It was COLD. Actually the air was colder than the water. The air temp was between 38 and 50 depending on which weather report you listened to. This was my first mass start and in all honesty I've had more washing machine action with some of the HIM wave starts I've done.

I got into a rhythm and just kept on trucking. If I caught someone's feet for a bit, fine. If I did not, that was okay too.

Whoever was responsible for ordering the current to help the swim needs fired. None. No current. Hell, it might have even been the end of the outgoing tide. That would explain a lot. That's what the RD was saying at the award's dinner, that we were in either the zero tide at all time or at the tail end of the outgoing tide where there was still a bit of an uphill swim for us.

About 1/3 of the way through some boat went by and we got the wave action off that. Wow, that was interesting. Threw someone onto me it was so bad.

By the second turn buoy I was just tired of swimming. Not tired but tired of swimming. I wanted out. My calves started twinging and the right one cramped up hard for a minute. I kicked a little and it went away. I'd stop and it would be back after a while.

Not much. I liked my performance for this one. Yeah I could be faster but I'm not for now.

Run up the dock, to the strippers, under the fresh water sprinklers, down the sidewalk, across the street and into T1. Grab your bag and head to the changing tent. My 15 minute transitions were not odd in the least. We were all putting on a bunch of clothing. Arm warmers, leg warmers, tights, cold gear shirts, gloves, shoe covers. It was COOOLLLLDDDD. I did a full change out, obviously, as did just about everyone else. I don't remember seeing anyone in just tri suit for the first half of the bike.

Not much. It takes a bit of time to get dressed and unhinge the car :)

Holy Headwind, Batman. 70 miles of steady 10 knot headwind or quartering headwind. By the time I turned South and had that as a tailwind I didn't care anymore.

Wonderful ride. There was only a few spots of actually bad road that felt like cobblestone. The vast majority of the roads were older asphalt with tar stripes and it was easy enough to avoid the bumpity bump.

Right before I got onto I40 titeloops comes up to me and says, "Your disc is HUMMING!" Apparently he recognized my bike from BT. That made me smile.

Riding on the interstate on a bike is an interesting experience. Cars doing 80ish. At least they weren't buttheads and trying to knock over the cones. This year they had us in the left lane. Guess it's a pain in the butt to have to regulate all the on/off ramps with bike traffic and only one travel lane. Makes sense. Niiiicccceee pavement there.

Turned onto 421 and started into the back woods portion. This is one of the most pleasant rides I've ever done (except for said headwind) Lots of stuff to watch and see. Such as the 15 foot tall metal chicken guarding the gate at one house. HUH? Yup, that's a chicken :)

I avoided the aid stations, I try to do these self sustaining and for the most part do a good job. I had six bottles of HEED, Sustained Energy and Perpeteum mixed for about 250-300 calories each. Last year I had them mixed for 350 each and I ended up drinking water half way through as I couldn't stomach it any more. I've found I can do 250 basically all day. That means I need to supplement with bars so I brought along a handful of Cliff's Bars and one apple granola type bar made for this. That was GOOD! I'm going to have to try to remember where I got it or what it was called. I got it on a whim and wanted to try it out.

Considering I lost a lot of situational awareness about 4 or 5 miles into the run I think my two bars total was too few. I need to eat one about every 1.5 hours. I'll work on that for IMFL next year.

Special needs. I'm not positive but I think we played two or three hands of bridge while we were stopped there. I took off everything but bike jersey (with my bars) tri shorts, socks and toe covers. Thinking back I believe I should have taken the socks off but it wasn't a show stopper that I didn't.

Did I mention headwind? I'm used to doing 18.5-19 MPH when I'm just tooling around and I was along the 17.5 average when I stopped at SN. When I went on again it was down to 16.5. Oops. But it was a fun couple hands of bridge. Peed there so I wasn't dehydrating.

