Not a great picture. I took it of myself at the finish line area the day before the race. It was about 105 degrees on Saturday afternoon.
After an up and down night of sleep, I woke up for good at about 4:30. Prepared all of my nutrition for the day, took a shower, took my shark salt, got dressed and headed to transition. When I walked outside the hotel, lightning was all around. You couldn't hear thunder but you could see the flashes, especially to the west which was the direction of the bike course. As the light came up, the race officials assured everyone the race would continue but they were monitoring conditions.
My rack in the transition area at about 6am.
The first wave went off on time. I was to enter the water and my wave was to start at 7:26. There were almost 100 people in my wave. I was one of the first to enter the water. I tried to get a spot up front but on the edge. The start line was about 15 yards wide and a line of people moved in ahead of me. The kicking and punching started as we sat there treading water in our bright pink swim caps. When the horn went off, it was hand to hand or foot to head combat. People were crawling on me, grabbing my legs or punching me in the head. Really not all that unusual for an open water start. However, this continued for almost the entire mile in the water. I had a break at about the 700 or 800 meter mark but I started to catch people in the wave ahead of me (green caps). About a hundred meters later a few people in the wave behind me (orange caps) passed me. The green caps littered the way until the finish. There were a few people from my wave who pretty much stayed right with me the whole way. When we reached the exit point, there were volunteers helping everyone out of the water. Your equilibrium gets a little messed up when your in the water that long. Two guys helped me out and then a third grabbed my arm. He was trying to help but I lost my balance and hit the aggregate concrete path. Got a pretty nasty cut on my left thumb and sprained my right thumb. Not what I needed going into the bike. My thumb was bleeding pretty bad and I kept sucking the blood off of it. I don't know what the rules are about that and I didn't want to be stopped. When I got to transition, I took a shark salt, put my socks and bike shoes on and took off. The officials announced the Olympic bike portion of the race had been shortened to a 20km due to weather. Bummer but I decided to put the hammer down since I only had to cover half the distance. I made sure to get at least one of the two bottles of Accelerade in my system and took both of the Honey Stingers I taped to my bike. There were about 5 people in my age group that passed me on the bike route. They were really fast so I must have had a really good swim. I wasn't going to catch them. I felt fast but didn't know how fast. I was trying to break 20mph. I took my feet out of my bike shoes on bridge but that was a little too early and cost me some time. I got back to my rack in transition, took another shark salt and put my running shoes on. I felt the rain drops as I pulled off my helmet. I took off out of transition as quick as possible. I wanted to maintain a good steady pace on the run. My first two miles were a 9:30 and then a 9:18. A little slow but I usually get faster as I warm up. The rain was coming down hard and I immediately regret the decision to wear socks and not put on my KSwiss shoes that drain. Miserable feeling. Then it happened. There was a climb that lasted a little over a mile including about 250 feet of elevation gain. The first hill was at least a half mile up the hill. There was a water station there and you head downhill which is a relief until you realize you have to climb the hill on the way back. I turned the corner and another very steep hill awaited. Another downhill followed by one more steep uphill. There were a bunch of people getting crushed and walking at this point. I never walked but it was intense. I mercifully reached the turn around and headed back.
It might be hard to make out how high that cliff is but it was the turn around point.
I was soaking wet and starting to feel the fatigue set in. I wasn't drinking much at the water stations. I think this was a mistake. The heat and humidity was draining me slowly. I managed like 9:50 miles in the hills. It was good to get off that hill and back to the flats. We had to zig zag about 50 feet up to the Herring Street bridge. I think that was almost the last straw. Once I ran across the bridge and hit the flat trail back to the suspension bridge my body started telling me to stop doing this. I gave in once for about 15 seconds and told myself to stop being a wuss and run. Mile 5 was my worst mile and I covered the distance in about 10:15. Once I could see the Hilton in the distance and the suspension bridge, I started to feel like it was going to be ok and picked things up a little bit. My last mile was about 9:50. There was one last climb from the trail to the suspension bridge. Lots of people were on the sides of the bridge cheering for everyone. It was a really nice feeling. I crossed the line and almost collapsed. My legs were jello and I had a hard time standing up. One of the volunteers stayed with me for a few minutes and brought me a bottle of water. I stood by the fence where a misting fan was and just tried to get my senses back. That was the most brutal run in any race I have run in the past two years. I finshed 17 of 28 in my age group and 189 of 332 overall. My times were:
Swim: 33:59
T1: 3:38 (long run from the river to transition)
Bike: 38:07 (19.5mph)
T2: 1:44
Run: 1:00:36 (9:46/mile)
Overall: 2:18:06
If I were to have done the second half of the bike and maintained the same pace, my time would have been about 2 hours 56 minutes. My target going in was 2 hours 49 minutes. The difference was the run. I did PR an Olympic by an extrapolated time of 19 minutes. Nice progress in 10 months. Went back to the hotel and slept for about 4 hours. I called Jeff to let him know how things went. He is going to change up my training some. I think we going to do more core work at the gym for the next few weeks. Jeff always says running comes from your core. I can't imagine how bad this would have been if I had not put in the trail work with Joe and Rich at Lake Grapevine. The conditions were very difficult so I was pleased with the performance but definitely feel like I left some time out there. My wife and I took the SeaDoos out on the Brazos this morning and I took the day off from training. I don't think I want to do a race in August and will start looking for something in early September.
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