Barb’s Race Report: Insanity or Tenacity?
Wow! I knew I would finish, but it was tough! I went into this race knowing how under-trained I was and knowing I would have to play the mental game. A Half Ironman is a LONG race - a 1.2 mile swim, 56.2 mile bike ride and a 13.1 mile run and it wound up being my first race of the season. Due to unforeseen events I went into it without having done any bricks, having swum only 3,800 yards and ridden 556 miles on my bike since January and my longest run back in May was seven miles. So… I had a plan: swim easy, bike moderately, run what you can and take a big “Suck It Up” pill.
The Swim: I am a good swimmer. I’m very comfortable in the water; I don’t panic when I get water in my nose or accidentally breathe it into my mouth or when I get swatted or kicked by other swimmers. All of which happened during the race. My plan for the swim was just to swim, not hard, not racing, but like I was doing a 2,000 yard warm-up in a very long pool with no wall to turn on; and it went pretty much according to plan.
The aquabikers (swim and then ride only) started five minutes before the first women’s wave. There were two swim waves for the women, each with about 170 racers in it, separated by 5 minutes. Each wave has a particular swim cap color to identify them. The race starts in the water and I positioned myself in the middle, towards the front. The starts are always a little hairy, with so many bodies in the water. I just concentrated on relaxing into my own rhythm and worked on ignoring how constricting the high neck of my wetsuit feels and the swim went pretty well. I started passing swimmers from the wave in front of me about halfway down the course and passed a few Aquabikers before the turnaround. Sometimes it was hard to pass because I would come upon groups of five or six women, swimming abreast all at about the same pace. On the return I found myself swimming with a lot of women from the wave ahead of me. I wish the race organizers had separated the waves by ten minutes. A little open water would have been nice. I finished the swim with a time of 37:04, not as fast as last year, but not bad.
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The Bike: The plan was to ride a pretty good, sustainable pace keeping my heart rate between 165 and 170 which would not tire me out before the run. This did not go according to plan in part because my heart rate monitor has been finicky lately about getting speed pickup and I had to mount it in a hard to read spot. But mostly it was my legs, they felt like lead from the moment I got on the bike. I could not ride hard enough to get my heart rate up. At one point I was looking at yet another little bump in the road, thinking, “Oh crap, another one! Dig deep into your suitcase of courage.” Seriously, I used “suitcase of courage” in my mental talk!
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Some highlights: getting to the top of Chalk Hill, a climb I felt pretty good on, and thinking, “That’s it?”; hammering through the bottom of the descent of Chalk Hill, on through the left hand turn and up the short steep hill after. Wheeeee!!!!! Some annoyances: the Penske truck that turned left in front of me on the descent of Chalk Hill. I had plenty of time to brake; it just stunk that I had to. The really narrow chute that lasted about a quarter of a mile before the turn into T2. I had it in me to really hammer into the finish, but got trapped behind 4 other riders.
I ended up with a heart rate average of 156 for the ride and a high of 169. My time was 3:35, 2 minutes better than last year. I had been hoping for 3:20.
The Run: The run terrifies me, but I am determined that someday I am going to run the whole darn thing. Last year I think I walked 12.1 miles, maybe even more. This year I would estimate that I walked about half and jogged about half. Some highlights: actually jogging up and over one of the smaller hills, all the runners who complimented me every time I started running again, the volunteers with water hoses who sprayed me. Some annoyances: my hips hurt when I walked, my quads hurt when I ran and it was hard to tell which hurt more.
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I finished with a run time of 2:49 down from 3:07 last year. I had been hoping for a time of 2:40.
Overall Time: 7:09.37 an improvement of about 18 minutes from last year.
I am ambivalent about my results. I am happy that I improved, but much of that could be attributed to the better weather this year. I’m happy with my nutrition and the lack of stomach issues. I know I laid it all out on the course. I finished hard and strong. I am disappointed that I did not get in the training that I should have and didn’t make any of my goals. Due to unforeseen circumstances I had a five week block in late June/early July with essentially no training. But if I had been more diligent in April and May that would not have been such a big deal.
“Discipline is remembering what you really want.”
Next year will be better.
There are more race photos here.
