Ironman 70.3 Florida - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

I deliberately started slow. I hadn't been in the water since before my crash (2 weeks), didn't have a warm up, and didn't want to blow up and hyperventilate in the first few hundred yards. Felt like I got a nice start, settled in, and stroked smoothly through the crowd. Then, all of a sudden, I was on my own. When I finally looked up, I had drifted to the right of the buoys quite a bit. It was odd because I usually pull left (left-handed) and on clockwise swims generally keep right on the buoy line. Took me a bit to get back in close to the buoys and I was back in the crowd. The waves overtaking me weren't so bad, except one guy who just kept hitting me. How hard is it to move over a bit? I grabbed his foot pretty good to let him know I didn't appreciate it. I had wanted to wear a wetsuit just to get a better time, but in retrospect, I do better without...just slower. The swim was okay. I never found a good pair of feet to draft off of; I had to dodge a few breast strokers; and I never seemed to be able to break out of the leisurely pace I began with. I expected between 45:00 and 50:00, but would much preferred to see it closer to 45:00 than 50:00. Oh well.

Pick up the pace. My crabby crampy calves were talking to me at the end, but I don't think a faster pace would've mattered, and it was manageable (no actual crampage). I've gotten pretty good at pulling (no kicking).

Nearly 8 minutes probably isn't even close to my actual transition time. I bet it was more like 10+ minutes...but part of my bike time is the long run out of transition. These transitions were like nightmares: you run and run and run and there's no end. In fact, I decided not to run. I just moseyed on over to my bike, dried off my feet, got dressed, unracked my bike, and followed another forever-long path to get out and on the road.

Maybe hustle some more.

First: the official bike time definitely includes part of transition in and out because my bike computer had me at 3:05:xx, which would be my fastest bike split for 56 miles. But, it would be the same for everyone, so it doesn't really matter.

I do not know what the deal was for the first 30 miles of this ride. I was NOT feeling the love. My legs had no power and every time we turned into the wind (which wasn't all that bad) or went uphill (again, not that bad), I could hardly keep pedaling. I would lose all momentum and it would take me forever to get back up to speed. I just knew the ride was going to end up taking forever andI wasn't sure I could keep going. It was cloudy and sticky and about 20+ miles in, it started to rain. Just in places, but enough for me to be cautious on the turns. I figured the road would be slick. By mile 30 I needed to refill my water bottle. Instead of doing the hand up and continuing on my way, I stopped to refill. It was good to get off the saddle, even if for only 30 seconds. When I got back in the race, I had finally found my legs. At that point, I had only managed about 17-17.5mph. The final 26 miles, I was doing 18-20+mph, and if you use my "actual" time, that brought me back up to an average of 18+mph. If I had been able to ride like that the entire time, I probably would have come in right at 3 hours, if not just under.

Oh well.

Not sure why I wasn't in the game for this. I'm glad that I finally felt normal and the ride wasn't a total blow up.

Ha! I know this transition wasn't this fast. Again with the long, long run in and the long, long run out. I'm sorry that it affected my bike time, but what can you do? And the race info even said that transition was counted in the bike time.

Actually run.

Wow! Sun came out just in time for my run. It turned the day into something of a sauna. Not as hot as at Longhorn last year, but very, very sticky. I started out okay, but really faded after the first mile. The first loop was tough. I felt better on the second loop, but had to go into survival mode for the last loop. I didn't want to walk, so I switched my watch from 10min run/1min walk to 3min run/1min walk. That seemed to work pretty well, along with walking the aid stations. I was just slow. But I did run at a decent clip for the last .1 and had the finish line to myself and got to break the tape.

Maybe just push myself harder. I need to suck it up, I think.

Hop on the bus back to the camp site (hubby rode my bike back) and walked to the tent. I skipped the post-race food. Pizza didn't appeal.


My head? Maybe nutrition? I had about 3/4 a bottle of Endurox on the bike (small yogurt for breakfast before the race), maybe the equivalent of 2 gels on the bike, and only water and Gatorade on the run (too hot for anything else). I don't think that was it, though. I didn't feel like I was bonking or shaky or anything like that. More just listless.


I liked this race. I think I should be able to go a lot faster on this course with similar weather conditions. Post-race food seemed thin, but I didn't really "investigate," I guess.