Saturday was mandatory bike check-in. Meaning, for those of you who don't know, that you pick up your packet with your race numbers, timing chip, schwag bag, and walk through the expo of retailers. You also have to leave your bike in transition over night. From what I can deduce, its only because it creates less chaos the morning of.
At this race, everyone had a specific place in transition that was reserved for them by their race
number. This made the whole process less congestive and more fluid. Nice.
My parents and I browsed the booths, didn't buy anything and went to listen to the athlete meeting. In athlete meetings they go over everything you need to know for race day, course maps, starting times, aid station placements, cut-off times, even who is going to be supplying food after the race. It is totally comprehensive. We sit and listen until the end and since I have already checked in, we leave so my parents can go grab some lunch (I had my daily PB&J). We also check into the hotel.
From 1-3pm on saturday, they were allowing athletes to enter the water and test it out. Make
sure your wetsuit was fitting right and you could sight the bouys that lined the course. After lunch, we went back to the race site to try this out. I had yet to swim in open water with my wetsuit since I bought it. The race this summer had its swim cancelled due to high surf. So, it would be a true test of its abilities. I swam about 500 meters and got out. Good test. Worked great.
We went back to the hotel, rested and went out to dinner at PF Changs. I ordered the Crispy Honey Chicken. Bedtime.
When I consciously know I have to get up early, I always tend to wake up every hour thinking its almost time to get up. My first wake-up was 11pm, then 11:10pm, then 12:20, 1, 3, and finally I get up at 3:45 for my morning. As many of you know, I like to be one of the first people to transition on race day.Transition opened at 4:45, i was there.
Pre-dawn is an understatement. It was still night at 4:45am. Thank Red Rock (the race promoter) for lights and music that early on. And speaking of music, I have never heard Black Eyed Peas more in my life than I did yesterday. Was that song on repeat? Anyway, I get my transition area set-up, its now 5:15. FCA Endurance had a small church service at 5:50. I go for a short jog, stretch, drills before the service. Make sure everything is set. "What else do I need?" "Sunglasses!" I almost forget them on my head. Could have been a horrible mistake. What was I doing with sunglasses on my head at 5 in the morning?
Church Service ends at 6:08 and transition closes at 6:15. I have to get my wetsuit out before it closes. One mroe mental check over my stuff adn I am good to go. Waiting for my parents to show up, riding their bikes from the hotel. National Anthem plays. Still not here. First wave begins and they just show up. Freaking me out. I was about to run to the car and put my backpack away and hope I make it back. They showed up in time.
I squeeze myself into my wetsuit as we watch the first waves of racers start their swim. Swim cap on. I get so interested in watching, that I am apparently not listening to the announcer, who I have hard time hearing anyway over the background music and through a swim cap.
My mom says. "Hey, Oranges are getting in the water!" Sure enough, my wave was headed into the water. I didn't think we were that far along yet. I run over, get in and then wait the 4 minutes between waves. I set myself up on the left side of the pack about midway through.
The horn goes off. It takes probably a good 10-15 seconds to get going because I am waiting for those in front of me to start moving and not kick me in the dome. I get into a rythmn, swim over a couple people, and bump out into some open water. The main pack is in a line to the left of me and I couldn't be happier staying where I was. I didn't want to get into that mess. So far so good, I am cruising, feeling good albeit some tightness in my shoulders.
I was nervous and hesitant after the previous days swim in the lake. The bouys were way down there. And open water swimming always makes me a little uneasy. It is a TOTALLY different experience from swimming in a pool. No walls, no bottom, can't see your hand in front of your face, you have to sight your line where you are going, tons of people around you, kicking, hitting, waves, etc. But, my goal was to cruise down to the turn around. I wasn't going to stop, I wasn't going to let anyone stop my momentum. I wanted to have a good first half and then turn on the after burners for the way home. We were swimming east and the sun was right in our faces. I could only see the bouys once they were right next to me. As long as that line of people was still there to the left of me, I was going to keep swimming with them. I hti the turn around and felt great. I had begun to pass people from two and three waves ahead of me by this point. That means I had made up 4-8 minutes on some people. I was hauling. I felt great. I didn't know my pace or time, but knew I was doing something I had never done before, having a strong swim.
