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 Swim
Comments: I put on my westuit up to my waist and met up with Greg (gregkl) to walk down the beach. The surf looked pretty rough but I was actually looling forward to swimming in it - the stuff great race stories are made of. As we got about halfway down to the start area we saw a guy running back to the T area and was mumbling something about a duathlon. Then word started spreading that the swim had been cancelled. Although I was bummed that it wouldn't be a true HIM, I knew that this change was in my favor due to my running background and because I suck as a swimmer. They told us to meet up the road for a short run leg to open the race. Got back to the T area and re-strategized. I usually don't race HIM and shorter races with socks on, but with no swim involved I decided I could spend the time putting socks on for a duathlon. Now I just had to figure out how hard to hit this short run leg. I knew I could bust out a hard 2 miler and still have plenty of time to recover on the bike. We waited around at the new start area for a while and I went for a short warmup run and pitstop in the woods before heading to the start line. As my wave (8) came up to bat I immediately got to the front line and staked my territory. At the gun I took the lead right away and held it for a few hundred yards. As we came to an uphill I decided I wasn't going to push the hill hard so I let a few guys pass me. At the turnaround I was in about 4th or 5th place for our wave and held that position into T1.  Transition 1
Comments: Due to the last minute change in format, I was still in triathlon mode of thinking for this T1, rather than a duathlon (my last duathlon was way back in the early spring). I was a little disorganized in what I was doing and probably wasted 10-15 seconds. I decided to put my bike shoes on at the rack, which I soon regretted because I didn't realize how long we had to run with the bike once we left the T area. What would you do differently?: Clip bike shoes on to pedals and run out of T barefoot.  Bike
Comments: As soon as I mounted the bike and began to pedal I could feel something was wicked wrong with my rear wheel. It would barely rotate. WTF!?! I dismounted and got behind the wheel and noticed the brakes where keeping the wheel from spinning. I flipped the quick release and straightened the wheel slightly and centered the brake pads. Got back on the bike and pedaled away. Did I mention that I'm a dumbass? There were tons of racers in front of me on the course. It seems like I spent the entire bike leg passing people. For some reason there were a lot of people riding 3 abreast and appeared clueless. Whenever I passed a male I would try to check out his wave number marked on his calf. I knew I was somewhere in the top five for my wave and wanted to know if I was moving up or not. I knew Alaina (jazzwithnumbers) was in wave 7 so I wanted to keep an eye out for her because I told her the previous week I was gonna trash talk her as I passed. At mile 10 or 15 I noticed a skinny kid on a P2C and determined that it was her and as I passed I said "nice bike...punk" and kept going. I think she got a kick out of it. Not much else to say about the bike. Passed hundreds of people and finally got some clear road during the last 10-15 miles. Didn't really pay attention to power output on the Ergomo - just hit it as hard as I thought was reasonably sane. I was treating this as more of a training day and was willing to gamble and implode on the last part of the run so that I could get a hard workout in before starting the IM WI taper in a couple weeks. As I got within a half mile of the T area I got out of my bike shoes and rested my feet on top of them. I'm usually barefooted when I do this and its a piece of cake, but the socks I had on kept getting caught in the velcro of my shoes and I had to peel them off in order to get my feet set properly on top of the shoes - lesson learned. I've seen a lot of talk on BT and ST about the amount of drafting that occurred in this race. Since they put older males in early waves I wasn't involved in any pelotons whatsoever. Other than passing tons of females and older racers from earlier waves, I was literally in no-mans land when it came to racing with other people of similar bike speed. So, I can claim that I drafted for a total of zero seconds during this race. What would you do differently?: Do a pre-race bike ride to check mechanicals. Transition 2
Comments: Dismounted and ran in socks to my bike. Started wondering if I was going to pick up any pebbles in my socks which would cause a problem in my running shoes. Made sure I wiped off my socks before putting my shoes on. Thought I had done OK, but had to take off my right shoe to remove a small pebble - dumbass move #2. What would you do differently?: Not be a dumbass.  Run
Comments: I wanted to use this race to try out my new Fuel Belt Helium 2 bottle liquid carrier to see if it would work well for IM. I filled 2, 10 oz bottles with low cal (200 cal) orange Infinit and used that in combo with water from aid stations. I dialed down the taste when I ordered it from Infinit and it sat well in my stomach, so I think I'll go with it at IM WI. I used the Ironman formulation (250 cal, lemon-lime, no protein) for the bike and it sat well also. My goal was to run 6:45s for this run so I fell short of that. Due to all of the travel the past 2 weeks my legs didn't have any zip to them and I just didn't have that extra gear for the run. But, I managed to keep a decent pace and didn't falter at all in the last 3 miles like I did at Liberty HIM earlier this season. I said hello to Dan (Marvarnett) and a couple of other BTers on the run. I came up on one racer that had an Endurance Nation top on and it looked like stinkyhelmet from BT, so as I came up behind him I asked "are you Jim?" and it turned out to be him so we exchanged hellos as I passed. I passed one guy a little later and he said "Birkie?" and it turned out to be Rocket Man so I said hello to him too. No idea how he recognized me. As I finished the first loop thru the Whirlpool corporate campus I took a right turn out of the driveway and saw a stretch of road that had a pretty decent little hill. I had driven the course with mbmoran2 on Friday but for some reason that