High Cliff Half Iron Distance Triathlon - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

O.K., so here I am in the front of this wave, and I and definately not the fastest swimmer. Lucky for me, about half of the athletes started running and diving in. Remember, the water's only waist deep at this point. So about half of the wave is swimming and because of the depth of the water, your's truly and about 20 others are sloshing through the water at the same pace the others are swimming. It felt like a skit where the main character is afraid he's going to drownd and is thrashing around screaming "Help, Help!" not realizing that he's only in water up to his knees. After all it is; Swim, Bike, Run not; Wade, Bike Run, and knowing that I don't get extra credit for running to the first buoy I decided to dive in.

When I did my first OWS 3 days ago, the thing that struck me during that swim was the lack of visability. I was assuming about 6' of visability and wasn't prepared for 3' of visability in murky green water, but after that 1.75 mile pratice I was OK. So when visability was the same on race day, I felt perpared and settled into what I thought was a slow steady rythm. That wasn't going to last long.

After about only 5 minutes, I was feeling out of breath. Then the panic slowly started creeping in. By this time I had made my way into the main swimming lane thinking it would be nice to draft off of someone with a good pace. In the pool, I'll swim a 1:45/100yds and thought I could find someone to draft off of. But man, I felt like I was taking real shallow breaths and was afraid I was going to pass out. At this point I was in about 9 feet of water and was trying to front crawl with my head out of the water. I wanted to get some solid breaths and get rid of some of the CO2 that was probably building up because of that shallow breathing. Crawling with my head out of the water wasn't working and now my HR is 169-171. I roll over on my back to backstoke thinking I'll be able to take some good breaths. Still not helping. Now because I'm on my back, I can see the next wave appproaching. O.K., I need to keep moving so I can't just sit here and tread water because I'll have swimmers crawling all over me.
I'll try swiming again...2 strokes and panic city.. how will I make it through 1.2 miles? I have a buoy and a kayaker to my right, if I ask for help I'm done for the day after only 5 minutes.

I know I can do the distance, I just need to settle down.

Looking over to my left I see an athlete standing. IT'S STILL ONLY WAIST DEEP OVER THERE! Alright, Ryon. All you have to do is swim 30yds across traffic without running into anybody or pissing anybody off and you can stand.
30 seconds later I'm standing and again walking my way to the first bouy.. At least I'm moving forward!

Keeping an eye on my heart rate monitor I finally get my HR back down to 150-155. Just in time, because now I have to either, walk back to the start and call it a day or swim for the first turn and finish what I started.
2 strokes, feeling OK...6 strokes, still OK...20 strokes, I'm in the groove now.

Addendum to mental note...Next time you're warming up, try 400-600yds.

The rest of the swim after that episode was uneventful. Bumped into 1 or 2 people, but nothing major.

Open water swim, open water swim, open water swim, and Oh Yeah...OPEN WATER SWIM!!

After a 15 yard beach run, you had a 6 ft, nearly vertical, slope. Thought it would be slippery, but had no problems. Then you have another 25 yds up a grassy hill.

Had the wet suit half off comng out of the water and got rest of the wetsuit off with out any problems.

I didn't know what to expect. Had planned on 5 min T1, so I was ahead of schedule.

I was really looking forward to the bike leg. Most of the terrain in and around Madison is hilly. For those familar with the WIMoo bike, I ride that about 2 times a week. So, the fact that the High Cliff bike is realtivly flat, had me really stoked!

Right after the T1, there is one climb (7% grade) about a mile long. It took a lot not to just blast up this hill. Even taking it easy, I was passing people all the way up.

After exiting the park, we were on back roads the whole time. The route was a one loop course heading south for about 18 miles, make a 10 mile rectangle at the bottom, return up the same 18 straight, finishing up with another 10 mile rectangle before re-entering the park.

At the start of the bike it was still overcast, but you could see the sun burning off some of those clouds so the weather ended up being just fine. Except for the 10-15mph cross wind.

Because the course was flat I felt like I had an opprotunity to make up some time that I had lost during my little adventure in Open Water Swimming. My goal was to finish the bike in 3 hours, and best case was to finish in 2:48:00. Because the swim felt so bad, and because this is a race after all, I had a hard time just racing my plan. I'd see someone ahead and want to catch them. Then I could't allow my self to get passed back, so I'd have to make sure that I put some distance on them. By the time I had enough distance I would have another bike in my sights and would want to pass them...a potentially disastrous cycle. At times I felt like I was riding too hard, like this was only a bike race. I found myself wondering if I was going to have enough left to run 13 miles. Well, you never know unless you try.

Darla, who started 2 waves ahead of me was having a bit of a tougher day. I caught up with her around mile 9. She a good swim, 35 minutes, but her stomach was in knots. Told her about almost drowning and wished her luck.
My support crew, Tracy, and personal photographer, Alyssa, were planning to drive to mile 13, which was also mile 30 to cheer. I must have been making good time because they were just pulling up as I approached mile 13. It was so great to see them out there on the course. I had no idea how much of a lift that would give me through out the day. Thanks girls!

