Spirit of Racine 2005 - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

I swam WWWAAAYYYYY of course, to the tune of about 400 meters at least. It was crazy. A rookie mistake. I was so pissed at myself that I made such a rookie mistake! It took me a good 10 minutes to get back into the pack, which I did at an angle of course :) I'm not THAT much of a rookie.

Uh, try to stay on course a bit more.

This transition was long. Hell, all my transitions are long because I just don't practice them. I wasn't stressed out though because I'm used to being slow in transition by now.

Not much. I could totally cut my transition times by a minute, but I'm so far away from placing in my age group anyway that it doesn't really matter.

I was told to stay in 130-135bpm but honestly, that felt WAY too easy so I amped it up to between 140-150bpm most of the race, even then I felt like I was holding back too much for this distance....but oh well. NO worries.

My nutrition was right on. I finished about 24oz of my 3 hr bottle of perpetuem (just right) and took 10 electrolylte tables on the bike.

I could have easily gone faster on the bike but I knew a freggin' scorching run was in store for me so I was okay with holding back as much as I did on the bike.

T2 was another slow transition for me but who cares, I'm slow in transitions and I have no real desire to get faster in them.

Man, I couldn't believe how hot it was. I also couldn't believe how many people were walking. It was like running through the "walking dead." It was CRAZY.

I was so proud that I didn't feel the need to walk except 3-4 steps through transitions to get down water and get ice placed in my cap.

I knew I had to stay on top of my hydration, electrolytes, and body cooling in order to make any sense of this run.

I drank at least 1-2 full cups of water at EVERY aid station and at every other aid station took 3 electrolyte tablets. Ended up downing about 17-20 electrolyte tables during the course of the run.

It didn't seem like my stomach really enjoyed my small shots of gel from my flask so I ended up only downing a total of 2 gels during the entire run.

I could NOT for the life of me get my HR up past 165 because once I did I felt like I was just empyting out energy onto the street with a fire hose. I mean it was REALLY draining to try to get into zone 4. But what I did find was that at a 160bpm HR I felt like I was pushing myself but not too hard. Below 160bpm felt much too easy and above 160-162bpm I felt like I was using up too much energy with not much gain in speed.



Try not to have to go #2 (nature call) during a race. That really sucks! Next time my friend recommended Immodium AD prior to the race.

1 bottle of water went down like a sponge and I nursed another bottle. I then walked with my friend down to the lake and went in waist deep to cool off. That worked PERFECTLY! That lake was freggin CCCOOOLLLDD, which meant my body temperature really needed it 'cause it didn't feel cold at ALL in the morning during the swim.


Quite frankly, the heat and my anticipation of a hot run limited my bike performance.


This race was well run but I was a little confused as to why they separated the girls and the guys in transition for the first time this year rather than racking us by bib #. Kinda strange. Like somebody complained they thought the other sex had cooties so they should separate us. :)

This was a REALLY good race to lead up to IMWI. I was able to sufficiently practice my nutrition and electrolyte replacement in extreme conditions and didn't have ANY trouble digesting it. I was very happy.

I also have finally realized that no matter how HARD I train I will never be as good as my 2 friends. They are such phenominal athletes with such little training it makes me sorta depressed. I work 2-3 times harder than they do....to no avail. OH well...SIGH.

I also realized that my bike race pace at IMWI is going to be NOWHERE near what I thought it would be. At a zone 3 I'll be lucky to average 17mph on that course.

I also have changed my IMWI goal after this race. My original IMWI goal was not a finish time but to run an average of 10:00min/miles on the marathon. I have now revised that goal to simply not walking the marathon (except the 1 big hill we do twice and 3-4 steps through aid stations).

If I end up running 12:00-13:00min/mils at IMWI but I didn't WALK any of those miles, I will be happy with my performance.