Ironman U.S. Championship - TriathlonFull Ironman

The days before the swim where most stressful as to whether we were going to swim or not, I really wanted to get the swim in to be a complete Ironman and luckily we were able to get in the water, the current was awesome to swim with, 53 minute swim (my fastest half Ironman time was 42 minutes :)), the point to point swim was easy for sitting with keeping the bouyies on the left and the shore line on the right, the water was hard to see a few inches in front of you and got worse as you headed to closer to the barge as the current bounced off the barge and caused the bottom of the Hudson to turn over and right in your face…

nothing

Not much help other than someone having someone give me my bag, no help to get my bike, other than someone at the end of the bike rack telling us which rack our bike were at, took my time to get bike shorts on and lube up before setting off to make everything was all set.


I could go a lot faster but given my this is my 1st Full Distance I wanted to make sure everything was OK

Nice hill coming out of transition, and a good hill around mile 44 but overall bike course was constantly either going up or down, with no flat sections, biggest part that sucked for me on the bike course was my Garmin (910TX) was acting up and had me off by 10 miles by the end (never had a problem with it before, so I blame the Hudson water :), my goal was to hit 16mph for this segment and it was spot on, I went out pretty hard in the first half since it was cool and had cloud cover, but once the sun came out I back-off the pace to keep from overheating as I was starting to get hot and still had the Marathon to complete

nothing I spent the entire year working on my endurance only and no speed work so overall I'm pretty happy with the outcome

Wow!!! Somebody took my bike as soon as I got to transition so that was cool to not worry about racking the bike, got my bag and had a hard time opening it, got my running shoes on, and was starting to run out the door and realized I forgot my biking shorts on so had to go back and put them in the bag…

Could be a lot fast but just took my time to get everything in order

was looking to get ~11:00-11:30/mile for the first part of run given the hills and previous issues with my IT band and then picking it up on the last half, was doing great until mile 3 when my right hamstring tightened up and had to deal with it all the way to the finish, so basically did a walk/run depending on the steepness of the hill and stopped every so often to keep the hamstring loose, overall I was pretty pleased with the run as other than my hamstring everything else worked great and the IT band held out for the entire run and finished pretty strong for the race, I was 10 minutes faster than my stand alone Marathon time from last year given the IT band problems I had, so it felt really good to beat that time and come out relatively unscathed.

Mile splits below, my overall moving pace (when not going to the restroom or stretching my hamstring was 11:30/mile)

1 11:18.1
2 11:18.1
3 11:12.7
4 12:08.4
5 13:57.7
6 12:05.1
7 11:25.8
8 10:49.8
9 12:13.2
10 12:14.8
11 12:22.1
12 11:53.0
13 12:34.7
14 12:29.8
15 12:37.5
16 15:05.3
17 10:38.3
18 12:02.3
19 12:14.6
20 11:44.4
21 11:48.1
22 12:55.3
23 13:48.6
24 12:01.1
25 13:43.0
26 11:37.3


work on my running but overall pretty pleased.

had chocolate milk and about half a slice of pizza couldn't really eat anything


Nothing really, everybody asked me what my goal time was and I kept saying this is my first Full and my goal is just to finish and learn from it, my unspoken goal time was 14 hours based on doing a half iron last year of 6hr24min, doubling it and adding an hour and my stretch goal was 13 hours. I learned a lot from the race and what I need to work on the future but I’m ready looking forward to my next full distance race, haven’t decided if it will be next year or the year after but it will be coming


I had a great time at the event and I know logistically it was a nightmare, there are a few things that can be done a lot better but given the circumstances and all the stuff going on it went off well. This course is definitely not a for spectators, I told my family a long time ago I’m not paying for ferry tickets, go see a show on Broadway instead and I’ll meet you at the finish line. The bike course was nicely closed off for the cyclist but hard for spectators to get to, other than the finish line the best crowd was just off the GW bridge, and after that not many people around, even at the park we went through had a bunch of families from the local communities having parties etc.. and had no idea what was going on, someone asked me if we were running for charity. While other people would just walk right in front of you trying to get to the other side of the park.

Host hotel was OK but I expected more, like banners or something showcasing the Ironman event so people knew, but no such luck, and the fire alarm didn’t help matter.

The highlight of the weekend for me was not only finishing but being in the roll-down the next day and finding out a fellow club member (PeakTriCoaching) qualified for Kona!!! Congrates Colin!!

One bad thing is that my run transition bag (containing all my bike gear - helmet, shoes) was lost and hasn't been found yet.. [Update] bag has been found

Till the next race

Chris