Still finding it hard to write. Post race blues? I dunno. Like I said, here's part 2.
Race morning
Got up around 3:30, had my usual pre-race breakfast of 1/3cp cream of rice topped with cinnamon and sugar, 1/2 of a boiled sweet potato and a glass of Gu brew. On race mornings, I like to get up early so I can relax and get ready with out stressing out too much. Off to transition.
The thing I liked about transition area for this race is that all your gear must be in your bag and nothing on the ground. I'm not a big fan of clutter at transition areas. Seriously, you're just missing the kitchen sink. Got numbered and headed down to the beach for a warm up.
If you weren't aware, this is a mass start swim so it get's pretty hectic. Due to a last min bathroom visit, I didn't get the best starting position. The cannon goes off at 7am and it was pure madness. I pretty much had to swim heads up for about 25m to avoid getting kicked in the face. After getting out of that, I made it to the outside to get ready for buoy one. So after reading a few reports from previous years about people getting their ass handed to them at buoy one I chose to go wide. Here's a vid of buoy one last year
Despite the mass start swim, I found a good rhythm and pushed on. Since I started back in the outside middle, I had passed a lot of people so it was hard to find a good draft for the entire segment. Since this was my first actual deep water open water swim, I found it pretty cool swimming in water so deep, you only see dark blue. I felt really good for the most part of the race until the ending until some guy decided to grab my leg and pull me back. Wtf, who does that? Let's just say, I didn't play nice. Ended up with a 38:04 overall. Little disappointed with my time. Guess I should have pushed a little harder since I didn't feel tired when I got out.
So the bike course covers a good part of the Kona Ironman world championship course so that was pretty cool riding it.
This course has a lot of long hills and some flats so it was definitely not a walk in the park. The wind was pretty crazy at times, strong head winds both ways. I found myself passing a lot of people going up hills, only to be passed by the same people on the down hill. If you're wondering why I'm running black arm coolers, it's because I find it distracting to have white on while I'm riding. With the black, it blends in with my front end, thus no distraction.
Overall, I went pretty conservative on the first half of the course, thinking of it, I should have pushed a little more on the hills and a little more on the way back. I didn't realize it until I got off the bike but I almost broke the 3hr mark. Finished in 3:04:26.
Bike dismount
Bike rack area
T2 was pretty enjoyable, volunteers were at the dismount line to catch your bike and rack it. This was pretty nice. My mom took some pics of T2 for some reason. Guess she didn't realize I was going to bike it so fast. Anyways, started running and felt pretty good despite not running for a while and not doing much bricks. The Achilles tendons weren't sore at all so I thought the outlook would be good.
Two sponges in jersey and one in hat
However, at the end of mile 3, things fell apart. My left IT band got tight and downright painful. Over the many months of running before I injured the Achilles, no ITB problems, nothing. Every time I tried running, it would hurt but when walking fast, it wouldn't hurt as much. So I ended up walking the last 10 miles of the race. Mentally, it was the toughest thing I had to go through. Old grandmas and grandpas would run past me, then walk once they were 10ft in front of me. The running course, was probably one of the toughest courses I've ever been on. A good part was on grass, than it would switch to concrete or asphalt, hills were long but not to steep. The toughest part was the so called "Death March" miles 9-11. It consisted of a long dusty paved road in the middle of the lava field with no shade or breeze whatsoever.
Despite being in pain, sucked it up and ran it in.
I'd like to forget this part of the race forever since it was so horrible. I'm so glad I didn't break 4 hours. Finished it in 3:28:12. Overall, I finished in a disappointing 7:19:30. Thinking about it, I'm still a little disappointed about it today. Would I do it again? Depending on funds, I will be back next year to beat my time by an hour or more. Promise.
I'll be writing about my nutrition/gear set up on the next post.
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