Ironman 70.3 Rhode Island - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

The ocean waters were very choppy. The start was delayed because they lost bouys due to the choppy conditions. They acutally announced that people could opt out of the swim, do a duathlon, and still recieve there finishers medal.

Luckily last Thurdsay morning I swam in the Long Island sound with Mike (mscotthall) and the conditions were just as rough. I also drew on my experience from a Sprint I did last year with similar conditions. These experiences helped me TREMENDOUSLY.

I navigated pretty well for the most part, swallowed 4 or 5 mouthfulls of water when sighting, but overall I never felt so strong on a 1.2 mile swim before. My swim trainings have come a long way and todays swim was proof of it. I felt good and fresh when I came out of the water.

Nothing. Last year I swam a 39:18 on the same course. I am going to continue with my swim training.

I was in and out.

I saw a lot of people with flat tires - I'm so glad I was not one of them. Last year I biked a 2:54:58 so this was a nice improvement. Again, a year of experience racing/training made all the difference for this bike ride. I tried my best to give my best bike effort while leaving legs for the run.

What also made all the difference was my nutrition. A big THANK YOU to Fred (PennState) who sat me down at Eagleman and explained to me a lot about endurance nutrition. I kept my nutrition very simple and it paid off in spades.

Nothing. I have a total of 3,205 biking miles in my legs. That's it. Aside from when I was a kid 15 yrs ago, I first got on a bike back in December of 2007. For this limited amount of biking I am ecstatic to put up the time I did. Hopefully with another 3 or 4 years of consistent biking, and building up my Long Bikes and overal biking volume, I will push my MPH AVG higher.

Again, I ran in, threw on socks and my Garmin and ran right out. I was very specific about knowing where my bike and rack was for both transitions and I pulled off (for me) flawless Transitions.

Nothing.

FINALLY! FINALLY!! FINALLY on my fourth HIM I ran a solid 13.1 miles. I made huge, sweeping changes to my Nutrition and once again it paid off. Last year I ran/walked a miserable 2:08:59. Miserable for me because I can run a stand-alone 1:3X:XX half mary. As I vowed to myself I ran the MONSTER HILL both times, and I did not walk once the whole run! I even lost my race belt, stopped to grab it and kept running. I slowed but kept running through all the aid stations.

For the first loop I kept a solid 7:40-ish pace and it felt easy (except for the HILL, that was 9 out of 10 hard). I had some side stitches that came and went. My plan was to run the first loop (6.5 miles) Aerobically and then if I had the legs left for the last loop I would push it and try to go sub 5. Unfortunately the second time up the killer hill took A LOT of wind out of my sails. My mile splits started going toward 8:30 miles and by the last 10k I was starting to go toward survival mode with the Goal of not walking. The last few miles I also started experiencing some cramping for the first time during the race.

Nothing. This was my best HIM run ever. It was a huge Goal Accomplished for me to run the entire distance.

Kissed the wife and kids and cheered Ralph (rtocco) as he came down the home stretch to complete is first HIM!!! CONGRATS RALPH!!


Great Race. Well organized. A big thanks to the Race Directors for not cancelling the swim.