Ever onward. Damn, will the headwind NEVER stop? I was singing, I told myself jokes. Oddly enough I'd heard them all before. I was counting animals I passed. I was naming roads. Saw a sign "Fayetteville 64" and I laughed "Heyyy, I'm in NC" Then I realized I WAS in NC. Oh well.

Volunteers were outstanding. I'm serious. They were worth their weight in gold.

Played dosie-do with a girl for a bit and we laughed at that "My turn"

Played it with a guy on a silver felt tri bike that I'd never seen before. I saw the S.A. flag on his down tube and talked with him a bit. He had the bike for about 8 years. Weld marks so it was an AL frame. Thought that was interesting.

Dude was off in the treeline and he had a Felt B12 leaning against the tree as he was peeing so I yelled, "NICE BIKE"

Hit the 100 mile mark on the way back down. I laughed. First time I've done 100 miles on a bike ride.

There were these tractor trailers with HUGE triangular pieces blocking the road as we came up to the bridge back to the battleship. Had traffic all kinds of screwy. forced us onto the shoulder or riding literally on the white line to keep going.

The Marquis de Sade designed this course. At the end of the bike ride and at the end of the run there is the bridge from hell. It's about a 1/2 mile long and rises a good 100-150' in the middle. it hurts going up and going down.

I'm not thrilled with the speed of the ride but having no idea how any of this would shake out and still wanting to finish I'm okay with my bike.

I need to eat a bit more, especially towards the end. Need bars and probably four of them for the whole ride.

Not much to say. I changed to an Underarmour Heat Gear short sleeved shirt and my running shoes.

Nothing.

Having never run over 18 miles this was an experience. Weird it didn't hurt more than it did. I know I need more electrolytes than most people so I took a Salt Stick capsule every hour. Never cramped. I got twinges, mostly in my right hamstring but never cramped.

Somewhere around mile 4 I lost it. I honestly could have gone to sleep right there on the side of the road. I knew that was BS and I've been more out of it with less at stake so I knew I could keep going. Walk when I couldn't run. Run when I could. I started in on the double cups of HEED when I started feeling woozy. That snapped me out of it and I came back about mile 6.

As a side note, I did the HIM here last year. My run time was 3:03 for the 13.1 of the HIM. My first loop of the same 13.1 for this year was run at 2:53. I was flat out ecstatic!

I kept the run when I can, walk when I can't up and walked up and down the four hills of this course. If you've done it you know what I'm talking about. If you have not there are two hump back bridges, one is 1/2 mile and really steep and the other is about 1 mile and a more gradual slope. Both hurt. Then going into town there is this downhill drop for a block and coming out of town on the other side is this vertical cliff, or so it seems, for a block. Homeboy is walking those both up and down. After a while down hurts as much or more than up.

HEED, Pepsi, Coke, Broth (Ummmm, broth), kept me going. I forgot to pick up my Salt Stick pills for the second half of the run so thank goodness they had broth at almost all the aid stations.

What wall? I was still running in the 10 minute miles near mile 18. I was running and walking about 1:1 ratio by then but I never really got pissed or felt emotional about it all.

I have no idea when I decided I could do it or what the heck got into me but about mile 24 I started running for real. About mile 25 I was seeing 9 minute miles on my Garmin and I was wondering who the heck was making my legs move so fast. I didn't hurt. I didn't cramp. I was FLYING. Did that all the way to the finish line.

Not much. I now know I can push a little harder. The question is how badly do I want to hurt the next day.

I ended up with the beginning stages of hypothermia. I was shivering uncontrollably and just could NOT get warm. I found a space blanket someone stuffed into the arm of a trash can and lined my jacket with that. One of the volunteers brought me hot chocolate and that helped considerably.


The unknown. This was the first bike ride over 100 miles and my first run over 18 miles. Also, I must be a bit different than a lot of people here. I don't much care about making myself hurt too badly for this. A little sore is fine but not able to walk afterwords is for the birds.


I look forward to doing this one again after 2011's season.