Patriot Half Iron (+4 miles) - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

I thought I was navigating this course pretty well, but kept finding myself a bit off. It felt as if there was a current, even though that's probably not possible. Found feet to draft off of about 1/3 of the swim, but the rest of the time I was a bit off course (I generally went for the turnaround bouys and not any of the ones in between, so it might not have been a bad thing). Felt very comfortable on this swim, and fresh for the bike upon exit.

More OWS practice w/sighting. More drafting.

Good transition. My wet feet caused my footbed to move in my bike shoe when I was putting them on, so I had to redo it. Will try to adhere it to the shoe so this won't happen in the future.

The course was long due to last minute construction. No one knows how long exactly, but my Garmin shows 59.7 and I think Steve's was similar, so let's go with that. The extra distance added 13:30 to my race time when compared to a normal half iron bike distance.

Jorge's race plan had me averaging 115-125 watts the entire ride, which ended up being a fairly easy pace for me, so the bike was very enjoyable and left me feeling very fresh for the run. I think my gear management could have been a little better, but since I have a roadbike with aerobars right now, changing gears is not as convenient as it would have been on a tri bike.

I must take a moment to rant now...
The annoying thing about being slow on the bike like this is dealing with the yahoos, and riding by watts means I can't just hammer and pass the annoying people. For example, two women ahead of me met up on the course and then proceeded to draft or ride two abreast for at least the next 20 minutes. The referee came by and slowed down two separate times to watch. When I made my pass, I let them know the ref was watching and they might want to stop drafting. They had NO IDEA what drafting was, and had never heard of the three bike length rule. How exactly you get to a race of this distance without this knowledge is beyond me. I think every race packet should include the Most Commonly Violated USAT rules, because these yentas were probably too busy talking pre-race to listen to the announcements.

Not sure. I am pretty new to training/racing by watts so could definitely use more practice.

This was a bad transition. My feet were wet (I had poured water on myself during the bike), and I could not get my socks on.

Guess what? The run course was ALSO long, and the extra distance added about 4:30 to my run time. I'm only saying this because my overall 6:25 time sounds much better once you realize there is an additional 18 minutes gained from the long bike and run.

I went out on this run feeling great. The first 8 miles felt very good, and the rest were not so bad. Unfortunately, the goal pace set in the race plan was a minute faster than my actual pace. My heart rate was low, I was hydrated and on top of my nutrition, I felt fine, but I just could not pick it up. Maybe it was the lack of sleep the night before? I am definitely annoyed with myself for missing the goal pace by so much for no particular reason.

Ended up dropping off in pace a bit more at mile 11 because my feet were getting numb and my hamstrings were beginning to cramp. I had to switch shoes recently, and my two former shoes had come out with updated models, so I was kind of out of luck and just had to suck it up with this less-than-perfect pair. It's the curse of the flat-footed runner.

More run training. We were focusing on my cycling this spring, so the running volume was reduced a little bit. There are only so many hours in the week!

Met Steve and then we walked around, chatted with Jorge about my sucky run, and ate. Went in the lake to rinse off and stretch a bit. Felt pain as soon as I stopped running, so we had to stop a few times on the way home to stretch.


My overall fitness is limiting my ability to perform faster. I put in a lot of hours training for this event, but the bottom line is that this was my first half iron distance race at the beginning of my second racing season. All that matters is that I learned a lot, had a great day, and finished with a smile. It's all going to come together.


Enjoyable race and good volunteers. Good course, even if it was 4.2 miles long. I was very impressed with this inaugural race, and plan to do this again in 2008.