About 150-200m from the end, I was swimming next to another guy. He splashed me and I got some water in teh mouth and with it came air. I got this tight spot in my chest from teh air that I needed to burp. But, couldn't because of my quickened breathing and horizontal position. I didn't want to stop to get it out because I was almost done. It was kind of uncomfortable for the last section. But I made it. Swim time: 34:11.5 97th fastest swim out of 615.
I ran out and into transition as I was taking my wetsuit off. Never done this before. First race with a wetsuit. Not any huge problems. Kind of a struggle to get it off over my timing chip. Sunglasses on, helmet on, shoes on, on my bike and off I go.
Bike course was 3 laps of 18.5 miles roughly. My goal was to finish in under 2hrs 30min. That would mean averaging under 50 minutes per lap. I was on the bike about 7:32am. I finish my first lap. approx. 48minutes. Perfect thats right where I wanted to be. I plan on hammering the second lap and then spinning more and letting my legs recover for my third lap. Well, I start to feel it on the small hills that dot the course. My legs are getting more tired. I have taken in a couple PowerGels, water and Xood power drink. Only a dozen or two people have passed me and stayed out front. Second lap: approx. 50min. Still right there, but if I did what I had wanted this lap was going to be faster than my first.
I didn't want to try and make up for lost time and hammer the third lap, only to sacrifice good legs for the run. So I kept steady and made sure my pedaling cadence was higher to keep lactic acid from building up. About halfway through the third lap, I knew I needed some food that was solid. There was an aid station about two miles from the finish of the lap that had powerbar products. I grabbed a chocolate power bar from the wonderful volunteers. Thanks volunteers! And ate that, definately helped. Almost done. Slower. Third lap: approx 57 min. Total bike time: 2:35:20.3. 134th fastest bike split. It was about 10 minutes slower than I thought I was capable of. Had I kept the pace of my first lap, I would have had the 21st fastest lap. Onto the run.
When I got to transition and hopped off my bike, i could tell my legs were going to give me a problem. They felt heavy and tired. More so than I had expected. The run was 2 long loops around the lake. About 6.5miles each loop. Mostly flat and almost all on concrete. 6 aid stations each loop. I had my GPS watch with me to make sure I was sticking to the pace I wanted. I started out at just over 7min/mile pace. A little slower but I thought it would take a couple miles to run the tiredness out of my legs and then I could get going faster. Instead my miles kept getting slower. From 7:04 at the begining to 8:20s at the end of the first loop. By the second loop I was just running between aid stations. Jog to the aid station. Walk through it, make sure I was getting all the fluids and nutrition I needed. Gatorade, water, coke, oranges, pretzels. And then start off jogging again. About 3 miles into the second lap I saw a kid (25yrs old) who had passed me on the first lap. Talked as he passed and then must have blown up on the second lap. I patted him on the back and said let's keep going. He caught up to me and for the next 2.5 miles we ran together, talking and walking through aid stations. By the last mile and a half, he had more in his legs than I did and took off, which was totally fine. I was just glad to be 1.5 miles from finishing my first half-ironman. Total run time: 1:49:15.2. Which averages over 8min/mile.
I finish. Finishers medal draped across my neck. Food table calling my name. John Foster, the leader of the FCA Endurance team in phoenix was helping take off timing chips. He congratulated me and told me they were cheering for me throughout the race. Which I heard and wanted to say thank you to them for that. It was nice to hear your name called out in the middle of the crowd. Food table. Animal crackers, oranges. Water.
The kid who I ran with says congratulations. (number 461 below)
It was hot. I didn't do as good as hoped. I know I could have gone at least 20 minutes faster. It was a lack of training and knowledge about this race distance. But, if you know anything about me, I will be back and will hammer the next race.
Thanks to the volunteers, FCA Endurance and Tyler for keeping my pace up. Thanks to my parents and friends who always show enthusiasm for my crazy sporting ventures.
Check out this video. I don't know who is in it or who shot it, but I think it is a good representation of the race.
