Delaware DIAMONDMAN® TRIATHLON - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

Very happy with my swim. Without a warmup, I felt out of sorts for the first 2-300 yds. I couldn't get into a rythmn and started having flashbacks of Columbia. But this time I kept my head down and continued plowing ahead. Being in the crowd and contact never helps. After a while I settled down, got to the outside edge of the pack and found a groove. Strangely, though, it felt better to breathe every third stroke than on every other stroke. I alternated my breathing patterns (left, right, bilateral) depending on sighting or changing focus. Navigation was decent for me. I still pulled to the right, but didn't get too far away from the pack and didn't have to make any drastic course corrections to get headed toward a buoy. It seemed to take forever to get to the far buoy. Once we made the turn, we were headed back into the sun. With my goggles fogged up, this made sighting a pretty difficult proposition. What I could see were arms, swim caps, and splashes, so if the pack was on course I was in good shape. I also used the angle of the sun to help with direction.
After the turn I started coming up on some blue caps from the wave ahead of me. This is always an unexpected confidence builder.

Can't think of anything. This is pretty much as far as my abilities will carry me.

This transition is a little different. Once exiting the water we run ~600 yds to the actual TA. I got out of the water and quickly removed my wetsuit - that went off perfectly. I had a second pair of shoes waiting for me at the pond, so I was in them, got my bottle of Gatorade and jogged up to the TA. I was amazed at how many people were running in their wetsuits.

At TA, flipped off my shoes, toweled my feet, got on my socks, in my bike shoes, grabbed my bottles and gum, then off to the bike course.

Here's where it got a little interesting. I clipped in my right foot and started to turn the pedal, but the chain kept sliding over the teeth on the cassette. Uhhhh, what's going on? I shifted up one gear, no go. Pulled the bike over to the side to get out of the way of others, shifted a few more times and found a ring that caught. I start out figuring that I'll see what happens. I realize I'm on the 14 tooth in the rear - that'll be interesting if that's the only gear I've got. I play around with the gearing a litle more and discover that I'm missing the 15 and 16 tooth rings. I've got 17-21 and 14-12. (Explanantion later.) This I can do, although I'm pretty nervous about shifting for the rest of the race.

Check out EVERYTHING the day before the race and take nothing for granted. Make a test ride the last thing I do before declaring the bike race ready.

Bike troubles: Saturday I took the cassette off the wheel to clean it and dropped it in the process, sending tooth rings and spacers rolling across my driveway and the bed of my truck. I guess when I put it back together I missed a spacer between the 16 and 15 tooth rings. Because the rings were so close and the teeth were spaced kinda odd-even, the chain would just runover the top of them.

Well once I got a little more comfortable with the gearing, it was a pretty uneventful ride. Part of that was the fact that I haven't found a way to get my computer to work with the new disc. So I had no speed and no distance. For an anal retentive stat junkie like myself it was rather torturous. But I still kept myself entertained with HR and cadence. My HR was usually too high, in the lower 140's. But it felt good to race. I just concentrated on whoever was ahead of me and went after them. I also tried to keep my intensity a little higher than most would recommend. I wanted to see what I could do. At times I felt my legs getting fatigued and wondered if I would still be able to pull of a decent run. Well, let's find out. Paul M passed me ~40 min into the ride. No surprise there, but I kept up pretty well, 2min behind at the turnaround. I caught up with Dave on the bridge, 60 min into my bike leg. I say "caught up" because he went screaming down the bridge and I couldn't catch him until we were back on the flats. Passed Shelly along the way. I knew she must have been having a good race. Coming back toward the bridge, I see Paul M walking with his bike. I slow down to offer help, but he rides tubulars (without a spare?!). The wind had come up while we were on the bike course and it made some of the homeward stretches kinda tough, but all in all not too bad. I had pushed pretty hard from the start and around the 2 hr mark I could feel the fatigue in my legs. At this point I took more opportunities to spin a higher cadence (53x17) on the downhill/downwind stretches rather than power up (53x14). I got stung by a bee....and that's all I remember about the bike. Took my bike split and was amazed to see 2:31. This was far and away the toughest goal I had set for myself and would not have been the least bit disappointed if I didn't make it. So to beat it felt awesome.

Could I have pushed harder? Having more gearing options would have helped.

T1 - short and sweet. Grabbed my race belt, finished my water bottle and off I went.

Only bugaboo was that I racked my bike on top of my wetsuit and it got stuck for a few seconds when I tried to move it.

Coming out of the park, my quads were really hurting. This is exactly what happened to me at Eagleman, but this time instead of it "just" being pain, my muscles felt like they were on the verge of locking up. First run split was 6:56. Uhhhh, I can barely bend my knees and I'm running a sub 7 pace - what's wrong with this picture? I tried to relax and visualize a nice fluid pace. It seemed to work as the pain started to subside. Took some Endurolytes at the first water station, which could not come soon enough. I took water at almost every aid station and poured at least half a cup over my head. This strategy turned out to be a mistake because during the second half of the run the Endurolytes in my neoprene belt pouch started dissolving. This was quite a boring run - hill to one side, canal to the other the entire way. The only variation was when the course diverted up a hill only to return to the original path. The other diversion was picking your way along the path so you didn't twist an ankle in a pothole or on a big rock. Splits went along nicely on the way out, then what should have been mile seven was an odd ball - 8:52? It was maked as mile 8 - did I miss #7? Maybe the course was measured short - no complaints here. The next mile was mile 9. My pace had slowed but we were heading into the wind and I was probably taking longer to go through the aid stations, but only four more miles to go. Next up was mile 9 - cool only 4 more mi.... wait a minute! Two mile 9's - that's just cruel. Now I'm starting to think that the course was long. I passed mile 11 (measured long) and knew the big hill was soon ahead. Some people ahead of me were walking the hill, but I was determined to go as strong as I could - short, quick steps, just keep 'em moving. At the top!!! 1.5 miles to go!!! The toughest part was over and I let out a yell - I don't know why, possibly the release of pressure or to refocus on a good, strong finish. Whatever it was, everyone ahead of me turned around to look. I felt a little bit renewed at this point and started picking off my marks, which included 3 or 4 guys in my AG! I was pretty stoked to see a 40-something aon a calf as I went by. Coming into the park, the sharp pain I started out the run with was shooting through my quads again. This time there were no Endurolytes or water stations between me and the finish. All I could do push hard and hang on. A guy in the park says to me "You can crawl there from here" - I'm not liking the potential irony in that statement. But, I did hang on and was amazed to see my finish time! What a relief!

Only 4% slower than my half marathon PR from one week ago - this is probably all I had in me.

Got a few snacks - no bananas??!!! BSed with some of the other pre-geezers in the finish area. Man, that's a fast AG! Quickly retrived my Endurox from TA and called Brenda. I wanted to go back out and run with Dave, especially that last hill, but I started jogging and my legs were telling me they had had enough for one day. I saw Shelly in the park and took that as an omen, so ran in with her. We talked and waited for Dave to finish. After we all got packed up it was reward time - Diamonman and NSTD Challenge completed, so it was off to DQ.


Possibly running a half marathon a week ago, no bike computer, no 15 or 16 tooth rings, 3-4 pounds I couldn't loose before race day. Other than that...




Just an awesome race. I exceeded or met my time goals in every leg, so it's going to be tough to top this race. If my lifetime PR is 4:50, I'll be happy. Of course the next triathlon goal is a sub 5 Eagleman.

What a tough age group! Top 3 spots went to M40-44's. My time was only good enough for the 8th best in my AG. Top 5/10, 8/20, 10/22 spots were M40-44, not to mention the 46y/o who came in 7th. Wow.