Not sure what happened here. I made good time at the half way point (29:00)

I think I was too conservative on the way back. The water seemed choppy coming back.

Push hard through the entire distance

I was a bit dizzy..I think the was because I had lost an earplug during the swim.

Pick bigger wetsuit strippers. The ladies who helped me had a tough time getting my suit off

I felt I had trained well for this leg of the event. My main concern was getting a flat but luckily that didn't happen. However the strangest thing did happen. (warning TMI below)

I settled into a rhythm and headed out to Shea. Had to pee so I grabbed a water bottle at the next aid station, so I could wash. Then I sped up to have enough momentum so I could coast while relieving myself, man did I have to go....basically ended up filling my shoe, yuck. Surprisingly, the water bottle worked well in washing up and now feeling relieved, I pressed on. After turning at Shea, I had to go again. I just repeated the process above. This happened four more times throughout the ride for a total of SIX times!!! WTF? The last IM I did I only had to go once, and never during the past five 1/2 IMs did I ever had to go. Needless to say I became an expert at it. I just made sure to hydrate and take in plenty of sodium.
I didn't hit any serious wind until the final leg back into town.

Get a bike fit, my left knee and hamstring were nagging me throughout the ride.

First time I ever tried taking my feet out of my shoes and dismounting on the fly. It went great and made me wonder why I didn't try this sooner.

Not really sure. I went a llittle harder than planned

After getting through T2, my legs felt pretty good. My plan was to start out with an 8:30 pace and try to hold on....I started out pretty good but the it seemed that with every little hill, my pace would slow down. After the half way point, all I wanted to do was walk. I fought this urge by focussing only on the next mile and allowing myself a short 10 sec walk though the aid station. My plan of going under 4 hours in the marathon was falling apart so my new focus was to try and finish with a total time of under 11 hours. This meant I couldn't walk, and I would have to speed up a little on the flats to make up for the couple of hills that were on the course. I experimented with increasing my stride by bringing my leg further up my inseam, this seemed to work but took a toll on the bottom of my feet as well as my quads. With 6 miles to go my legs were hurting, but I knew if I stopped I wouldn't be able to start back up so I just kept running. With two miles to go, I saw my coach and he encouraged me to push hard for the last stretch.



RUN SPLIT 1: 2.5 mi 2.5 mi (20:34) 8:13/mi
RUN SPLIT 2: 11.5 mi 9 mi (1:22:19) 9:08/mi
RUN SPLIT 3: 20 mi 8.5 mi (1:29:12) 10:29/mi
RUN SPLIT 4: 26.2 mi 6.2 mi (1:03:37) 10:15/mi
TOTAL RUN 26.2 mi (4:15:42) 9:45/mi 368

Maybe hold back a bit on the bike.

Racing at 188lbs


Sub 11! Yes! However, once I finished I couldn't put one foot in front of the other. In fact, I still can't lift my own leg up to get in my car. My quads are dead. But man was it worth it! Being able to shut out the pain during the run and hang tough....This was a big mental toughness breakthrough for me!