The water was pretty choppy, with decent sized waves, but no white-caps. The first leg of the triangular course was going directly into the direction of the wind, so we got bashed around a bit. Also, it was quite shallow for a long time, which I think exaggerated the size of the waves.

I started at the front of the pack and right near the sighting buoy line. The traffic wasn't all that bad, but as I started to swim I felt like I couldn't breathe. I started to stop and do breaststroke both to sight and to give myself a chance to breathe some more. That didn't work, and soon I started to freak out a bit. I felt like I ABSOLUTELY HAD TO GET MY SUIT OFF! I was having an open water panic attack! I couldn't believe it! I was a competitive swimmer in high school and never in my life thought I would have a problem like this.

At the point of peak panic, I reached around and undid the velcro strap at the top of the zipper, which relieved some of the tightness around my chest. I also started to do backstroke, and as I look back on it I think that was the key to my eventually being able to get into a sustainable rythm and make some good progress. But, it wasn't really until I turned at the first yellow buoy that that happened.

On the far side of the triangle, I was making decent progress and staying pretty close to the sighting buoys, despite my left breathing and the sighting buoys being on the right. The wind kept blowing me in, though, but I was sighting pretty well and was able to keep coming back out to close to the sighting buoy line.

By the time I reached the second turning buoy, I was really moving well and felt good. I also knew that the wind would be helping me come in at that point. The only problem was that due to sun glare I couldn't see ANY of the sighting buoys on that leg. I was just doing the minnow thing and following all the other fish, hoping they were going in the right direction. I didn't have any problems, but I very well could have.

Despite not seeing the buoys, I had no trouble seeing the shoreline - which appeared much sooner than I expected. Pretty soon I started to see bottom, and it was time to get out. It felt very short, but at that time I couldn't put my finger on why. As mentioned above, it turned out the course was 400 yds or so short, which makes sense given my time was more than 2 min better than my in-pool best for 2112 yards. Given my slow and troubled start, there's no way I could have swum my best if the distance were to specs.

I'm not sure about how I could have avoided the panic attack. It might have helped to put my HR monitor band on in transition and not wear it during the swim (would have given my lungs more room to breathe). It could be that I pulled up my armsleeves so tight it effected the tightness of the chest portion of the suit.

I definitely need to get some goggles which will help me see in sunny conditions. My clear goggles just didn't cut it and I could have gotten majorly off course.

57/89 age group, 277/416 overall

When I first got out of the water I immediately reached for the velcro strap on the back of my wetsuit collar, thinking I should try to at pull down my suit to my waist as quickly as possible. I took me about 4 grabs before I finally got it open. And after that, I couldn't find the zipper strap - it had gotten stuck in the velcro, so that took another few grabs before I finally got it and unzipped. I was moving, albeit a bit slowly, the whole time I was doing this so in that aspect taking my suit off went well.

Once I got back to my transition area I hastily got my legs out of the suit, left it inside-out and started to put on my socks, shoes, etc. I actually sat down to do this as I needed to dry off my feet and get some dirt off them. I did take a small plastic tub which I had thought I would fill will some water to help get the sand off, but given I ran out of time to do more important things before the race (putting on sunscreen!) I didn't have time to do that. It wasn't a big deal though because walking through the grass pretty much got all the sand off.

Just after I got the suit off I realized that I had forgotten to turn on my garmin and put it in bike mode, so I turned it on real quick and let it get satellite reception, thinking that by the time I mounted the bike it would be ready. Luckily this was the case.

I didn't rush things too much, and pretty soon I was pushing my bike out of transition. The timing pads were quite a distance from the mount/dismount line, and looking back that probably added a good 90 seconds to my bike time. The walk to the line was across a dirt-and-gravel parking lot.

When I got to the line I took 20 seconds to put my Garmin in Bike mode (again something I should have done before the race), and was off. No mis-clips.



Turn on my Garmin and put it in bike mode before the race

I knew the first part of the bike course was a decent-sized hill, and I had planned not to take it very hard so that my heartrate could stabilize. Once I cleared that hill, I noticed that everyone else seemed to be doing the same thing, only by that time I was ready to get moving, so I started to pass a bunch of people. Shortly I was out of the state park and onto to northernmost road in the bike loop.

Like several other BT-ers, I had heard that the bike course for this race was 'large chain-ring rollers'. Well, I hit the first decent hill about 5 miles or so in, and I was quickly on the lowest gear on the large chain-ring with my MPH dropping fast. I decided to be a bit brave and go down to the small chain ring, and after doing so felt much better about the hill. I managed to keep my speed above 10mph, which for a decent sized hill is good for me.

As predicted by the weather forecast, the wind had started to pick up. It was blowing pretty consistently at 10mph or so, and when I turned south to bein the next side of the roughly square-shaped course I was heading directly into it. I tried to stay in the tuck longer - even when on a moderate hill, on this section of the course. Normally I find that I can crank up small hills faster when not in the tuck (I can utilize my quads more when outside of the tuck), but that's not the case with a headwind.

There were some pretty sizeable downhills, and I hit 30mph on a couple of them. A couple of the hills after them were borderline big, but I found I had the legs to stand up and pump a good portion of them. They weren't steep enough to exhaust me, thankfully, and I managed to keep up a decent speed up them.

