the day before we had been to the water and everyone was complaining about jellyfish stings. this threw me into a world of panic. on our honeymoon in october i met the acquaintence of several very unhospitable jellies and left there with welts that then scabbed over. they hurt. there was no way on earth i could swim in those conditions. i knew the ones in the choptank were not going to be anywhere near as bad, but the descriptions that people were giving me where not comforting. "it's like a pin prick." yes, well, i would not swim in a sea of pins to prick me, so that is not helpful. after realizing the jelly issue, i would have driven home that night if not for ryan. no joke. would have gone the hell home. i'm so so glad i didn't. it took every ounce of me to get in that water, but it ended up begin a great day.
i had heard from Mindy on the mentor forum that vaseline can help prevent jelly fish stings so i was lubed up. i know that vaseline isn't good for wetsuits, but did not care. i was doing what i had to to make it through that race. wetsuit can be replaced.
i was getting in the water when my goggle strap started popping out. great. hands are full of vaseline and i can't fix it. one of the great volunteers there fixed it for me.
get in the water put on my goggles, and i can't see my hand in front of my face. damn vaseline is on my goggles. ugh. it wasn't coming off in the water, so i ran back over to volunteers that were standing in the water near the start. i asked him, "can i borrow your shirt to wipe my goggles on?" he says, "why of course" and rips his shirt off and hands it to me. very nice guy, cute young guy with a six pack that has been DYING for someone to ask to borrow his shirt. i told him i didn't actually need him to take it off. "oh". he puts it back on and i just use the edge to wipe my goggle. better, but still not great. what am i going to do? in a last second attempt, i found that licking the hell out of them worked. that must have looked cool.
start horn blows and i just started swimming. i made a concerted effort to stay easy. this is my first HIM and i just want to make it through the day happy. got my first jellyfish sting and could not believe what a non-event it was. these locals got NOTHING on those caribbean jellyfish. in fact, i got stung a LOT, but it was so not a big deal. nothing like pin pricks or whatever else people describe them as. for anyone that thinks these are pin pricks i say go get stung by one of those caribbeans boys. yikes.
so anyway, the swim. sighting was terrible! i zigzagged all over the damn place. got my goggles kicked off once and i had to float to put them back on. had to stop again to readjust them twice because they were leaking. time for knew goggles. I felt calm, cool, and collected the whole time. new, clearer goggles would have helped a lot.

new goggles, and don't get vaseline on them. oh yeh, i also need to work on breathing to the right. i train almost exclusively bi laterally, but for some reason i am not super comfortable breathing soley to the right which would have been helpful since that is the side the buoys were on.

didn't try to race out. just wanted to be sure i had everything i needed.

i was more cautious because this was my first HIM and i had new nutrition so i wasn't used to what i was grabbing. in the future, i will hustle this up.

holy wind batman!!!
my goal here was to not kill my hip and to have enough hip left to do the run. i never pushed it. i did not use the aero position a lot at all. when i felt i was getting tired i eased up the gearing. i thanked the volunteers. i stopped to pee. i had a merry old time. oh, i had passed a woman i had met at the hotel on the bike, then i passed her again when i was out of the portajohn. when i passed her i said, "i had to stop to pee." she says, "you've got to learn to pee on the bike." now, i know this thing occurs all the time, but i am not winning this race. i will take the 2 minutes extra to pee in a john everytime. think of the time i could save in life if i just wet myself instead of making the annoying trip to the bathroom, but i don't. why? because it's disgusting. if one year i miss placing or a kona slot by two minutes, then i will consider peeing on the bike the next year, but until then, no way in hell.

ryan caught up with me at mile 44. it was so nice to see him. i was so sad when he rode away. it was at the part of the bike when i was ready to be done and i just wanted to stay with him. don't leave me! obviously, he needed to race his race, but i missed him anyway. saw shelly and scott a few times. it was so nice to have someone cheer just for your. yay me! my computer wasn't working so i wasn't super sure what my time was and was SHOCKED when i finished in 3:05. I was expecting something closer to 3:30. shocked shocked shocked....and so so happy. for nutrition on the bike i went through my water bottle which had 2 packets of perpetuem mixed in it. i went through two aerobottles of water, and a hammer bar. also took 2 electrolyte pills every hour. felt good getting off the bike.


nothing. i am really excited about what i can do on the bike if i have a fully functioning hip, can train high mileage on it, and can stay in aero. i'm gonna rock this junk. the nutrition was also clutch. I will do this again in the future. i am a hammer girl.

felt fine.

i could pick up some time if i learned to do the shoes on the bike trick. run barefoot, etc. maybe next season.

i was super super super happy with this run. i wasn't sure what to expect from the hip since i haven't bricked after any of my longer rides. this was the best possible run i could have hoped for. took my perpetuem flask with me and sipped on that. that had 1.5 packets in it. also took 2 electrolyte pills each hour. drank water at every stop.
it felt like i passed over a hundred people. all those jerk guys who blew past me on the bike within 6 inches even though there was 5 feet of open lane got my dust on the run. eat it. :) felt great. hot, but great. about 30 minutes into the run i saw a familiar butt ahead. could that be ryan? it was. i didn't want to sprint to catch him because i needed to stay even, but when i did i creaped up on him and slapped him in the butt. that was funny. thank god it was him! we stayed together for a few miles, but i was just feeling too good to not run my race. kept going and felt great the whole time. the only problem is that i did not wear socks and paid a heavy price. my feet are a mess. i have several large blisters on both feet. bad bad bad. but the run was great great great. this, amazingly, is a half marathon PR for me. awesome.

socks socks socks.

it was great because i was able to wrap around real quick and watch ryan finish and cheer for him. this was the second year i got to see him finish. so proud. he killed it 5:27. so so proud. i love that we can do this together.
we changed, got massages, and ate. it was a great day.


obviously the hip, but i go in for surgery today. yikes.


i'm going to jump on the soap box real quick....i saw more than one occurence of a racer being rude to a volunteer. one jerk guy pitched a fit because he couldn't take his bike out a certain exit after the race. what was wrong with the other two exits that they offered?! maybe they should just let you go out anywhere. this would make it nice and easy for me to just take your expensive as hell bike and leave you my overstock special as a gift. jerk. on the way out, i thanked the woman checking numbers. as i was walking away i heard her say to another volunteer that it was nice getting thanked "after all the grief she has gotten today". absolutely ridiculous. we wouldn't have a race without these people. be nice for the love of god.