I made it through my second race of the season yesterday and I had no stomach issues. That was a big step up considering the big mess up last week.
Yesterday morning, I showed up in Guntersville around 6:15 to make sure everything was ready for the race. I racked my bike and got my transition area set up for a fast transition and then stood around and talked to some friends for a while while I waited for the race to start.
At about 10 minutes until 8 AM, we all headed out on the dock towards the swim start and jumped in. We went out in waves of 50, so it wasn't overly crowded and easy for me to get open water to swim in without bumping into other swimmers. I went out swimming smooth and made sure I kept moving forward. I didn't want to push too hard because I knew I had a long day ahead, but I wanted to put up a good swim split. I had a little issue with water in my right goggle, so I did the swim with my right eye closed the whole time. It was annoying, but I didn't let it keep me from having a good swim. I did stop a few times to try to adjust the goggles, but as soon as I put my head back in the water, it filled right back up. It also made it hard to see the buoys so I had to stop to take my goggles off to see where I was going. Because there were not very many swimmers in my wave and there were only about 10 ahead of me, it was hard to just follow someone else.
The swim seemed like it was taking longer than it should have. I planned to swim the entire course in about 25 minutes and I looked at my watch as I passed one of the buoys and it said I had been swimming 27 minutes, and I still had a good ways to go. I thought that I was doing something wrong because I didn't feel bad and my time is not where I wanted it to be. I finally got out of the water in 32 minutes. I was so disappointed at the time because in Knoxville my time was 35 minutes and I was sick the whole time. This was the same distance and I felt good. It wasn't until after the race that I found out that one of the buoys had drifted and caused the course to be 500-600 meters longer than it was supposed to be. The 1500 meter swim course was over 2000 meters and my time was the 27th fastest swim of the day out of around 200 extremely fit athletes. The course wound up being longer than a half Ironman swim course.
When I got out of the water, Eric Doehrman yelled at me to sit down. I thought I was in trouble because all I knew at the time was that it took me 32 minutes to do the course, but he just wanted to help me get my wet suit off. He pulled it off, I headed to my bike put on my helmet and was off on the bike course.
The bike course was uneventful. Eric and I had agreed that I should keep my power between 170-180 Watts to save my legs for the run course. I was passed by several folks, but I didn't care, I just stuck to my game plan. I wound up averaging 177 Watts, which was only about 17.6 mph, but the course was pretty hilly too. I could have done it better, but I stuck to the plan and was happy with myself. I did have a little mishap at the end when I tried to get off the bike and I didn't quite get my leg over, which caused me to drop the bike. I was able to stay on my feet, but I left a little bruise on my thigh.
I had a pretty good transition to the run, putting on my socks, shoes and hat and taking off. I felt much better this week on the run than I did in Knoxville. I took off and watched my GPS, waiting to get a little water in at the first aid station. I kept pushing to keep running through the rolling hills until I made it the 1 mile to the aid station. I made it to the 1 mile mark and there was no aid station in sight and a mental disappointment hit me, so I walked for a few seconds. I started back up running until the aid station, but something had hit me that I need to work on in preparation for Ironman because I walked way more on the run course than I should have.
The run course was tough. It was hot and very hilly. About 2 miles was on a gravel road that was up and down pretty steep hills where it was difficult to get my footing. I wasn't the only person walking, especially up and down those hills. To add insult to injury, on the way back, we passed by the same aid stations that were there when we went out and they were out of water. They only had power aid, which isn't very good for pouring on your head when you are hot. I was hoping to run this 10K at an average pace of 9 min/mile, but the walking caused me to have a page of 10:54 min/mile. There were allot of run times that were slower than mine, but I see that I really need to work on running off the bike.
Overall, I came in 87th place, which is the first time that I have finished a race in the top half. I have never thought of myself as fast, just someone who goes out to do triathlons, but I am starting to see speed coming every day. I still have 6 months until Ironman Florida and I have some great lessons learned from this race that I will carry over. My goal was to do this in under 3 hours, but I did it in 3:07:51. If it weren't for the extra 8 minutes I spent on the swim, I would have barely made it.
I don't have any races planned for the next few months, just hard training until late July. I am going to run the 10K at the Cotton Row next weekend and then I am going to do the 1 mile kids run with Hannah.
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