My swim was fine...Nothing spectacular, but at elevation I wanted to make sure that I didn't get too crazy at anytime during the race. It never fails at Mountain Man; within the first buoy turn you'll always see about 20 guys on their backs who went out too hard not accounting for the thin air. I was not one of them...

...That doesn't mean that I didn't have to stop every once in a while, though. There were NO middle siting buoy(s). Literally NONE. That means that I was trying to site off of a tiny yellow buoy that was well over 1000m away. Of course, I was mostly siting off people who were ahead of me, but it's nice to know where you're at during a 1.2 mile swim.

Nothing...Siting went well, swam in a fairly straight line and avoided too much drama in the water. (Although I did did whacked in the eye pretty good.)

I'm pretty sure I PRed my swim time here which was a nice surprise since I took it easy. My watch showed 41:33...

No hurry here...I was very cold, "shivering bad" cold. I just wanted to make sure I had all of my nutrition since there weren't any aid stations on the bike. (Unless you count the one guy out there handing out bottles of water)

I suppose I could of had a little more urgency, but lets face it, it wouldn't have made a huge difference.

Coming out of that water I was COLD!! In fact, I was shivering almost to a point to where I thought I was going to have to stop pedaling. Muscles tensing up, no feeling in my limbs...It wasn't fun. Luckily that didn't last long. As soon as I got into the sunshine and started to dry off I felt great...at least temperature wise.

The course was very tough...Not only was I at altitude, but the roads were recently chip sealed and even on the older pavement it wasn't easy to find a super smooth spot to ride. Couple that with the fact that there is 2300 feet of climbing on this course and you've got a pretty tough bike leg. I had one goal for this ride: Don't burn out. I can at least say that I executed that plan perfectly. My fastest time on the bike course in training was 3:17 so I was hoping for a 3:15-3:20 split. I was happy to see that I came in at 3:02, 15 minutes faster than any other time I'd been out there.

I think just train harder and become faster...I would pass a lot of folks on the climbs who would then pass me again on the flats so I'm sure there's something I can do about that. I also had to pee the entire time I was on my bike...Hard to push super hard when your bladder hurts. And since there wasn't any porta-potties on the course, (literally not one) this was pretty big deal.

Not fast, but a little faster...I was so not looking forward to this run. Like before, I took my time to make sure I had everything I needed and took off on what would be a challenging 13.1 miles. Kim and Tom, who had already finished the OLY distance race, kept me company and offered me encouragement...

This is really where the whole race fell apart...Exceeded my expectation on both the swim and the bike just to have my run completely fall apart. I actually felt great at the beginning and maybe I pushed it a little too hard...I haven't been running consistently due to injury and I'm sure that didn't help, but leading up to my demise, my legs actually felt fine.

About 1.5 miles into the run, we had to climb the dreaded Lake Marshall hill. This road zig zags up a mountain climbing 453 feet within a mile and a half...The bad news, it hurt. The good news, I was finally able to find a semi private tree to pee on before coming back down.

After coming back down the hill I was still feeling good. I was well on my way to smash my goal of 6:00 and even though I started feeling a little woozy, I still felt that I could keep my pace and finish strong. Well, as we all know, feeling a little woozy 4 miles into a 13 mile run is never a good thing. I tried taking in some "heed" (put in quotations because it was more like water with a hint of Heed residue) at one of the aid stations, but it was not helping a bit. And while I was glad they had water every mile and a half, would it have killed them to have a little fruit available?!

Seeing the 6 mile marker only reminded me that I still had 7 miles to go...I was feeling quiet light headed at this point and I knew I had to do something to finish this race. It was at this point I decided that I'd do a 5:1 minute run/walk to get to the finish line.

(15 minutes later)

It was at this point I decided that I'd do a 3:1 run/walk.

Okay, let's try a 1:1 run/walk...Which eventually turned into a 1:2 and unfortunately it didn't stop slowing down there.

This was my race for about 5 miles until I reach that "2 miles left marker"...A cyclist was cruising by offering everybody words of encouragement and said to me, "90% of the pain is above your shoulders". It's weird how sometimes stupid sayings you'd expect to see on a Runner's World Meme can get you going again. I agreed that a majority of my angst was in my head and convinced myself that if I hadn't passed out yet I wasn't going to and ran the last 2 miles without stopping. A small victory in an other wise disappointing run...

Fuel better...I knew that there wasn't any support on this course, but thought that what I brought would be good enough. Never take for granted a well supported race!
Also, If I wouldn't have gone out so fast I may have gotten through it without having to walk...I do believe that that first walk break was my first step on the downward spiral.

2:21 on the run...almost 30 minutes slower than other other at that distance.

Feeling slightly defeated, I just packed up my stuff and waited for some friends to finish...There were a lot of familiar faces up there who asked about my race. Of course I had to go into the long winded explanation about why I wasn't finished a half hour ago. But considering everything that went wrong, I was ecstatic about everything that went right...70.3 miles is no easy task, especially that course, and I felt accomplished at the end of the day and excited for my next race.


1.) Nutrition
2.) Elevation
3.) Proper rest
4.) Training

In that order...


"The toughest race you'll ever love"

I vowed to do the half last year after finishing the OLY and I'm glad I did...Not sure if I'll ever do it again, (although I do think I should redeem myself for the poor performance) but I will most definitely be up here for the OLY at least. Still to this day, one of my favorite courses ever...