LongHorn Triathlon Festival - Half Iron - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

The first few minutes of the swim were much more chaotic than I'd anticipated. I've done starts with bigger waves and still not had this much traffic. I didn't notice any of the seaweed others have commented on at the beginning, but I did grab a bunch at the end. I didn't find anyone to draft off of, so I was on my own. I love open-water swimming, though, and had a great time.

Get a little faster, but nothing major.

T1 was a long run up the hill. The wetsuit strippers were great--that seems like a fun job, and when I volunteer, I want to sign up for that. I put a little bodyglide between my toes before I put my socks on, and didn't have any foot or blister problems all day. I put my shoes on at the rack and ran in them to the mount line. I didn't even try for a flying mount.

Nothing.

This was my first race with my new PowerTap and disc cover. I don't have a tri bike yet, so I was just racing on my road bike with the clip ons. I definitely wanted to break 3 hours (18.66 mph) and my outside goal was 20 mph, or 2:48. I ended up a bit slow. My chain fell off once when shifting from small to big, and my lower back felt lousy during the last 15 miles. I drank a bottle of 2.5x concentrated Infinit and took two gels. I also drank water. This seemed to keep me hydrated as I had to make a bathroom stop in T2. I was a little disappointed in my average power of 164--I had been hoping to do about 180 watts, but I have no experience with the thing and rode with it primarily for data collection after the race.

The bike course seemed about .5 miles short based on my Garmin 310.

I was slower than most on the hills, and that was on purpose, but based on the power meter readings, I need to slow down even more.

T2 caught me by surprise. I knew I was getting close, but the dismount line was right around a corner, and I'd only loosened one of my shoes. So I yanked that foot out of the shoe, and unclipped the other, and ran to my rack spot with one shoe on and one shoe off. I got a little lost finding my spot, but that only cost me a couple seconds.

Prepare for the dismount and remember where my spot was.

This is where it gets interesting. The first ten miles were great. My only problem--if you can call it that--is that I tore off my bib number when going from back to front. I tucked it under the race belt because I'd like to see some pics and wanted the number visible to the camera.

Anyway, I'd planned on doing 8 to 8:30 miles for the first loop, but I felt great and my Garmin was reading 7:40 or so for the first loop. I drank plenty of water, but only took one gel and skipped the Gatorade because it was too sweet. The second loop felt great as well, though I didn't take in any calories. Just a sip of Gatorade made me want to wretch, so I was hoping I could race my exhaustion to the finish line. That lasted until mile 10.

Starting at mile 10, I began doing a run/walk thing, hoping to do 2 minutes of running with 30 seconds of walking. After a couple rounds, it slipped to about 1:1 ratio. I felt like I could run physically except for the nausea. I contemplated walking long enough to settle my stomach, but figured I was better off just continuing as I was doing and run/walking back in. About a mile from the finish line, a hot young woman ran past, slapped me on the shoulder and said: "You didn't train to walk. Get going." Her cute butt in spandex shorts was enough to bring me back to a run for about half a mile, but then I ran/walked a couple more times before running into the finish. I was happy with the run time--I figure I lost about 10 minutes on the run during the last 3 miles.

I have no idea. I was on the line between running out of fuel and throwing up, and I chose to run out of fuel. I'm a little worried about IMLP for next year. I'm fine with fueling at training exertion levels and can drink and eat fine on the bike and on the run. But when I push the pace in a race longer than 3 hours, I can't get calories in at the end. This happened in the NYC marathon a few years ago. Hopefully, IM pace is slow enough that I won't have quite the same problem.

I still didn't want to eat anything, but I was OK walking around. After about 30 minutes, my stomach felt fine and I drank a recovery drink that I'd brought with me. (It was great parking 100 feet from the arena!) I ran into the girl who motivated me at the end and thanked her. I wandered aimlessly for a while, then grabbed by bike and went back to the hotel, but couldn't nap.


Nutrition.


Overall, a great race. The run course was brutally boring, but I understand the last-minute change due to the trail conditions. I can't blame the race organizers for the bad roads either. They are what they are in this part of the country.

I had been hoping for a 5:30 and my stretch goal was 5:15. I was on pace for 5:10 until the last 3 miles, but even then, finishing at 5:21 ain't so bad. Despite what I thought of as a bad run, it was good by other standards. I put my age group results into an Excel spreadsheet and did a little sorting and math out of the 340 in my age group:

2 people passed me in T1. I passed 31 people in T1.
63 people passed me on the bike. I passed 8 people on the bike.
0 people passed me in T2. I passed 25 people in T2.
Nobody passed me on the run. I passed 55 people on the run.

0 people who were slower than me on the bike beat me overall
81 people who beat me on the bike lost to me overall.

Only one runner faster than me finished with a slower overall time.
29 runners with slower run times beat me overall.


The bike is obviously my relative weakness. Hopefully, a winter on my new Computrainer doing long intervals will help change that.