On a side note, Alyssa is becoming a bit of a long distance race groupie. She was with us when Tracy did her first marathon in San Fransisco, and numerous marathons and half marathons since. I have a great picture of Alyssa sleeping on a curb, in San Fran, with dozens of people cheering around her. She should get a finisher's medal. It's a marathon all it's own for a kid to get up at 4am and spend the whole morning chasing around to see the person you're cheering for, for all of 10 seconds. What a trouper!

At the bottom of the long straight, we turned East, right into the wind. To make this more interesting, it was a long sublte climb. Needless to say, what was a 22mph pace droped down to a constant 13mph. Still, it felt like most people weren't prepared for any hills, so I kept on passing people. I was lovin it. Bring on the winds, bring on the hills!

By the time I returned to mile 30, Tracy and Alyssa and a little party going. They had the back of the van open and the music was cranked! I later learned that because they were positioned near a port-a-potty, they were acting like a mini opit crew for the riders who needed to stop. They would hold their bikes while the triathletes ran in to take care of business.

When mile 40 rolled around, I was getting a little concerned about the over all effort I had been putting in the the bike. I remember thinking, "Oh boy, I've got about another hour to go before I start running. Will I have anything left in the tank?" At this point I was making a conscious effort to spin a bit easier. I even got passed and didn't chase the guy down. Well at least for a couple of miles :)

Nearing the end of the bike I was thrilled with the pace I was able to keep. I rememebr thinking, "I won't be able to keep the same pace for IMMoo with out some serious mileage."
About a mile from T2 I started standing and strecthing my calfs and hamstrings. I wasn't going to leave my shoes cliped in because the one time I praticed I almost ejected myself from the bike when I ran over my shoe. I'll deal with a couple of extra seconds. Rode onto the grass, dismounted and ran to T2.

Nothing.

T2 went very smooth...after I found all my gear. The two guys on either side of me were there and gone before I came in and I had to dig my gear out from under the piles they left all over the place. Left T2 and immediately headed for the restroom.

The run was a 2 loop route, in the park, through the hiking trails. I didn't have a chance to check it out the day before so I did exaclty know what to expect. The terrain varried from woodchipped trails to grassy trials to mud puddles to hard rock. Felt kind of Xterra-ish. The first mile sent us up the same 7% slope that westarted the bike on. I walked. My foacus on the run was to try and manage my HR as best I could. The 1-3minutes I could pick up by running the hill, didn't matter as much as not blowing up.

At the top of the hill it was off into the woods. This run would be great if it was sunny because 80% of it was shaded. I'm glad that we didn't get any more rain because it wold have been like trying to run on bananna peels had it been any wetter.

Miles 1-4 clicked away. I felt like I was running a bit slower than the 9min/mile pace I wanted to keep, but because the mile markers were inconsistant, I couldn't keep track. Mile 4-7 seemed to take for ever. Probably because of those inconsistant mile markers. Between mile 4-7 I should say nonexistant mile markers. Around what I would assume to be mile 6 a woman asked me if I had seem any mile markers...Nope. "Oh good," she said, "I thought it was me." We ran to gether until the mile 7 marker. Finally, more than half way done.

At this point the course started thinning out a bit, or at least I wasn't getting passed by any more 7-8 min/mile runners. I wasn't hurting, but mentally I really wanted to rest. "Just keep moving." It felt like when I was training for the Chicago Marathon and was doing an new distance. Once you pass you previously longest distance, your body is like, Whoa, this is more work than I've done before.
Finally at mile 9 I allowed my self to walk up one of the small hills. And as luck wuld have it, there was Darla, about a quarter mile ahead. It would be great to run with someone I knew for a bit, but I didn't know if I had any gas left in the tank to catch up with her. Slowly I started making up some ground and finally by mile 10, mile 4 for Darla, I caught her. What a nice distraction to chat with someone for a couple of miles. When we arrived at mile 12/7 Darla continued on her second loop and I headed off back down the hill.

I walked down the steepest part because I didn't feel like dealing with all that jarring on my legs at this point in the race. About half way down the slope lessens and I started running again. During that last mile I had time to reflect on the day and was extremly happy with the results. Some of it was harder than I thought (the swim of course) and some was easier (the bike). I have a new respect for the distance and a healthly trepidation for the Wisconsin Ironman in September.

Approaching the finish chute I could see Tracy and Alyssa yelling like crazy, what a great sight! Alyssa ran with me across the finish line. What a cool experience for a 9 year old.

More mileage during training.

A little stretching and then food! Pasta, Brownines, and bannanas.


Lack of preparation on the OWS and lack of mileage on the run.