At about 1/2 way through (end of the first loop), I was feeling pretty good. After my hellacious experience the previous Sunday (dehydration bonk - not fun...) I was taking pains to drink a lot of water and HEED, but mostly water. My stomach felt a bit sloshy, but not nauseous. I was also steadily eating the shot bloks and cliff bar chunks I had stuffed in my bento box (good thing I didnt' forget to do that before the race...). According to my Garmin, I had averaged 18.7mph on the first loop - which was well ahead of my target.

Coming back to that first big hill, I went to once again shift down to the small chain ring - and my luck ran out. The chain came off - sh--! I popped out of both clips and tried to get it back on by just reaching down and putting it back on the small ring, not dismounting the bike. Luckily I was able to do just that, so I only lost about 30 seconds to that. I figured that I had been a bit too cavalier with the strengh of my shifting motion, and a couple of times later in the race I did go back down to the small chain ring, but those times I shifted in a manner best described as 'gingerly'. No further issues - whew!

By the time I made that turn into the wind again, it had picked up quite a bit - 15-20mph with gusts. This definitely slowed me down, and I didn't want to push to keep up the speed of the previous loop thinking that to do so would be using energy best saved for the run. I made it though the rest of the 2nd loop without issue, but I definitely felt tired toward the end. My back was also a bit stiff, but not as bad as it had been a week earlier when I did my first ever 3 hour continuous ride (the race was my 2nd). I'm really glad I practiced that.

47/89 age group, 229/416 overall

I stopped my garmin at the mount/dismount line and saw that the final avg mph was 18.1 - which was exactly my target. However, I had to walk from the line all the way back across that parking lot to the timing pad - and, again, all told that probably added 90 seconds or so to my bike time. Once I got to my transition spot I switched shoes, put on my favorite running hat and my fuel belt and race belt pretty quickly, then was off.


Nothing

For me, coming out of T2 is always the point where I figure out if I have any legs for the run or not, and is often the point when if I'm going to have any leg cramps they will show up. This time I was lucky - I felt strong and had no cramps. I quickly prepared myself mentally for the first hill, which having run the course before I knew to be tough. I slowed down as necessary on this hill, doing my best to keep my heart rate in check (below 160 was my target). The hill went pretty well and by the time it flattened out I was starting to pick up my pace.

The run course was three loops, so I knew that I would have to hit that big hill again two more times. I figured I would take a Hammer Gel just before I hit the hill on the 2nd and 3rd laps, and in between just rely on water and Perpeteum (which I had in my fuel belt). This plan worked pretty well. I continued to feel strong at each point on the course, and I was able to recover well from the hills (there was one other somewhat-hard hill and two other smaller ones). On the second half of the first lap I got a bit of good luck - a port-a-pottie opened up JUST as I was approaching it, and there was no one in line. So I had a chance to take advantage of the facilities (something which I thought I would try to avoid) without really having to break my stride for long (it's good to be a guy :-). Doing so actually gave me a great mental boost - one less negative thing to have to think about over the remainder of the run.

On the first lap, I was taking the downhill portions pretty fast - 8:15/mi or so. On the latter two laps I was at 8:30-8:45 or so on those same stretches. I wasn't too concerned about it because I knew that all I had to do as average 9min overall to make my goal. By the time I got to the last lap and finished the initial hill (it felt better the third time than the second - a good sign...), I started to think about when I would start my final push. I didn't want to start too early and risk getting a cramp which would really mess up my time. I decided that as soon as I hit the 12 mile marker I would really pick it up. When I did, I was able to get back down to 8:05-8:15/mi and keep it, and then when I hit the last 1/2 mile (a wooded trail section which was a nice break from the otherwise shadeless course) I basically sprinted as hard as I could to the finish line, and did not have to slow down at all.


Take it a bit harder throughout. Having done one race at this distance should give me the confidence to do this next time around.

My initial thoughts after the race weren't 'awesome! I finished and didn't bonk on the run!', but rather 'where the hell is the race clock?'. It turned out they didn't have the race clock out for fear that the wind (which was a steady 25-30mph at that point with 40mph gusts) would knock it down. So, I would have to wait for about an hour before I knew my time. Ugh.

I wandered around for a bit recovering from the end sprint, downing a Coke which tasted bad because I'm not used to drinking regular coke anymore. My legs were pretty shot at that point (first time they had felt that way all day really), and I had trouble going up and down stairs for a time. After I had a big plate of pasta (boy that tasted good...) my legs felt a lot better.

I figured my time must have been around 5 hrs 35 or so minutes based on what I saw on my Garmin on the bike and run. I was very pleased to see that that was the case when I finally saw my time posted. I was thrilled to have come close to breaking 5h 30 min on my first HIM!




In terms of what I would do differently next time, I think there are two big things that would have helped me with my time.

First, more open water practice swims in my wetsuit. I really need to get serious about this if I'm going to be wearing that damn thing and want to avoid further panic attacks.

Second, I need to get a better bike. Even given the fact that I didn't train on my bike as much as a lot of people did I'm sure, the difference in my training and my power-output couldn't have been that far removed from the folks who beat me by 15-20 minutes on the bike. I'm convinced of that. I need to save up and get me some serious velo-hardware if I'm going to make it to the next level in this sport.




Well run race, except for the lack of a race clock.

The volunteers were all wonderful - thank you if you are reading this!