hill didn't look right. I thought maybe I made a wrong turn. I yelled back to the racer in back of me if we were on course and she didn't know for sure. I stopped in my tracks and looked around and saw an official at the Whirlpool driveway. I yelled to ask if I was going in the right direction and he said yes so I turned and ran up the hill. That was a tough hill the second time around before heading to the finish stretch. I knew that I wasn't maintaining the pace that I really needed to pull off a good run split and started expecting another person from my wave to pass me. I didn't think I had enough zip to keep up with someone if they did pass me. Luckily I got to the final stretch of course through the sand dunes and realized there was no one in back of me to worry about so I finished up as strong as I could. Rick (rkreuser) has some good pics of me as I was finishing. What would you do differently?: Not much. I knew travel/meetings would leave me with less than fresh legs so I managed as best as I could. Post race
Warm down: No warm down. Used the little towel they gave us to wrap up some ice to put on the back of my neck. Started to hear the names of BTers called out as they finished. Alaina had a great finish time and we chatted a bit afterwards as she told me about her tire problems. She had an awesome race despite the flats. Now that I knew I had a Clearwater spot I needed to figure out how to pay for it. I forgot to go to the ATM machine to get cash prior to getting on the race shuttle. Dan offered to write a check for me so that took care of that problem - thanks Dan...even though you beat me by a measly 20 seconds :) What limited your ability to perform faster: 2 straight weeks of travel and meetings prior to race left my legs a little dead (sorry to sound like a broken record). Event comments: Despite the havoc created by the change to a duathlon, this was a nice race. I don't know if I would do it again or not. I think Racine is a little nicer. May have to check out the Door County HIM next year if I recover well after IM CDA. Staying at the Jazz house with a bunch of BTers was a blast. Even though I was continually harassed for being quiet (cough, Trixie, cough, Whizzzzz) I would do it again for sure. It was great meeting everyone. Last updated: 2008-04-01 12:00 AM
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Sunny
Overall Rank = 50/1889
Age Group = 45-49
Age Group Rank = 4/148
On July 18 I loaded up my vehicle and started a long trip to Knoxville, TN and Washington DC for 2 weeks of meetings. This was not a good recipe for fresh legs going into Steelhead. The only good thing about driving was that I had my bike with me set up in the hotel room in Knoxville for the first part of the trip. After Knoxville I drove up to Michigan for a couple of days of bike distance before flying out of South Bend, IN to DC on July 28.
I arrived in Benton Harbor late Thur night before the race and stayed at the Motel 6 in BH. The place was pretty crappy - killed a cockroach in the bathroom Fri morning before checking out and then headed to the race venue. Right after I parked mbmoran2 stopped at my vehicle and asked if I was Birkie - small world! We chatted a bit and got our swim stuff and headed to the beach for the BT swim. Met Trixie and rkreuser as we were walking to the beach. A bunch of us met for a swim and the water was a lot warmer than I expected - relatively smooth surf too.
Went to each lunch in town with mbmoran2 (Brian), greg, sgoehner et al. Brian gave me a quick tour of the run course before we headed to the venue and packet pickup. They offered body marking at the same time, so I went ahead and did that before going back to my vehicle to assemble my bike. I didn't do a test ride - big mistake, which I'll get back to later.
After checking in my bike I headed north to the house that Jazz and a bunch of other BTers had rented for the weekend. This was a great strategy for us because we got to relax and not be confined to a motel room and deal with restaurants, etc. My first real life exposure to Trixie, Whizzzzz, and Jazz with numbers was funny. I'm a pretty quiet guy and for some reason they just didn't let that fact go un-noticed :) It was a lot of fun meeting a bunch of BT peeps.
Woke up at 3:30 and had 2 Ensures. Left the house around 4 am to go to the shuttle parking lot just south of the venue. Got to my bike and put my gear down so that I could jump in the bathroom line. While sitting in line I started going over the contents of my gear bag in my head and had this very bad feeling that I had left my swim goggles on the front seat of my 4Runner. When I got back to my T spot I emptied the bag and found out that I had everything but the kitchen sink in my bag but NOT my goggles. I started weighing my options. One was to get on a shuttle and go back to get my goggles but I didn't want to take a chance on getting stuck in long lines on the return. I saw Rick (rkreuser) and asked him if he had any extra goggles in his bag. He didn't, but offered to ride his bike back to the parking lot to get mine (he wasn't racing, he was being a poser that day :) ). I didn't want to impose on him and didn't want to ride his bike back either. Scott (sgoehner) offered a spare pair of mask goggles (thanks!) but I had never used a mask type before and didn't want to try on race day. Then I thought I'd check out the vendor at the expo to see if they were open. They were open and they had my Kaiman Aquasphere goggles that I love so much. Plunked my money down and my blood pressure immediately started to go back down.
Next task was to get my gear laid out and fill my aero bottle. I started pumping my tires (I had let air out the day before since they were going to be sitting out in direct sun Fri afternoon and didn't want any popped tires). The valve adapter I put on my pump for my rear disk cover wasn't working well, so I brought the bike over to the technicians and we managed to get 'er filled. Re-racked the bike and made sure the rear wheel was spinning OK. But, when I looked down at the brake release I noticed that I had forgotten to close it. BUT, I didn't check the wheel after I did that, which I would regret later on. I do a pre-race spin before EVERY race to check mechanicals but for some reason opted not to do one for this race - I'm a dumbass.