South Carolina Half - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

Actual time in the water was 36:00 flat. This was a pretty good swim for me, considering that I had an injured shoulder and have not swum much at all since IMKY. Sighting went well. I really didn't have much chance to draft, because I started off slow, as I was not in the slightest warmed up, then I picked up the pace. So at the end I was passing lots of people, and was more interested in getting around them than in drafting off of them.

Under the circumstances, nothing. This beat my White Lake HIM swim (similar conditions) by 3 minutes.

This went fairly smoothly. Because I had to rush to set up transition, it wasn't as smooth as could be, but OK. Wet suit came off just fine. Getting on the bike didn't go so well, as the rubber band holding my shoe up either broke or slipped off before it was supposed to. Ugh.

I was really really worried about the bike. I have biked very little since IMKY, and nothing this long, and nothing particularly hard. In the middle of the bike, my right knee was getting very sore, and I started wondering what was going to happen on the run, but it calmed down by the end and did not bother me on the run. Basically, I just rode, without much of a plan. I got lucky and paced it about right for my fitness, but if I can get fit on the bike, I can do this much faster. Next year...

I was FREEZING for the first 20 miles. My hands were numb and I could hardly hold the water bottle or the gel flask. Fortunately, I didn't drop them. Then the air started warming up, and I had thawed out by around mile 45. Nutrition seems to have been fine - I did my usual plan of gel on the 1/2 hours and sports drink on the :15s and :45s. I drank a bit too much for the cool weather and peed on the bike, into my shoe. Yuck.

Train?

Not a bad T2. I put socks on, or it would have been blazing fast. I'm not sure I really needed them, but opted for the insurance.

I'm pretty pleased with this run, not because of anything to do with pace, but because I managed to hold it together. I went out a little under 8:00/mile and held that for about 8 miles, then the hills and lack of serious run training recently (especially long runs) started getting to me, and I slowed considerably, and started walking the aid stations. But I kept the walking to a minimum, and was able to keep running through some pretty deep pain and deep desire to stop. I'm really glad I had this chance to prove to myself that I can keep going through that pain. Now my right leg is oh so sore, but it's nothing serious. It'll be fine in a few days.

One hamburger, one chicken burger, pasta salad, brownie, and 5 cookies. I watched Brad finish and talked to him for a few minutes after he had a chance to recuperate a bit, and then I had to get home.


IMKY 5 weeks ago. Low training volume. But this was for fun, and I did have fun, so I don't really care.


This is a small race compared to the other HIM and IM I've done, but I had a good time, and as always Setup Events did a bang-up job running it. I was a bit disappointed about the road quality on parts of the bike course -- not really the chip and seal portion (which is super-short and not that bad) but some of the other parts. It was nothing dramatically bad, but it did grate on one's nerves a bit.