Black Diamond HIM or 1/2 iron at 1/2 a century

[roadie gal]

I signed up for a HIM length race because doing a half iron length race when you're half a century sounded cool. Well...

I did the Black Diamond Tri in Enumclaw, Washington. Enumclaw is a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, about 40 miles east of Seattle. The race starts and finishes in a small state park just outside of town.

We took our brand new RV up there on it's maiden voyage: me, my SO and the 2 pooches. We got there on Friday to sign in, leave the bike, and get body marked. I'm glad I did that because Saturday, race day, was pretty frantic for the folks who had to do it all that morning.

The transition area was very nicely set up. The rows were marked with your race number, so there was no fighting for the best spots. There was also plenty of room to set up your bike and all of the transition stuff, with room to sit down, too.

The swim was set up in a diamond shape in a small lake. It was a 2 loop swim. There were only 2 waves: the men and the women, with the teams going with the women. So the start was a bit of a washing machine. I felt pretty good, so I just kept powering along. After a while I noticed that I was passing a few men, not to mention a few women, too. That's pretty unusual for me. I guess living and training at 6500 feet and racing at sea level makes a big difference in the swim. I came out of the water at 37 minutes and a few second. That's over 4 minutes faster than any training swim I'd done.

The transition took about 5 minutes. But part of that was the long run with the bike to get out of transition and to the bike mount area. The set up of the transitions and bike/run starts could have been very confusing. But there were a TON of very helpful, cheery volunteers that made it easy.

The bike course is a figure 8 where you do the top loop twice. There aren't any really long or tough hills, but there are lots of rollers. I had 3 1/2 hours worth of sports drink calories on my bike (1 aerobottle and 2 regular bottles) but I ended up drinking it all in about 2 1/2 hours. On the course they had water and electrolyte water but no calories. So I pretty much bonked at about mile 45. I ended up gutting it out to the end and came in at a fair 3:10.

My bike to run transition went pretty quickly. My stomach doesn't tolerate a lot of stuff, so I carry my sports drink with me. I have a 4 bottle Amphipod belt that I wear. I look like I'm wearing the Bat Belt, but it works for me. I had 2 hours worth of calories with me for the run.

The run is an out-and-back course on the road for 12 miles and then a very nice 1+ mile loop around the park on well packed trails. There were water and electrolyte water stations about every mile. Once again, they didn't have anything with calories. The weather was a perfect mid 70's temp with occasional puffy clouds. So I never got too hot. Surprisingly, as bad as I felt at the end of the bike, I felt good on the run... for the first 8 miles. I was going right along at my pace, being passed by some people and passing others. I ran up and down the hills. But at mile 8 I hit the wall. I walked a bit and sucked down some sports drink and grabbed some water. But it only helped a little. So the last 5 miles I shuffled and walked and managed to do some running. I did run most of the trail run at the end and put a small burst on in the finish shoot. But I felt pretty gone when it was done. My run time: 2:11

My SO met me at the end, with the dogs, and walked me around a bit. Then she went to check on the official times. When she got back to me she had a funny look on her face. Now, my goal had been first to finish and then to try to make it under 7 hours. But as she came up to me she told me that we should stay for the medal results.

Not only had I done it in under 7, I had come in at 6:05 and was FIRST in my age group (7 women). OMG!! I still can't believe it. Overall, I was #150/226.

Now my plans are to nurse my tweaked right quad and to not run, bike or swim for a few weeks. Maybe next year though... if I trained a bit harder maybe I could break 6...