Pigman Triathlon - Long Course - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

The whole swim went well. I adopted a newer breathe 2-2-3 pulls to alternate sides. My breathing made a nice rhythm that kept me focused and calm. Not too much pushing and shoving. I was able to settle into a groove quickly and kept my breathing calm the whole time. It really was a glorious swim. The sun was out, the water was calm and I was swimming well. It always amazes me that listening to our breathing underwater is so loud, but when you lift your head to sight for a few seconds it is soooo quiet, especially compared to the background noise at a pool. Very peaceful.

I came out of the water six minutes faster than I expected, so either the course was short or I've made progress the past month! And the wetsuit...

The run up to transition was pretty long. Overall this was a good transition--methodical and controlled but relatively quick.

nothing

Apparrently I've made a lot of progress on the bike in the last month or so. I rode the course about a month ago and it was difficult. I was tired at the end. I averaged 15mph, so was expecting 3:30 or so on race day.

This ride felt awesome. The hills weren't nearly as hard as I remembered and I tackled the rollers well. Kept leapfrogging with a guy who was faster than me on the flats but I was stronger on the hills. I eventually passed him for good. Shifting was good except for going down to the middle ring from the big ring. It would jump clear down to the granny ring so I'd lose momentum every time. I fiddled with the deraileur cable twister thing a little but didn't want to do anything that might really mess things up for me. I managed.

Figure out what the heck was going on with me front deraileur!

Hit the porta potty quickly, didn't take too long.

This is where it fell apart (kind of). I was hoping for at least 10min miles. After my swim and bike I would have come in under 6:00 had I been able to do this. I felt good coming off the bike, but my HR wanted to creep up if I picked up the pace a little. I wasn't going to let myself do that until the last 2-3 miles because my main goal was to finish strong and happy, not crash on the run. It got hot, but there were patches where the clouds covered the sun and we had some relief. I was fighting nauea the whole run. It would get worse after I ate or drank, but i was able to keep it to where I stayed adequately fueled but could tolerate the nausea. Nothing hurt, but I was just tired. Wanted to lie down and take a nap. Much of the run was mentally difficult. Picked it up the last two miles, so my first two and last two miles were at about 9:30 pace.

Don't know--I don't know that there's anything I could have done to make the run faster.

not much!


This race is very well organized with tons of happy volunteers. I really can't complain about my time--I was expecting 6:30 but wanted between 6 and 6:30, secretly hoping there would be some way I could be really close to 6. But I felt really good at the end (about as sore as racing a half marathon!) and really want to do this race again. I really like the HIM distance.