post-race journal

Pre-Race
swim: this is the portion of the race that I felt least prepared for. I gave lip service to my swim training. Maybe managing a swim per week during the last three weeks before the race. Never stepped foot into a pool or other facility where I had any way to measure time and distance

bike: I devoted the bulk of my training time, energy and cash to bicycling. Upgraded from my somewhat ancient road bike that is too big for me to a brand new triathlon/time trials bike made of carbon fiber and lightweight components. Learned a fair amount about numb nuts and how to try and avoid it. Spent hours on the road and on the trainer spinning my pedals.

run: I felt like I had devoted a good amount of time and energy to my run training, but based upon race results and looking back on my training I think I lacked appropriate focus. My run results were the biggest letdown of my day when held up against my goals.

Race

Swim: 2nd ever competitive swim event. "deep water" start, meaning you are in water 6 feet deep at the starting line. Knowing little to nothing about how to seed myself I chose a spot about midway between the two starting buoys and swam to the front of the pack to wait for the cannon. After the cannon went off I worked my way through the initial scrum of thrashing arms and kicking legs and settled into my swim. I sighted every 20-40 seconds for the buoys and didn't veer off course much for the first three legs of the course. I noticed that my tri-shorts were ballooning in the back and acting like a brake. Le sigh. I should have done some swim workouts in my race gear.... durh. Somewhere during the third leg some of the faster swimmers (or those with more endurance) began to filter slowly past me. After the third turn I got a bit off course as I couldn't see the next buoy in the glare from the morning sun. Probably burned 20 seconds or so with the extra leg I added to my course there. After correcting course and turning that corner I continued swimming my way to the last buoy and turned for the beach. Just as I got to the archway at the edge of the wet sand I heard Todd's name called as he passed over the timing mat ahead of me. So I felt pretty good about my swim being that close to Todd (swimming is Todd's strong suit and I probably wouldn't have been nearly as close if he hadn't been hit by a car the previous day while doing his last pre-race bicycle ride). 1:56/100m

Swim-Bike Transition:
I chose to swim without my tri-top on despite the pain-in-the-ass factor of trying to get a tight top on over a wet torso. This was a mistake. Next triathlon I either use a one-piece triathlon suit or I wear my shirt during the swim. I pounded 4-6 shots of Hammer gel from my transition kit. Threw on the rest of my gear and still took over five minutes to do my transition. Granted there were a few hundred meters of running from the beach to the bikes, but I need to work on my swim-bike transition and see if i cannot get the time down closer to 3 minutes.

Bike:
Massive awesome bike ride. Having done plenty of rides on the course prior to the race was incredibly helpful. Having a strategy (keep the cadence high) and sticking to it was also incredibly helpful. I had two equipment problems during the race. First one was when the sponge blew out of the top of my sippy-cup water bottle. I went back and picked it up, but later someone pointed out that I didn't need to do that because it happened at an aid station (there was a referee right there so I was trying to avoid getting a penalty). The second problem was when I hit a pothole on the final turn in from Queen K highway to the Mana Lani Resort. I ejected a water bottle and some other gear from my equipment behind my seat. Again I turned back and picked up the stuff I could see to avoid getting a penalty. Also my sippycup style water bottle in the handlebars had a failure of its attachment system. Next time I add the rubber bands to the velcro for extra attachment power. I spent the last mile or two of the bike ride holding things together with one hand and cruised into the transition area. Probably lost ten to fifteen spots to the two equipment issues. But still it was an awesome ride and I was able to average better than 20mph under windy and hot conditions. Drank tons of water during the ride. Failed to keep to my nutrition schedule (every 30 minutes eat some hammer gel). I think the failure to keep to my nutrition schedule contributed to being pretty beat during the run.

Bike-Run Transition:
Not terribly bad. Not terribly good. I almost wiped out coming into the bike rack area due to running too fast in bicycling shoes while pushing my bike (they make you dismount before you get into the transition area). Narrowly missed falling over onto some very expensive bicycles. Apparently the volunteers will put all your gear into your bag for you after you leave so I burned a little time stuffing my bike gear into my transition bag. Not a big deal, but good to know for future Ironman events. I chugged about four or five doses of Hammer Gel after putting on my shoes. Probably not the best idea.

Run:
Ouch! The run was long. The run was hot. I started out feeling pretty good, but soon after the first little uphill I started to feel a bit barfy. Not nauseous. More like the massive dose of sugar gel and water that I imbibed after putting on my shoes wanted to come right back up and decorate the pavement. The key is probably to stay on your nutrition schedule during the bike so that you can just keep that schedule flowing through your run instead of trying to play catchup at the tail end of a long hard day. I took advantage of almost every aid station for water, gatorade, sponges or orange slices. I quickly abandoned one of my two flasks of Hammer Gel (probably around the 3 mile aid station). I should have tossed the other one too as all it was doing was bouncing around on my lower back. Didn't really notice it until around mile 10 and threw it out at the 11 mile aid station. No problems with knee pain or ileo-tibial band tightness. Around 11 miles my soas muscle on the right side began to hurt. From mile 11 to mile 12 the ache progressed to sharp pain. Between mile 12 and 13 the pain got pretty darn intense. During this whole progression I also began to get all emotional, bordering on tears. There wasn't much left in the tank. I was running on fumes. Every little distraction helps during this time. A volunteer cheering as I crossed the road, a random spectator with cheerleader pompoms and a boombox, coming upon the guy with number 846 (I wore 847). Anything to distract myself from the agony. And finally the finish line. I took off my running cap so the finish line photographer would get a good shot of my mohawk. Crossed the line and yeehaw!!! I was done. Nowhere near my goal of 7-7:30 per mile, but hey. This was the longest run of my life done after one of the longer bike rides of my life and the longest swim of my life. 8:51/mile. Next time I hope to have that under 8:00/mile.

I'm impatient for the search driven results to get posted to the ironman703hawaii.com site. I want to dig in the numbers a bit deeper than you can on the ironman.com site.