Beach2Battleship Half Iron Distance Triathlon - Triathlon

5th place in AG was 11 seconds ahead of me! We were very bunched at the end. Never mind though- that is trivial in the big picture.
Started well but then got boxed in by a large group swimming diagonal to the middle of the channel (I was already in the middle). Had to stop, look and try gegt around them. Overall it was a nice swim except for a major navigation issue- swam right to one of the nav bouy's after turning left but it was actually some kind of out-of-bounds bouys so the guy blew a whisle and yelled to go left. So I had swim at a 90 degree angle and then had to turn sharp left, rather than just swimming diagonal. Not sure how much time it cost me but certainly a handful of seconds.

Stop and make sure I am going to the right place before heading over there!
Pretty happy with this though- swam somewhat sporadically before the race (1-2X/week, 2Kish each time) so put in little effort and could fudge my way through. One of these days I am going to train hard for the swim and see what happens. Maybe for Raleigh (non wetsuit legal and no current...should be able to put some distance between me and the runners and make them catch me :-)) Still, I always say that but then realize that the 5 mins I might gain takes a lot more work than trying to cut down on my shoddy running time.

Wetsuit stripper was quite slow and he had some issues but nice to have him do it anyway. Got caught behind a bunch of people so had to slow down but then ran fairly quickly through and had a reasonably fast T1. Its funny, because I really didnt hurry. Makes you wonder what the heck some people do in transition! Second fastest in my AG and 34th overall.

Try to get round that pack sooner so I could push along. They were moving very slowly. Other than that it was pretty methodical. Didn't do anything stoopid.

So this is where the * comes in. Missed the turn at mile 35 or so. There was a woman in front of me who almost crashed and the three guys behind her almost hit her, so I was watching them. Saw all these cars stopped but no-one turned left on a bike and I didnt hear anyone so I just kept going straight. I started passing only people with grey wristbands and thought it was odd. After a mile and a half I asked someone if they had seen the turn and they said it was way back. I turned around, almost lost it in a fit of rage, pulled myself together, fumed and then was somewhat happy to see that it was "only" 1.7 miles or so out of the way. I got lots of cheers from people thinking I was the lead FULL bike coming back! That was funny. Anyway, when I got through mile 56 I was averaging 20.8 and was a touch under 2:42 (2:42:xx, but Garmin doesnt have the seconds once you go over an hour). So I am taking 10 mins off (should be 11 or 12) for my unofficial results :-) Ranks would have been about 28th (2:42 was 28th) in my AG and 130 overall. That is MUCH more in line with where I normally am. Did I mention how thoroughly frustrating that was? :-)

Garmin has my ride at 20.7 average...not 19.4 :-( Overall, other than the missed turn, my ride was pretty methodical. I found the congestion to be a problem at times and hated how many people were blowing by in packs, clearly drafting. Some people were also riding quite dangerously on the highway- passing on the right IN the interstate lane on the other side of the cones. Guys, this is an interstate...cars are blowing by at 70+ and are not expecting you in their lane!

Not mess up the turn. I knew it was there...I just missed it. And I should have asked sooner. I had a bad feeling when suddenly it looked much quieter on the course but was too embarrased to ask someone. Anyway.

All fairly methodical. Found Daryn who had been waiting, wondering if I had wrecked because he was behind me on the swim but had seen my T2 bag and didnt recall passing me. It all made sense when he found out that I had missed the turn and was riding on my own for a little while. Had a pee in T2. That wasted quite a bit of time because I ran back into the restroom after I had almost exited T2. No worries though...it is what it is.

Not backtrack to pee.
80th overall and 42nd in AG in T2. Again, what are other people doing because this was not a speedy transition!

Started out OK. Running with Daryn and chatting. Somehow I seemed to be in worse shape than he was, even though I had trained and he has run somethign like 20 miles in 3 months! Anyway, started pretty well. In retrospect maybe I should have gone at silly-slow pace rather than comfortable. Didd 8:xx miles for the first 4, then 9:xx for the next 5, then 10:xx stuff after that, other than the final mile. Can't remember where the walking began but we started walking the aid stations and I was VERY thirsty at that point. Then those walks got longer and started to do some walks in between the aid stations too. It felt very warm on the back end going to the turnaround and, as Daryn said, "there is always someone who feels worse!". Had moments when I was running OK but mostly it was a struggle. Had a really hard time just sucking it up and not stopping. Part of that was my knee/tendon on right side of my calf, just below the knee that was absolutely killing me. Got worse as I plodded along. Happened 2 years ago too. It really sucks because I dont know what to do about it. Anyway, will work on that. It was a hard run and I was very happy to finish! It felt like it would never end and some of the miles felt so so long! Thanks for the encouragement Daryn- I really appreciate you tagging along with me but I hope (for your sake) that your achilles plays along so you can race the next one of these.

Not sure- greater fitness? Mental toughness to just push through more? More long bricks? I think this might be the key for me- multiple 50mile rides/6-8 mile runs. I actually think there is some merit to just having a few very long days in training- 4/5 hrs long (like a 100 mile ride) just to get used to being out there for so long. I struggled a little with knowing that my goal was out of reach and, bad as I felt, it didnt seem worth really trying to dig deeper. Having said that, I felt quite "done" at the end so pushing harder was prob not really in the cards.

Milled about. Felt like crap until I drank some chicken broth! That stuff fixed me. And had some tylenol. After that I felt OK.


Knee. Fitness.


Still love this race. A few of the changes they made this year were good (losing those bridges and havingt the finish downtown), but a few were not (that triangle was confusing and I know it messed a few people up on the run- I know a lady who runs, maybe 2hrs on a good day in a stand-alone race who is listed as having finished in 1:41...I don't think so). Other than that though, it is just a really cool area to have a race and Setup does a great job with the logistics.

It was a fantastic weekend down in Wrightsville. Stayed at the Holiday Inn Sunspree Resort. It is right on the beach with pools and hot tubs and the kids ate for free in the restaurant, so it was pretty cheap too. Great to be able to sit in the room and watch the sun rise over the ocean with Luke on Sunday morning, and to look out over the sea. Played quite a bit with d00d's family- our kids and his his are roughly the same age and seemed to quite enjoy each other's company. Very nice atmosphere at the hotel too. While I am really disappointed in my race, "it is what it is". Glad I am doing this report on Monday rather than sooner because I was ready to pack it all in and eat chips. But I am moving on and, while annoyed, am ready to try to rectify some of this and move along.