Ironman Texas 70.3 - Here we go again!

It has been an interesting winter and spring leading up to Ironman Texas 70.3 this weekend.  All of my winter training was running in preparation for Rocky Raccoon 100.  In fact, I had not done a swim workout since Ironman Texas back in May.  After Tahiti, I decided enough was enough and I got back in the pool for some 2000 meter workouts, but only three weeks before the race I had no idea how my fitness would be.

Two weeks prior, my friend Jeremy and I rode 50 miles then went straight into a two-hour run, which did well to simulate the bike and run portions of the race.  I did them at a light intensity, but I got through them feeling pretty good and it boosted my confidence going into the race.  Nonetheless, I really felt underprepared so I decided to take it easy on the race and treat it as a training workout for the full Ironman event in May.

We checked my bike in on Saturday and picked up my race packet, as was the requirement.  The drive down to Galveston was slow.  Traffic was heavy because good weather was predicted for the weekend in addition to the 3000+ people heading down for the race.  I checked in my bike and then went to visit a lot of friends who were working the expo.  One nice thing about being the president of the biggest triathlon club in Houston is that I have gotten to know a LOT of people in the local triathlon scene and it’s always nice to see a friendly face.

My stress level was at all all-time low before this race.  Accepting that I was not going to go all-out put me in a very positive frame of mind.  I planned to have a good time and encourage everyone around me. My personal best on this course was 5:37:17 back in 2010.  Tentatively, I wanted to come in under 6 hours, but if that didn’t work out… well I was fine with that too.  Alida and I drove back to Friendswood and met up with my dad.  We stayed there Saturday night.  It’s an easy 45 minute drive to the race from there and despite the alarm going off at 4:30AM I still got about seven hours of quality sleep.

Alida made me a bowl of oatmeal with walnuts and banana and off we went.  Traffic was light until we got near race parking and we ended up parking about a mile away from the transition area.  That was annoying, but no big deal.  I had plenty of time before transition closed.  We hung around our club’s tent as people started to show up.  Steve had spent the night in the back of his truck while tending his massive BBQ trailer.  Steve is great.  He takes a lot of pride in his grilling and everyone always appreciates his contributions.  Today would be no exception.

Just look at this guy.  Pure dedication!

After transition closed and everything had been set up, there was nothing left to do but wait around.  The pro wave, including Lance Armstrong, went into the water at 7AM.  My wave wasn’t until 7:55.  This was fun because I got to hang around outside the transition area and see the pros come charging out of the water 25 minutes later.  Lance was in the first group and quickly off onto the bike.  After that I made my way down to the water and jumped in with my wave.  3. 2. 1. GO!

I had forgotten what it felt like to be in salt water in a wetsuit, but it’s great.  It feels like cheating.  I was as buoyant as a cork and glided across the surface of the water with minimal effort.  I deliberately went out at a controlled and light pace because the last thing I needed to do was stress out and exhaust myself on the swim.  My goggles never leaked or fogged and I was able to see far into the distance.  As a result, I had no problem staying on course and after 39 minutes, I popped out onto the shore relaxed and ready to go for a bike ride.  Of course, I didn’t know until after the race what my swim time was because I completely forgot to look at my watch.  That’s how easy I was taking things.

After a somewhat slow transition including me putting on my arm sleeves and a quick spray of sunblock, I was off on the bike.  There was a slight headwind on the way out, but it was not crushing.  I just kept telling myself “Wait until the turnaround and you’ll have it at your back.” About ten miles in, I saw the pros coming back.  Lance was in the lead with a guy about 10 seconds back from him.  That was too close.  Lance was going to have to have a pretty spectacular run if he was going to win today.  I kept a bottle cage on my bike open for water and Gatorade hand-ups from the aid stations.  Bicycle aid stations are an interesting experience.  It’s not always easy to grab a bottle from someone at 20mph.

The ride went pretty well and I knew I was working my legs pretty hard, but even though it was tough, it felt good so I kept it up.  I got passed a lot and I passed a lot of people.  Our race bibs have names on them so I greeted people by name as I went by.  “Good job, Steve!”  “Good job, Kim!”  People seemed to like that and it gave me something to do while grinding away at my pedals.  I hit the turnaround at 28 miles and much to my pleasure, the promised tailwind was legit.  It wasn’t massive, but I could definitely feel the difference.  Sections where I had been pushed down to 16mph on the way out were now a comfortable 19 or 20mph on the way back.  I still felt great and my nutrition seemed to be holding up.  I just didn’t know how I was going to feel on the run.  Oh well, I’ll find out soon enough.

Time went quickly and before long I was turning back into the race venue and heading for transition.  After a quick change of shoes and a hat and one more spray of sunscreen, I grabbed some food and went out onto the run course for a half marathon.  As they say in triathlon, “You ride for show and you run for the dough.”  That would explain why I’m broke.  But it’s an accurate statement.  You never really know how your race will go until you get out there on your feet for the run.  Heading out of transition, I needed to hit the restroom, which is a very good thing because it means I had been handling my hydration properly.  I made a right turn out of transition and ran right by our club’s aid station.  All my friends were there as well as Alida and my father.  Everything was feeling great.

