So I had no idea what to do here. I had never actually swam this far before consecutively. I went out strong and found that the water was so cold I was short of breath. Seeded myself way at the back cause I am usually a pretty slow swimmer but I seemed to be passing everyone and I really was not too tired when I came out after my first loop. I was so excited about swimming and being in a race that I forgot to check my watch to see what my first lap split was. oh well. decided to keep on going. did notice about half way through the second loop that when I tried to switch breathing sides to sight a bit to the side that I was so use to looking the one direction that I got almost motion sick when I tried to switch. decided to get into a groove of 5 strokes and one stroke sighting and that worked great. I really swam much better than I thought. I was hoping for a 40 min swim as I can swim 2:00/100 for what seems like forever and even in my sprint races, that is about as fast as I get, but when I came out of the water and saw 33:XX I was pumped! Saw D and my Dad and they said hat I was way ahead of what I thought and I told them I knew... talked to them as I jogged up to transistion and moved on to get ready for the bike.

move even breathing to both sides to avoid the motion sickness.

I really was in no hurry at all. I had forgotten to put the calf sleeves on before the swim so that was a challenge gettign them on a wet leg. grabbed my honey stingers and my helmet and shades and off I went. So use to seeing 1:XX for T1's that this was kind of like a slug race for me.

go faster, put calf sleeves on first

Loop 1:
Came out of transistion and the only thought in my head was "this is not a sprint or OLY". I told myself do not take this first lap hard and do not even think about going hard up any of the hills.(again, I feel really undertrained...) Headed out on the road and noticed that my GPS watch was now dead... great. time to go based on feel alone which is what I normally do but I would have no idea where I was on the course which scared me somewhat. took it out nice and easy and had some really nice roads to just kind of spin it along a=with. was moving well and was passing a ton of people(mostly because this was their 4th race of the weekend and it was m 1st). made the turn and boom. hills. next 2 miles was straight up and I had never ever ever ever seen or ridden on anything like this before. welp, time to sit back and just spin for a while. people started to pass me and left and right and I just sat up and couldn't have really cared less.
We finally crested the hill and I clicked it up a few gears and soon found myself no longer able to pedal as fast as I needed to so it was a nice break. found out I am a much faster climber than descender in comparison to a lot of people as I don't care to ALMOST DIE! Made sure that every ten minutes I was drinking gatorade and every half our eating about 5-7 honey stinger chews and washing that down with water. felt more than satisfied and never really got hungry or thirsty the first loop.
After another set of climbing I almost got taken out by some random dogs that decided they did not like people riding past their house. kind of creepy but I managed as I have dogs that chase me out in the country on my runs for over a mile here in NW Ohio. I did however lose a bottle of nutrition as I hit a rather larger bump on a decent and I apologized to those who were behind me. another woops.
Finally saw the turn to go to the turn around which was actually right back at the transition and saw D and Dad and they cheered and D ran over to the water station to grab my empties from me. Told her I felt great and that I was going to be slower than I had thought as it was now 1:50 and I had thought 1:35 for the first loop. I grabbed new bottles of gatorade and filled up the front bottle of water again and new packs of honey stingers. and off I went.

Loop 2(The "what did I decide to do" lap)
My goal the whole time was that I had said that if I got done with the first loop and felt fine that I could push harder on the second loop. my decision was to work harder on the climbs and just try to spin a constant speed up them all. And I did. I killed the hills on the second loop and used the downhills for more rest that I had the first loop. I passed a lot of the people who had passed me the first loop and a lot of comments were made that went something like "Can I hook a tether to your bike?" or "where did you come from" and that made me feel good. I encouraged and tried to talk to a lot of the people I saw.
Saw Joe(BooTri) but did not know it was him. he was pointing out some of the bumpy road and I thanked him as I road past and up a hill. Felt great the second loop and thought that it was going to turn out to be a good run until about 1.5 miles left in the bike and I was doing the last steep climb. felt a twinge in my quad and instantly knew that I was starting to cramp. Crap! I had not been taking in enough calories and had not really thought about salt at all. I knew I was drinking enough though. luckily the rest of the bike was downhill so I took it really easy and got back to T2 where I could address the issue while not going 30MPH down a hill. got back and negative split by 10 min for the second loop so I was happy about that.

nutrition plan. gotta work on it.

No splits for this... tok my time though as I figured i needed salt so D ran and got me some crackers from her purse. chatted with them a bit and prolonged the inevitable slow jog out of transistion.

I knew my run would not be good as soon as I walked out of transisition. yes I walked out of transistion... I was relaly afraid of cramping and having to walk the whole thing so I wanted to wait to start jogging until I got some more calories and water in me. mostly walked uphills and jogged downhills and flats the first few miles being an extremely good customer at all the aid stations I could find. also ate pretzels as much as I could and then also drank infinite at the aid stations. at the 5k mark is where I felt like I could consistently start running without too much walking except the steep stuff by by then my first 5k was already around 40 minutes. hopes of a good time were gone! met up with a kid from Xavier on the way back and we chatted and jogged and walked the steep stuff. he wanted to just break 7 hours and said it was going to be close so I decided to help him out and run with him and encourage him. I am pretty sure that this also slowed me down as he would say he needed to stop and walk and I would be telling him we need to at least get a little further. This also might seem like an excuse to go slower but I really think that I could have gone faster if I had ditched him but I had made a friend and I didn't want him to not get his goal, especially after he told me his other two buddies that came with him had dropped out after the bike that morning.
I hit the porta john at back at transistion before we started the next loop and looked at my watch. 1:12... yep real slow. but that meant my second 5k was a 32 which I took as a good sign. I started to feel really good and tried to push John(my running buddy from Xavier) as much as I could. he needed to hit sub 10's in order to make the 7 hour time he wanted. I had started about 20 minutes after him so I wasn't too worried about that but a 6:30 would be nice. we jogged and walked the steep stuff and hit the 5k mark on the way back out and I looked and we were doing really well. we made our way back and told john I was going to leave him and pick it up, and he told me "not so fast there" and so we both dropped it down to about 7:30 a mile for the last 1.75 and "kicked" it in. ran the last 10k in about 1:01 so another negative split which was the goal so that was nice but slower than I wanted. Goal in LP is to go sub 4 as I have a big running background so I think I can do that with a better nutrition plan and a better (friendlier) course.

ditch john

came through the finisher shoot and got sprayed by the hose. ate a sloppy joe and some pasta salad and figured with a 6:36 I wasn't gonna get an award(wrong) and went and packed everything up and left for the 4 hour drive home.
The next few days were not bad at all. no soreness in the legs, a bit of soreness in the shoulder and arms but was out working out the very next day. going all out on the training until LP now.


nutrition and undertraining