Iron Star Triathlon - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

The water felt pretty good. I started to the outside left so that I could use the group to sight off of. The start was pretty tame, no banging or kicking. I stayed wide left the whole first stretch which was .7 miles long. The only problem I had on this stretch was that we were swimming directly into the sun and it was just above the horizon in that phase where it was really big and orange. Once I made it past the second buoy the sun was higher and smaller so it was eaier to see. After the first turn the waves got choppier but not too bad. At this point I was still doing a pretty good job of sighting. After the 3rd turn I started zigzagging pretty badly. The group was way to the the left of me, and I was close to the buoy line but I kept swimming inside the line then turning back and going too wide. I finally caught my first person from the first wave at this point. On the way back to the shore I got passed by a couple of swimmers from the wave behind me, which I knew would happen. There were wetsuit strippers at the top of the hill who were really trying to go quickly, but I wasn't in as big of a hurry as they were. In fact I was thinking that if they took it off too quickly they would take off my shirt as well. I have no idea why I thought that, but I slowed them down and got it off then I ran the rest of the way into transition.

I was pretty happy with the swim. I thought it would take 45 minutes and I finished in under 42 minutes, so a pretty good effort.

We had to pack up all of our transition towels and our swimming stuff since it was a point to point race. This took a little bit longer than normal, but not too bad.

nothing, I was happy.

I started off in my small ring just to get my legs warmed up. After about a mile I went to change into my big ring where I had done 95% of my training, but my derailleur was broken. It wouldn't switch. I was panicking! How in the world could I do 56 miles in my stupid little ring? I thought about the tools I had with me and I was sure that I didn't have a phillips head screwdriver so I thought I'd try to flag down the course mechanic, or ask at the first bottle-up. I decided not to stress about it right then. I want to get something to eat so I reached into my bag and tried to get out my pretzels, which I was very excited to eat, but the plastic bag slipped and I dropped the whole bag just 1 mile into the ride!! At the same time I dropped my bag with salt tablets but I was able to catch that - thank goodness.

This entire course was rolling hills and my goal pace was 16 mph. I quickly settled in and realized that even with just my small ring I'd be able to stay above my goal, so I just stopped worring about the derailler.

For the first time in a race I saw a group of people blatantly drafting! I've read other race reports where they said they saw people drafting and I thought that it must be a mistake, surely no one would flat out cheat like that, but by God if I didn't see a group taking turns pulling. They were about 1/2 foot from each other for a couple of miles.

The first 25 miles were nice raods, no wind. Then we crossed the county line and suddenly the road was fresh chipseal and bumpy as hell with a strong cross wind. I was a little worried about all of the vibration making my derailleur even worse, but it smoothed out pretty quickly, still chipseal, but older and flatter. I didn't pass very many people and most of the ones I did pass were clearly struggling. I wish I would have had my big ring!

When were were close to the end I finally passed a guy who I had been catching up to for a long time. When I passed him I told him that we only had 8 more miles to go. He was pretty happy to hear that and thanked me. Then he took off and passed me back. I saw him up ahead passing another group and he went around the corner and I never saw him again!

Overall it was a good ride, I stayed above my target pace of 16mph the whole time and I didn't burn out my legs. Right at the end we had two hills that I struggled on, I had to come up out of the saddle and I could tell that my legs were tight, but they didn't feel tired.

I should have carefully checked my bike and tried all of the gears. What was I thinking not trying to make sure the derailleur worked!

When I got to the dismount line I tried to get off my bike by swinging my leg off the back, but my thighs were so tight that I kind of got stuck in mid-swing! How embarassing!

nothing

THis whole 6 months of training I have only done 4 brick workouts. One of them was a month ago in an Olympic tri, which went really well. I had a brief fear that my legs would feel like tree trunks. I started off running and felt great. My legs were fantastic. My goal was 11:30 miles for an over all finish goal of 6:45. I had to slow down the first mile, it was uphill and I was running 9:25. Once I pulled back to about 10:20 I started to feel real comfortable. A nice girl named Allie ran up to me and asked if she could run with me. I told her I'd be happy to, but I was probably slower than her. She was ok so we ran together for a while. We cheered on every girl on the course. Since it was an out & back we could see everyone ahead of us. After about 3 miles or so she started to speed up, so we parted ways. The first 5 miles really flew by, I was feeling great. At about mile 7 I finally started feeling tired, but I figured that I could just keep trotting to the finish.

At mile 10 we started going gently uphill for 2.5 miles. This was the first time all day that I started to really hurt. I wasn't sure if I could finish without walking. My goal finish time was 6:45, and I knew that I left T2 at 4:18 and I had a gps with my run time,. so I knew that I would finish under my goal time. I kept trying to do the math to see if there was any way I could have gone under 6:30, but I didn't see how that was possible. I would have run the last 3 miles in sub 10 minute/miles, which I can easily do in training, but I didn't see how I could do it with so much uphill. I was really tired, but I kept going. Finally, with .7 miles left to go, and near the top of the worst hill of the day, my legs finally started to cramp. First the left, then the right. I made it to the top of the hill and I knew it was downhill to the finish.

I saw my husband at mile 13 and I was feeling good. The crowds were fantastic, lots of people cheering. I straightned my race number, and picked up the pace to the finish line. It was a great feeling to be done.


I stuck to my plan of stopping at every aid station and drinking water. I wanted to only walk while I had water in my hand, and I was able to do that.

I walked to the food area and ate pizza, oranges, and bananas. We stayed for a while and watched the awards. The girl, Allie, that I ran with won 3rd in her AG (20-24) so that was pretty cool.


The race itsself was fantastic. The course was great, the aid stations were AWESOME and the volunteers were great. The only problem was the race organizers did not always give us the right information. They kind of expected that everyone has already done that event in the past, which I had not. But this was my first HIM and it was a great course for me.