Ironman Wisconsin - TriathlonFull Ironman

We entered the water about 10 minutes before the swim start and seeded ourselves to the right of the ski jump and back a ways.

The gun went off and the first couple of minutes were really clean and I was thinking, this is great! Then reality hit - we started catching up with main body of swimmers and from that point on it was 1 hr 20 minutes of full contact swiming!

I kept waiting for the traffic to clear up but it just never did. The corners were really brutal - had no choice but to basically stop and doggy paddle around them. Half of my focus was on moving forward the other half was fending off kicks to the head.



Probably start wider to try and swim around some of the congestion. also probably started too far back.

Running up the helix was just amazing. It was lined with people cheering, yelling, etc. Very fun!

My brother was volunteering in T1/T2 so he helped me out which was nice. I did a full change into my DeSoto 400 mile bibs.

Nothing.

I started off nice and easy and was getting passed left and right but I was ok with that. Early on I noticed my HR was higher then I would have liked it given my power level and I had my first big decision to make. Do I stick with the power goals or adjust downward to try and get my HR down?

Well, I decided to stick with my power goal because RPE + power was telling me I was fine (felt super easy). In hindsight, it was the wrong decision.

I had a great time on the bike though. The crowd support was amazing, going up those hills with all the folks cheering, yelling, beating the drums was just fantastic. Loved some of the signs too. My favorite was the one that simply read "wow, you guys are great at exercise!". No idea why, but that made me laugh.

I had a very close call going into cross plains - took the corner a bit tight and my tire caught a grove in pavement and I came oh so close to going down hard (was going around 19-20mph). Thankfully I stayed upright.

Stopped at special needs and started to wonder why I hadn't seen my wife yet. She got out of the water ahead of me but I expected to catch her 20-30 miles in. Hmm...maybe she stopped at a biffy or is just having strong ride.

Finally around mile 75 I caught up with her and she was having a great ride! We chatted for a couple of seconds and I pressed on.

The final 30 miles were rather uneventful - my legs felt great and never ever felt tired.







My goal was to try and average around 145 watts which based on my training rides should have kept my normalized power under 160 and TSS under 300.

I hit my #'s dead on: Avg Power was 145, N power 159 and TSS 279.

But I probably should have dialed everything back a bit given the elevated HR.

Rode up the helix and gave my bike to a catcher - I think it was 1st Time Tri! Grabbed my stuff and slowley changed. Saw my Dad between the bag and transition rooms and gave him a quick wave.


Nothing. A bit slow but....

The first 2 miles were good but then things quickly went south and I realized my earlier decision on the bike was coming back to haunt me. My HR shot up to high zone 3 and my lungs were closing up (I have exericse induced asmtha).

It was really frustrating cause the legs felt good and they were saying "go" but the lungs and HR were saying otherwise. All through training I've had runs where the lungs behave and runs where they close up and I can't seem to figure what the driver is.

From miles 3-10 I started run/walking and I saw Julie around mile 6 (?) during one of the first out and back sections and she seemed to be doing well and I told her she'd be catching me soon!

Around mile 10 she caught me and she helped keep me going to 13 mile marker. From that point on I started to feel better. By mile 16 I was doing pretty good and she was starting to struggle so the roles reversed. Now I was helping to keep her going.

We never race together - we each do our own thing but for this race it just worked out that we ended up running together and it was great being able to help each other out through the end.

We also saw our friends Mike, Paul and Paul ALL OVER that run course! It was amazing. We saw them at the turnaround, at the football stadium, by campus and somewhere else too. They did a great job keeping us going!

Our goal time was under 14 hours and once we hit mile 20 we knew we had that in the bag so we just enjoyed the last few miles and hitting that finish line was fantastic! I ended up high fiving my mom down the finish line shute but I didn't even know it was her!




On the run nothing...

Met up with family and friends and just enjoyed the moment. Julie was feeling a bit woozy so she sat down with her mom and my mom while the guys went and collected the bikes and bags.


You know, instead of talking about why I didn't go faster I'm just going to focus on the fact that 4 years ago I couldn't swim at all, couldn't run 2 miles without feeling like death and biking more then 45 minutes seemed like a major event. Yet here I am at the finish line having just swam 2.4 miles, biked 112 and ran (well kind of ran) 26.2 miles. I'll take it!



I thought the entire event was first class. Volunteers and crowd support were just fantastic and it was everything I hoped it would be.

While I'm not doing this next year, I do plan on volunteering next year and taking another swing at it in 2012! I have a score to settle with that run course...