This was the roughest swim I've ever been involved with. I was about 200 yards behind the start line with the cannon went off. I couldn't find any clear water and ended up with a split lip pretty quickly. After about 100 yards I removed my arm warmers and tried to swim, but there was no space. The visiblity was really bad and people just kept running into me. After getting slugged across the face and loosing my goggles, I decdied that I jsut needed to swim breast stroke for the rest of the time. The first buoy I saw was the turnaround buoy and I was able to stop the buoys on the way back. Regardless, the traffic never lightened up, which made for a pretty miserable swim.

Swim, at least a little bit, before the race. My shoulder and neck have been bothering me and the pool is a hassle, so I generally avoid it. At some point, I need to start enjoying swimming again, but for now, I still feel like too many years of my life were spent in chlorine.

Hoped out of the water and got the wet suit striped by two very nice guys. Ran into the change tent and it was chaos. Was able to dry off, warm up and get my long sleeve shirt on fairly quickly. Also helped a woman get her tri top on. Tri tops pver cold wet bodies do not work very well. Once I got out of the tent, Pam was watching my bike rack so she helped grab my biek and got me on my way.

Nothing.

This was a really good bike for me. Much, much, much, much better than IMKY. First loop was pretty much a massive peloton. No matter what you did, you couldn't get out of a pack of riders. There was a decent head wind going up the beeline highway and then a wicked nice wind heading down. I was avergaing 23-24 mph on the way back into Tempe. Wicked sweet. For the second loop, same headwind on the way up, but luck me, the winds changed once I reach the top of the bee line and I had headwind heading down as well. Hit special needs at about the 60 mile mark and spent quite a while eating, changing and drinking. Started to try to drink Gatorade after special needs (my Vitalyte bottles were all gone), but the Gatorade didn't really agree with me, so I switched to water and GUs. Was able to pick up the pace a little on the third loop, the only problem was I got a nasty side stich around Mile 90, figured I probably needed more salt. Came into T2 with the stich.

Ride more. The year was pretty shot training wise, so I was happy to finish the bike strong (and with no flats thanks to the super-special tire Shaun put on this summer).

Met up with Shaun outside of the shange tent. Smooth change once in the tent. Realized that I was swollen and my watch and roadID were cutting off my circulation, so I loosened the watch and took off the road ID. Took some endurolytes and got some ice water and went out on the run.


Nothing

The first half of the run went remarkably well. Was able to actually run most of it. Drinking Gatorade watered down with water and chicken broth. No GUs or hard food. Actually ran past special needs on the second loop, but deceided to go back and get my ibuprofen. Bad idea. Taking 4 ibuprofen on pretty much an empty stomach killed me. Ended up walkign the second half of the second loop. At the start of my third loop, I met a woman who was starting her second loop. She had just finished chemo for breast cancer 6 weeks before and needed to maintain a 14 min/mile pace to finish, so I decided to stcik with her to help her get through her second lap. Finiahed the third lap, said good bye and ran into the finish line. Saw Shaun at the corner and then wussed out on doing the Moose Ears as I finished.

Run more. Once again abbreviated training doesn't bode well for IMs.

Went through the finish area, got a slice of pizza, changed, then more pizza and chicken broth. Then Shaun and I headed back to the finish line to watch the last two hours worth of finishers come in.


Training. Weight.