Normally when you get off the bike, your legs feel very heavy and you are subject to an optical illusion.  I had just spent the last three hours watching the world go by me at 18 miles per hour on the bike.  Now I’m getting off and running at 7 or 8 miles per hour and everything just feels so SLOW!  It’s easy to go out way too fast without even realizing it, but luckily, I am aware of the effect and have the experience to know to take it easy for the first quarter mile.  As it was, my legs felt really good.  In fact, I thought a sub-2 hour half marathon might be in the cards for me—a feat I’ve only managed once before at a half Ironman race.

I think nutrition was the reason I was able to keep feeling good.  On the bike, I had a bottle of water and a bottle with six scoops of Perpetuem, which is pretty thick in that quantity.  Six scoops is about 900 calories and appropriate for a 3-hour ride.  I finished the bottle and drank several additional bottles of water given by the aid stations.  On the run, I took a page from my Rocky Raccoon nutrition playbook and had some coconut date balls.  These things are magical.  They are made with dates, nutritional yeast, white miso paste, maple syrup and a heaping portion of salt.  You put them in a food processor, then roll them up into little balls and finally roll them in shredded coconut.  They taste sweet and even a single ball is incredibly filling.  You can feel the calories as soon as you eat it.  It was a little hard to eat them on the run, but I knew they would keep my energy up and they did.  I had three of them on each of the three loops.

Speaking of the three loops, let me take a minute to talk about the new run course.  In the past, the run course was a four-loop course around the Moody Gardens resort.  It had a lot of turns and doubled back overitself a lot.  Some people didn’t like it but I never minded.  There are four aid stations per loop and that made for 16 aid stations on a 13.1 mile race.  I thought that was outstanding.  This year, they kept most of the course, but added on an additional leg across an adjacent airfield runway.  This expanded the course and dropped the loops to three.  The runway section was easily the least popular part of the course.  It was right at the end of each loop, there was NOTHING to provide shade and aside from an aid station right at the beginning, there was nothing out there but an endless line of runners all suffering.

Since I was in high spirits and feeling good, I was running at a comfortable pace and walking the aid stations as I tried to wash down my food.  Along the way, I saw many friends and fellow competitors and greeted them all.  In particular, I saw Brandon a few times.  Brandon is a blind athlete who competes in triathlons and endurance events.  I’ve known Brandon for a couple of years and I am continually inspired by his determination and his accomplishments.  Someday I’ll write a blog post all about Brandon.  Anyway, he was out there with his running guide and they were going strong.

My first and second loops went well and I held a steady pace of about 9:15 per mile, which put me on course for a little over two hours on the half marathon.  I was ok with that.  I figured I would probably be pretty close to six hours and I felt so good that I was content with however it worked out.  I have never in my life felt this good during a 70.3 triathlon.  While I was in the dreaded airport section near the end of my second loop, Wendy Hammerman ran up on me.

Wendy is a good friend and she’s a fiercely competitive person.  She is very driven and any time she puts on her race gear, she’s looking for a personal best.  She must have started several waves after me because I knew she was much stronger on the bike and she was obviously running faster than me.  But she wasn’t running THAT much faster than me.  So I picked up my pace little bit and ran alongside her for a while.  Wendy was hurting.  She couldn’t catch her breath and was desperately chasing a new personal best for the race.  I was feeling good so I figured I would run with her for a little while and then send her off when I didn’t feel comfortable holding her pace any longer.

We finished the second loop together and ran by our club’s aid station.  By that point, Wendy was moving well and I told her I just didn’t feel like working that hard so I sent her on her way.  By the time I got to the next aid station, Wendy was still walking it so I grabbed my gear and ran up to her.  We ran together for a little bit and I sent her on ahead again.  This became a sort of ritual on the last loop.  She’d go off and then walk the aid station until I caught her.  We’d run together for a moment and off she went.  As good as I was feeling, I got the impression she didn’t want me to talk to her anymore because she was very much in the zone.  She got this weird mantra to get her through the last loop that she would repeat out loud over and over.  “Beach, Airport, Finish” describing the three parts of the loop we had left.  She said it so much that people around us started looking at her and I announced she was my pet parrot.  That seemed to get some laughs.  Wendy did not laugh.  We got past the beach and her mantra changed to “Airport, Finish.”  None of us were looking forward to one last trip through the airport, but there was nothing to do but run it so off we went.

By this point we were running together more often than not and even though I was working harder than I planned, I was happily watching my average pace fall to right around the two-hour half marathon pace.  Once again I picked up the hope that maybe I could come in under two hours.  After we left the airport, there was only about half a mile to go and I asked Wendy if she wanted to go on ahead and dig out a sprint finish.  I wouldn’t have minded, but I had no plans to do that.  She said no and we should finish together.  That sounded like a plan and so we did--right through the finisher’s chute.

As it turns out, I finished the half marathon in 1:59:12, which made me smile.  More importantly, I felt so good I could have gone out for another loop (not that I had any intention of doing so).  Wendy did indeed make her personal best and my overall finishing time was 5:49:54.  Not only did I come in well under six hours, I was only 12 minutes off my personal best on this course.  That gave me some pause for consideration.  If I can race comfortably and finish with a smile and feel great after the race, but still finish only 12 minutes off my all-time best, then why should I be turning myself inside out on these races?  I plan to do a lot more comfortable racing.  The stress is low, the fun is high, and the entire experience is far more enjoyable this way.  And apparently, it’s 95% as fast as when I go all-out.

The first time I saw her smile all day.