Sometimes you need more room

Training

Swim: 49.7 miles
Bike: 1604.9 miles
Run: 848.5 miles
Spin: 432.5 miles
Yoga: 19 hours
Weights: 8.5 hours

PRs

5k – 22:16 (3/21/09) and 22:15 (5/16/09). previous 24:36 (7/4/08)
10k – 48:06 (2/28/09). previous 52:19 (3/8/08)
1/2 Marathon – 1:48:45 (2/15/2009) and 1:47:29 (10/25/2009) from 1:52:33 (2/16/06)
Ironman – 13:17:04 (11/29/2009). previous 14:34:55 (11/4/06)

(You can click on the swim, bike, and run headers to see the legs in Garmin Connect. I forgot to un-set the auto-pause feature so any stops along the way don’t show up.)

Swim – 1:00:23

Yikes! Either this course was short or I took a wrong turn because there’s nothing in my training that points to my swimming this fast without wearing myself out. The most plausible explanation is that the current was much stronger on the outside of course.

My goal was to come out of the water as if I had just done an easy warm-up which is exactly what happened. Every so often I would switch to breathing every 3rd and 5th stroke for a little while just to make sure I wasn’t overdoing it. I was able to draft off of a few people but not as much as I would have liked.

The conditions could not have been better – no waves with perfect visibility. We got really lucky because this is what it looked like 2 days prior.

Although I didn’t spot it, the Christ figure below was visible from the course. Several safety divers and rays were visible along the ocean bottom as well.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewsaunders/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

T1 – 14:45

Just like IM Florida, the transition tent was packed so I just sat down right off the path to the bikes. I took some extra time to make sure there was no sand left on my feet when I put on my (compression) socks. That, arm coolers and a ton of sunscreen made this a less than speedy transition. Still faster than my 20:00 IM Florida T1.

Bike – 6:37:59

The bike course consisted of three laps around the south end of the island that was marred only by the wall of wind as seen in the video below. It may look beautiful, but you get over it really quickly.

I was a bit apprehensive because I brought my 100mm Blackwell racing wheels, and while I wasn’t blown across the road at all, I’m sure I exerted a lot more effort than I would have had my wheels been shallower.

Everything was going as planned until the special needs stop where our bags weren’t organized effectively and there weren’t enough volunteers to help us get them. Unfortunately, I packed nutrition for the rest of the bike in my special needs bag and after 15 minutes or so I gave up the search and went to plan B – PowerBar Gels. The 350 calories per hour I had trained for went down to about 250 (for no better reason than my not liking PowerBar Gels). This turned out to be a huge mistake.

So I did my best to shake that off and not 15 minutes later a hear this horrible noise that turns out to be a flat on my rear wheel. I had never changed a flat tubular which turned out to be a bit more challenging than I had expected. At one point I even considered throwing in the towel. After about 20 minutes though I got the tire on and was back on the course.

At this point I had lost a good 30 minutes and faced a decision: a) push the rest of bike and hope for a great run or, b) stick with the race plan (and give up on the sub-12 attempt).

The rest of the bike was pretty uneventful. Even though I was pushing I rode cautiously since I had used my one spare tire. The crowd support in town was amazing. They cheered for everyone as if they were pros which totally made up for the monotony of the loops.

T2 – 2:32

This was a bit surprising. I’ve had slower sprint transition times and it was definitely an improvement over my 15:01 IM Florida T2. The only things I had in my bag were shoes, race belt (with GU), and hat.

Run – 5:21:25

I felt good and made my usual 2-mile pit stop but I could tell something was off. My stomach was in knots and I was starting to get a blister on my right foot. A quick stop in the medical tent took care of the latter but it took about 8 miles for my stomach to settle down – right around the time the calorie deficit came back to bite me. No more juice and 16 miles to go. I went from walking the mile markers to walking the aid stations to walking every mile marker and every aid station to walking every other cone – run 40 yards, walk 20.

Again, the crowd support (especially closer to town) was great and carried me for the last mile to the finish.