First of all we missed the first loop. We apparently made a left when we got to the bottom of Mt. Horeb instead of going right so we hit the first aid station at mile 14 and my fiance and I looked at each other wondering why it came so fast. We looked at the map and finally figured it out. So from the get go we knew we were going to be short on the mileage. I was ok though the first 3 legs of it. It was incredibly difficult but I was getting through it. The heat seemed to just get crazy. There seemed to be a river coming off me especially on the climbs. I was drinking plenty of water. I started taking enduralites every half hour but when it got hotter I changed to every 20 minutes and I'm pretty sure that helped a lot. I also had Perpetuem for the first couple legs and switched to Sustained Energy for the rest of the ride. I think that seemed to work out pretty well too.
The first rest stop was crazy cause, they literally had no water. A branch fell on the power line and they had no power to get the water pumped up from the well. So I had to fill my bottles with Gatorade which I'm not a big fan of. It worked ok and luckily there was a family by the side of the road a few miles into the second leg with thier hose out so I refilled my water bottles with H2O.
So, like I said the first 3 legs went ok. I muscled my way through the hills and enjoyed hanging on for dear life on the downhills. About halfway through the 4th leg I started to feel a little strain on the inside of my knee on my right leg. I've felt this before and it's usually just kind of gone away. It was getting a little worse up until we got to the last rest stop. (Rest stop K I believe). I just felt DONE. My fiance said she's never seen that look in my eye. I think my body was just overheated. She got me a cold rag and I put it over my head and it made me feel a LOT better. I tried to eat some stuff and ate a little more as I started to cool down. I stood up and my knee had stiffened up and felt awful. It didn't feel like I pulled or ripped anything cause I never really felt a sudden sharp pain that would indicate that. I think it was just really strained. I figured I'd get back on the bike and hopefully I'd loosen it up again when we started going. Get the blood flowing through it again. We started off and immediately it didn't feel good. We started up the Pinnacle hill and the pain went away while we were climbing that mother of a hill but when we got to the top it just started throbbing. I had to pretty much just pedal with my left leg. There was about a 5 mile strech after the Pinnacle hill where it was pretty flat with some rollers and I was hoping the leg would feel better but when I put any pressure on my right leg it was very painful. By this time my fiance was WAY ahead of me so she turned around to see if I was ok. I told her what was going on and we both agreed, I was done. I didn't want to risk serious injury. Like I said I don't think I ripped anything. I'm thinking/hoping I just overworked and strained it. It's feeling better and I've tried running about a hundred yards and it felt fine with that so that's good. I guess I'll just see when I get back on the bike later this week. This morning it's feeling quite a bit better as well. So, when I stopped, I was at 96 miles miles. I'm ok with that. 96 on that Hellishly Hilly course is fine. Everybody said there were crazy hills on that course but, I had no concept of what those hills would actually be like. I feel like that was almost as hard or harder than marathons I've run.
So, to keep going with this long posting. I was thinking about WHY it was so hard for me when other people at the last rest stop were smiling and joking around. My body felt completely drained. It occured to me that when going up these hills I saw other people spinning up them and didn't seem like they were straining with EVERY pedal stroke, for me was like a full on leg press. I think the cranks on our tri-bikes were making us work twice as hard as most people out there. Most people seemed to have the 3 rings in the front and possibly more rings on the back. I was wondering how other peoples rpm's were so much faster than mine going up the hills. That HAS to be why. I feel like we probably should have taken our road bikes with the 3 rings in front (I wish I knew all the technical terms but I don't). But I guess it was good experience on the actual bikes we'll be doing the Ironman on . It makes me feel a little better about having to drop out that the gears I had may have been working my legs a little too hard.
I suppose I need to focus on strengthening my legs so this doesn't happen in Sept.

So, I have to say this was crazy hard. I've NEVER experienced hills like that. It was hard to get any kind of satisfaction after completing a killer hill cause you knew another one was looming just a few miles ahead. It WAS a spectacular day and the scenery was stunning.

I was SAG'd back to the start. My leg was D-O-N-E. My fiance finished the race and met me at the car. All she said was "Take my bike!" Ha! Yeah, she got through the last killer hill. She's a trooper.


I feel like it was the gear selection on my bike. I've been training since Feb on the bike and my speed has increased immensly. I'm also not accustomed to those kinds of hills being from the Chicago area.


Do people really do this race for fun? I mean, I'm trainig for IMMOO so it was something I needed to do for training purposes but that wasn't really fun. It was both Mentally and Physically exhausting (as I know the IM is). One of the hardest things I've ever done.