it about half way up before I ended up having to stand up on the pedals. Once again, wasn't the safest idea considering the number of people I was passing in the conditions. There was a huge pack of people on the up slope, almost ended up having to ride in the oncoming lane to avoid people ridding the whole way across the road.

Road was mostly just rolling hills until mile 44. Took my GUs as scheduled every 30-40 min, got water bottles from the aid stations. Biggest problem was the second aid station came up on my before I realized it and I tried to grab the first bottle going close to 25mph. Managed to quickly slow way down to grab a bottle eventually. I know I passed at least two other photographers during this stretch, one I was sucking on a GU pack for, the other one I was fumbling with trying to get a water bottle out of my cage, two more bad photos.

At mile 44 the road takes a steep descent again as it shifted onto a chip seal surface. This time I took it carefully sitting up and only hitting 32mph. From my drive the day before I knew there was loose gravel on the road and with the wet conditions I did not want to risk going down in a crash.

The last 10 miles were all essentially downhill, with a couple kickers here and there. I was still feeling really really good, though I could tell my legs were starting to get tired. On one of the kickers towards the end I decided to stand up and try to loosen everything up for the run. Oh no, the lower right side of my stomach did not like that. Could feel something bad happening. As long as I was sitting I felt fine, so I decided to just ignore it and worry about it later. Got to the finish, dismounted, hobbled a bit and jogged back into transition.

I am very very happy with my bike. Fun racing with that many people. I was always either passing people or getting passed. There were a couple of guys/gals that I ended up playing leapfrog with for most of the ride. I was honestly amazed at the amount of people that were obviously drafting. I took in all the nutrition I planned on, and didn't bonk which was my main goal for the bike. My sub goal was to hit 3 hours which I came really close to breaking. That being said, the cramps I'm going to get later on the run I'm sure are due to nutrition on the bike so I still managed to mess something up somewhere. I have no idea if it was due to eating too much or too little, something to try and fix for the future.

I knew my rack was right after a trash can, ran down the first one I got too.. None of these people look familiar.. Woops didn't realize there was a second trash can before my rack. Eventually managed to find my spot and get my bike racked. Decided to put on a clean fresh pair of socks due to the ones I was wearing on the bike being a bit water logged. Stopped at the port-o-potty on the way out for some relief since I kept missing the ones on the bike course. Once again took my time to make sure everything was right.

Make sure I know where my rack is.

This is where my so far great race fell apart. As I started running out of transition the slight annoyance that was my stomach at the end of the bike decided to become a major pain and cramp. Staying determined I just changed my stride to minimize the pain coming from my stomach. About a mile in I had to quickly stop and re-adjust a sock that felt like it was on wrong. As I took off my shoe I realized that it wasn't that my sock was on wrong it was that two of the toes on my left foot were numb, with nothing to do to fix it I put my shoe back on and started running again. The stride changed worked ok until about 2 miles when my left calf cramped. Stopped stretched it out, started running, right calf cramped. Stopped stretched it out, started running. Both calves cramped, shoot this isn't good. Managed to just walk/run until it cleared. Changed my stride again to try to give my calves the ability to stretch out, bad idea as this caused my lower abs to cramp. At this point I gave up on any ideas of running the whole half mary and decided to walk the aid stations and any steeper up-hills. The majority of the run was at a slight down grade which going in I thought would be a good thing, as it turns out this was just causing me more and more pain. Some of the best running I did was on the parts of the course which were flat/slight up hills. Took in GUs at mile 3 and 7 as planned. Due to my lower jaw locking up/cramping as I attempted to use a port-o-potty at the mile 4.5 aid station started drinking Gatorade. The sweetness didn't do any favors for my stomach but it did seem to help with the other cramps. I'm not sure how, but managed to only walk the aid stations until about mile 11.5 when my stomach did a loop-de-loop and caused me to have to completely stop moving for a bit. The rest of the run was a struggle between my mind and body. I tried turning up the pace for the last mile running down hill into the inner harbor but realized that I had no energy/strength to do it. The last 500 yards of the run was just a tunnel of people, the cheers gave me enough energy to cross the line with a little boost in speed. I nearly fell over as the volunteer gave me my finisher medal and took the timing chip from my ankle. I have never felt so completely drained in my life.

Looking back and seeing that I still managed to avg just a little over 10min/miles with all the pain I was in leaves me very pleased with my run. I think I had more strength in my legs, but with all the cramps and my stomach doing flip turns I was just drained. I was hoping to avg 9min/mile on the run so still came decently close all things considered.

My goal for the race was sub 7 hours, which I managed to blow out of the water. I was secretly hoping for sub 6, which I know now is easily reachable if I can fix whatever caused my stomach to cramp up on me. For my first HIM and the end of my firs season doing Tris I am extremely happy. I have a lot to work on across all aspects, but I know what I'm capable of now.

The weather turned out to be great race weather for tri short/top. I was only cold for a little bit on the bike.

Overall I feel the race was very well organized, plenty of cops and national guard troopers on the run/bike course. The volunteers were amazing. Best port-o-potties ever. They had carpet, pictures, potpourri(holy cow took awhile to figure out how to spell that). Biggest problem was the run course was just plain ugly. It ran through some of the uglier parts of downtown Syracuse.