Ironman 70.3 Eagleman Triathlon - Triathlon

So my swim is by far my worst event...In a pool I'm OK swimming 1:40ish per 100m, but take away my lane lines and I just utterly suck! This swim was no different and in fact was almost as bad as the polar bear plunge of a swim I did at Waterman's last October.

The weird thing is that I didn't feel like I was doing that bad in this race. Normally, every time I sight I have to adjust my course because I'm so out of line, but today it didn't feel like that... a lot of it may have to do with the lack of navigational buoys, since they were so far apart my perception must have been off. It also didn't help that when I was sighing the turn buoy as I got close it really did feel like I was chasing a moving target... come to find out I was. As I got up there I saw that one of the support folks was moving it around, and I heard a girl say that it broke loose... don't know if I swam long, short, or what but it did suck chasing a moving target!

When I got out of the water and saw the clock at 45:xx I was dumbfounded. I honestly didn't think it went that bad and I was a bit demoralized at the poor time.

I gotta take some one-on-one classes. I know that I'm not the fastest swimmer but it really is the fact that I can't swim a straight line to save my life w/o lane markers. I'd be ecstatic if I could even come close to my pool times in an OWS.

Let the Tough Mudder begin!!! Transition was mess, no a bloody mess, no an absolute catastrophuck of a mess!! The rain that made the part wet and mucky at 6 AM was now rather muddy by the time the previous 9 waves of folks went through.

I actually did fairly well all things considered by there was no way around the fact that my bike and I were covered in mud by the time I got out on the course.

Nothing really, other than the mud and muck my transition went fairly well, the suit come off lickedy-split and I got my bike gear on w/o issue. The run out took longer than it should since i was running through the EagleMan Tough Mudder course, but all in all it wasn't too bad.

My goal in this race was to finally break 3 hours on the bike. It's not fair to compare, but my previous 3 HIM were all over 3 hours, although they were on much hillier courses. I figured if I was going to break 3 hours anywhere, EagleMan was the place to do it.

I spent the first few miles just getting my feet in the shoes, getting settled in, and taking in some nutrition. Spinning out those first few miles the ride felt pretty smooth and my legs felt OK. Once we were out on the main part of the course, I just tucked my head down and got to work. It seemed like things were going pretty well, after the first 5 miles or so, I was able to consistently ride in the 21 MPH range and I felt good doing it. I was worried, however, how long I'd be able to keep the pace up. The longest ride I'd done since my last HIM in October was 40 miles, and even at that I didn't have too many 30 plus mile rides in this year, so needless to say my bike fitness isn't where it should be.

After the first hour of ridding my legs felt fine and according to my watch I had covered 20.92 miles. I figured OK, that was pretty nice, now lets see if I can do it again. So I continued to ride, but thought that I'd try to amp it up a bit... what the hell right... I can limp though the run if I need too! So I ticked up a gear and tried to keep the cadence up. I soon realized that was not a good idea, the legs were feeling the extra work and I knew that an easier gear and higher cadence was the way to go, so I settled back down and just chugged along. The second hour went as well as expected and I covered an additional 21 miles on the nose. Things were looking up, I averaged over 20.5 MPH for 2 hours and my legs still felt fine, this was great!!

I figured that for the last part of the course I'd knuckle down for about 30 minutes or so and then ease up for the last few miles to let me legs refresh. The plan worked out pretty well as I put just a little extra into it for the next 30 minutes, averaging over 21 MPH for that time span and then I eased up into the finish to give my legs a bit of time to recover some.

In the end this was really a great bike leg for me. Averaging over 20 MPH for the course was huge, especially seeing as all I really wanted to do was to come in under 3 hours.

Nothing really, this was a great ride for me, I think that I could have gone a bit longer before I eased up, but all in all I'll take this ride any day.

Well, well, well. What was a muddy mess 2:45 ago is now just indescribable. Every step I took my foot disappeared in the mud... I'm surprised that I didn't take a nose dive at all. I tried to take my time because I really didn't want to DNF because of a sprained ankle or anything.

The time was off, for obvious reasons, but in the end I think that I did pretty OK all things considered.

Wear hip waders?

Running is my strongest event by far, and I was hoping that with the good ride I had I would still be able to hang on for a decent run and come in under 5:30... a time that I had all but given up on after my horrendous swim.

After making my way through the mud pit, I just eased into the run, I really needed to make sure that my legs were ok, and I didn't want cook things from the get go. My plan was to run 8:00 m/m pace for as long as I could and then take it from there. Unfortunately, my first mile was too fast, but that is usually the case. Thankfully, it wasn't that bad at 7:36, and I was able to quickly settle in after that nailing the next 8 miles all between 8:00 and 8:10; logging the first 9 miles at an average pace of 8:01.

The heat and sun was starting to take its toll at this point... my breathing became more labored and I was steadily fighting off a diaphragm cramp. I was having a hard time taking in fluids and I was constantly slowing down just to take deep breaths to fend off the cramping. Mile 10 was respectable at 8:24, but miles 11 and 12 hurt coming in at 9:10 and 9:18 respectively. I had just enough left in the tank to "kick" for the finish running the last mile in 8:45 and the .1 in 0:53. that last .1 hurt like hell though my diaphragm had fully cramped up and my wife got a great shot of my writhing in pain coming up the chute.

Nothing really, I ran as hard and as well as I could... no cramps might have saved me 30-45 seconds overall but in the end I left it all out there, so I could have asked for more.

Walked around a bit to cool down, then went over to the hoses to spray myself down... I was caked in mud from my knees down. I then had some chow, got my gear and walked back.


Well my complete lack of OWS skills cost me several minutes, the Tough Mudder event thrown in for T1 and T2 I'm sure cost me 60-90 seconds, and the cramps on the run maybe another 30 seconds or so but all in all I think that I performed pretty well today.


Great race, great town, and a great time... I don't need to say I'll do this race again, my wife already told me that I was, so I guess I'll be back next year!

My poor bike, I posted before and after pics... if they attach... Mr. Felt was none-too-pleased!