White Lake Half - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

I was by far the most worried about the swim - I was so afraid that once I got out there, I would be freaked out and not be able to do it. But all that worrying for nothing - the swim went great! White Lake is an awesome place to swim - you really can see all the way to the bottom of the lake. I amused myself during the swim by observing all the different things at the bottom of the lake - ladder, bricks, anchor, cans, bottles, clothing of some type, etc. We waded in and started at the end of the pier in about chest deep water. I started at the back and right in the middle. I took off easy as soon as they said go, and immediately fell in a decent rhythym. I have a problem in open water in the wetsuit getting in deep breaths, but I didn't let that freak me out, I just got used to taking more shallow breaths.I just swam my own race - 2 1/2 waves passed me (waves were starting 5 minutes apart), but I didn't have any really bad incidents with people passing me. Once, someone touched my foot and it tickled. I definitely got bumped a few times and stuff, but nothing bad. I stopped maybe 3 times during the swim for a few seconds each to get my bearings find the bouy, breath, choke, whatever I needed to do at the time. I definitely need to practice sighting, I swam probably an extra 100 yards at least just weaving back and forth in the water swimming crooked. This swim time was better than I expected

Not much, this was a great first wetsuit open water swim effort for me. More practice in the open water with the wet suit, more swim lessons to get faster, that's about it.

I took T1 slow and easy on purpose. It took me forever to get the wetsuit off, I definetely need practice with this. But after I got the wetsuit off, I put on sunscreen really well (except of course the one little spot that I forgot on my back that got burnt to a crisp), put on bike shorts, put on shoes and socks, helmet, camelback, and took off with the bike.

Not forget that spot of sunscreen!

The first 15 miles or so went awesome. I felt great, no wind, average speed around 18.5. Then the wind came. It was pretty much there the rest of the bike - no matter which way we turned, the wind always seemed to be blowing on us. My average speed just slipped and slipped and slipped. There was one section of road that was absolutely horrible. In the pre race meeting, he said it was a little rough, but that didn't feel a little rough to me. Maybe I was already grumpy because I was getting tired - but it felt bumpy as heck. This was the section on Over the Lyon road or something silly like that. Yuck. I stopped about 1 hour into the ride to tinkle out in the woods. I think maybe I didn't get both pair of shorts pulled back up exactly right because the girly parts started hurting not too long after that and kept on hurting the rest of the right, getting worse and worse. I think it was a mistake to wear bike shorts over the tri shorts - in the future I need to either get used to the tri shorts or make a complete change to bike shorts. I need to learn how to drink out of water bottles on the bike. The camelback was great and very convenient, but my biggest complaint about it is I can't monitor how much I am drinking and I didn't take in nearly enough on the bike. The last 10 miles or so of the bike I felt pretty bad - and by then I realized that I wasn't drinking enough and started trying to drink more at the end of the ride but it still took a while to get over the bad feeling. Even though the end of the ride was bad, the bike time was about what I had expected, so can't complain. 40 ounces Gatorade (problably 15 ounces of that was in the last 5 minutes on the bike) and about 3 packs sport beans.

Wear 1 pair of shorts, drink out of water bottles, ride, ride, ride.

Again took my time and got more sunscreen on (again missing the same spot), running shoes, hat and number belt on, took of the bike shorts and took off running.

Ok, I probably should have sped this one up a little.

Uggg. The first 5 miles or so were horrible. I felt really bad coming off the bike. I realized that I hadn't took in enough nutrition/hydration so just started taking in everything I could at the beginning of the run. Took 2 cups of Heed at each of the first 3 aid stations. After that I tried a little bit of everything - Heed, water, flat coke, chips, orange. My one piece of advice is don't try to eat a peanut butter cracker out on the run when you are dehydrated - it doesn't go down very easy. :) It was stuck in my mouth - I couldn't chew, I had nothing to wash it down with, it wasn't pretty. The cold towels were amazing on the run course! These were one of the things that saved me! I finally started feeling ok on the run course. Never felt good, but I felt decent. Just plodded along, some run, some walk, whatever I felt like at the time. Saw Spot and Ellasdad and TriNC out on the run course, that was cool. And talked to a few other people while I was walking. Very interesting. Run time was not as good as I was hoping for, but I survived it. I ran in the last 1/4 of a mile and was done just like that.

Work on nutrition/hydration

Hugged the hubby. He took a couple of post race pics - and commented that it was pretty cool that we took them right next to the porta potty :). Walked around a bit, got stuff from transition packed up and headed home.


Just training mostly. I skipped probably half of the HIM training plan workouts so I am just glad that I was able to finish! I am going to have to take myself to my special place before the IM training plan starts. I need a lot more time on the bike to get stronger and more comfortable on the bike. Learn how to drink from a water bottle on the bike. Work on nutrition/hydration. Practice more open water swims and sighting and swimming around other people. Lots of good lessons learned here that I can take with me. BUT, I am psyched that I have completed my first HIM!!


SetUp always puts on top notch events, this was no exception. The run aid stations were stellar. There wasn't much left in the way of post race food by the time I got done but that would be my only complaint.