Beach2Battleship Iron Distance Triathlon - TriathlonFull Ironman

After all the planning and training all the little things you can't plan for started going wrong right from the swim. My Aquasphere goggles I always swim in that have never leaked before or since started leaking and filling up to the point I had to stop and tread water every 5 minutes as I cleared them and then go on. Also the wetsuit created a rash on the back of my neck despite the normal bodyglide I always use.

Not sure what went wrong with the goggles, luck of the draw but without those the actual swim rhythm was great and probably would have been closer to 55 minutes.

Took my time on this transition cause I knew it would be a long bike and wanted to get everything right. Wetsuit strippers were great. Turned my Garmin on as I exited the water to boot up. Went into changing tent, changed for tri suit prayed sunscreen and more body lube in all the right places, changed to tri shorts with more padding and dry, and tri top, socks and shoes, helmets, gloves and arm coolers sleeves and sunglasses, went and grabbed my bike and off I went feeling great. Changing tent had plenty of room, volunteers collecting the bags had it all together. Love this race. It all runs so well.

Maybe go faster but I wanted to be careful

Yeah. This is where it went to hell. First two hours I felt awesome and was turning and burning. All the way to the interstate stayed on my desired pace of 17 mph and legs felt great. The entire stretch on the interstate I felt great and stayed on 17 mph. Some headwind but not terrible. After two hours I was right at 17 mph pace and was thinking I was right in line to make my goal time with fresh legs to hammer the run, my specialty. Then I must have hit something, don't know what, but it felt like I was towing something or peddling into heavy wind while everybody else started passing me as I lose time and get more and more exhausted fighting harder and harder to keep up my speed. I get to special needs and find my back wheel had become bent and was rubbing against the back brake. When I fish out the special tool and take off the back brake a spoke snapped. A smart volunteer got a piece of duct tape and I duct taped the spoke together, swear that saved my race. I did the last 56 miles or so of the bike with a duct taped spoke and wobbling wheel with no back brakes stopping every 10 miles or so to get off and check to make sure it was holding. Cost me at least 40 minutes on the bike if not more and totally wore out my legs and broke my focus.

I had the bike checked a few weeks before the race but go figure. I guess have it checked the day before. Just bad luck. Doubt it will ever happen like that again.

T2 went fine. Plenty of room to change, took it slower than I am capable of again and changed socks, kept my cooling sleeves, put on visor and Brooks Racer St5 running shoes. Already knew my goal time was shot so this was just about finishing.

just go faster.

Started out trying to run my planned pace keeping heart rate between 154 and 164 bpm and walk 1 minute at every aid station. That quickly went to hell. My heart rate wouldn't come down even when I was walking, was staying in the 160s and I could hear the blood pumping in my ear to the point I couldn't hear anybody talking to me. With all that had gone wrong that day and this being my first ironman. I made the executive decision to just walk most of the second lap. I ran the last mile and a half or so in at a time at least 90 minutes slower than I was expecting based on my training times so I wasn't overly happy. But I finished, I finished running not walking and I got the first one ironman done. Now I can come back and do it right next time.

Train better, take in less salt, try different run walk plan.

Unpredicted disasters and breakdowns, bad luck.


Despite the things that went wrong for me I cannot praise this race enough. They plan details you wouldn't even think of. They know there stuff and they run the most enjoyable race you could ever imagine. You should do this race, that simple. It is worth it. It is cheaper than Ironman. Wilmington is beautiful and not expensive to visit, the conditions are great. This race is worth doing in every way and if you don't have equipment failures you will have an amazing finish time here.