Great Buckeye Challenge - Half Iron Triathlon - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

I was very happy with the swim. I went out hard and was into a solid groove before the first buoy. I was able to draft a bit off some stronger swimmers, but I kept getting pulled up on them too much resulting in a few kicks in the face so I swam off them and got into my own open area. Other than that the swim was smooth, aside from the one punch to the face I took on a turn. And by punch I don't mean soft hit, it was a teeth rattling goggling tossing hit. I was pretty impressed by the Tyson like hit that was dished from a female Ager! I was almost exactly on target coming out of the water ~40 minutes, then the run up the hill happened. It was harder than I expected.

I would do nothing differently, the swim went very well.

T1 was pretty much flawless. I was kind of disappointed by my time, but its a long race, so an extra minute in T1 wasn't going to kill me.

Calm, Collected, and fairly quick. I'm happy with this.

I was over 10 minutes faster than the next Ager. After T1 everything went downhill. My biking legs just weren't there today. My legs were heavy from the beginning to the end. I dropped my chain twice, and both happened on hills, and I was not shifting when they happened. My bike was also ghost shifting the ENTIRE time. Nothing like having mechanical problems on race day. I wanted to average at least 21.5MPH and on a good day I would have easily. I am very unhappy with this performance, and it doesn't display all of the hard work I had leading up to the race. On a good note, nutrition was spot on. It was pretty lonely out there on the second lap.

Mechanical issues slowed me down. Nothing I could do but cope and push through.

I went no socks in T2. I have been doing my runs without socks and all has been fine...but I've never gone over an hour without them...the few secons that I saved in T2 added about 40 minutes to my run...

TAKE THE TIME TO PUT SOCKS ON

I was first in my AG until the run. I completed the first lap in 58:33, which was exactly a 9 minute mile pace. After the first lap my race started to crumble. THis is when the no socks decision came into play. I started hearing the scraping of my feet sliding through my shoes. The second lap was literally the the most painful 90 minutes of my life. All of the sweat running down into my shoes caused some major issues. I ended up taking my shoes off for a bit and walking...this is when I found out just how bad of shape that my feet were in. Toes bleeding, bottom of my feet bleeding, and my heels were bleeding. After seeing all of the blood and how blood stained my shoes were I got even more siked out. It was so hard and painful putting my shoes back on and continuing on. THe run was miserable.

Wear socks. My legs and heart coud have carried me through the run course 30 minutes faster, that is something that I am absolutely sure off. I now understand what people mean when they refer to their pain cave.

As soon as I finished I ripped my shoes off and tossed them aside. THe girl handing out metals freaked out when she saw all the blood. I thought that was kind of funny. (I was in a weird la-la state of mind)


My stupidity in T2


Even though I had an awful race, I'm still pretty proud that I finished a 70.3 in my first year of triathlons. And I placed in my AG, with a time that was over 30 minutes slower than my projected time. Bigger and better things to come in the future, as well as better decision making. The course is a great course, and HFP is a solid company. I look forward to racing here next year.