Finishing the 2014 Austin 70.3 Ironman
Pre-Race
Saturday - 10:45 p.m.
Caitlin's phone rings. It's the apartment repair guy calling to let us know he can't fix the air conditioning that night. It's 85 degrees inside despite having the windows open and fans running. We got in bed two hours ago, but are doing a lot of laying there sweating and not doing any sleeping. I try to pretend I'm back at overnight camp with no AC and at some point around 11 I assume we fall asleep.
Sunday - 4:30 a.m.
My alarm goes off. I grab a gatorade and Red Bull and move to the couch. This was supposed to be breakfast time, but I'm not ready yet. Scooby comes to the living room with me and lays down on the floor. I pick him up and put him on my stomach and we nap together until 4:45.
4:45 a.m. - 6:45 a.m. I eat a couple slices of toast with peanut butter, we pick up my dad at his hotel, get to the race super early since we've been warned what a cluster it will be to get to the transition areas.
6:30 a.m. - 8:44 a.m. My transition areas are good to go nice and early and we spend two hours watching the other racers start as I nurse a gatorade and 5-hour energy before getting in position.
The Swim - 45:36
8:44 "Time to pee," a fellow 30-35 triathlete with a last name starting with N-Z jokes as we got into the water. A couple people laugh. I pee. It was going to be as long as 8 hours before I saw a bathroom again. I had to go.
8:45 And off we went. I started with the front crawl for a few minutes, but once I got some separation I settled into the breast stroke. The swim was quite long, but pretty smooth. The water felt good and got me nice and warmed up. I only got kicked and had my legs pulled on a couple times. At one point I saw a buoy marked 1 and thought it meant one mile and that I only had 0.2 to go. Not so much. I wasn't much more than half done. Still, I kept plugging along and singing "swimming, swimming, in the swimming pool" to myself. I felt some fatigue 30-35 minutes in, but I'd planned on swimming for 45 minutes and that was almost exactly how long it took. I felt pretty solid coming out of the water.
Caitlin took a pic of me running by. I liked how enthusiastically the volunteers tore the wetsuits off those who wore won. I didn't.
The Bike: 3:46:49
The bike ride was fun for about half of it, but that was so much riding to do with no music and no one to talk to. Breaking it into 11 segments of 5 miles each made it doable in my mind, but it wasn't the most enjoyable.
I smiled for Caitlin as the bike was just starting. Not nearly as much smiling the rest of the time.
The bike ride ... took forever. I thought I'd fly through it after knocking out 17 miles in the first hour. That first hour was a lot of fun. It felt like it was all down hill and I was really enjoying myself, and let myself think I could finish in 3:10 at that pace. Apparently that was the only section that wasn't full of steep hills. The next two hours and 45 minutes were ... I won't bore you with a minute by minute breakdown of 226 minutes of biking, but the following relatively interesting things happened:
Grunting out the ride. I forget if I was posing like this on purpose or not.
Two dogs ran into the bike course. I had to slow almost to a complete stop to avoid hitting one.
I got yelled at by an official on a motorcycle for riding next to a friend I made coming out of a water stop and spent the next 15 miles worrying I'd get a penalty for an improper pass.
I chugged Powerade and water and inhaled chomps and gels at all four rest stops and still went through both of my water bottles.
I saw a horse taking a dump and didn't look away.
I sang the Army "Jody" Caitlin made up for in my head. It goes "Wittbloom, Wittbloom, 1-2-3, no one's faster than Scooby" but I changed it to "going faster than Scooby." It helped.
Some kids were "selling" lemonade for free on the side of the road. But they were too far away for anyone near me to take them up on it and it would have taken too long. Kind of a tease, honestly.
At one point I saw a sign that said "Austin 24 miles" and prayed I wouldn't get a flat tire or have a bike malfuntion
I high fived every cop I could on the course and got them all to smile.
I managed to stay on my bike through every hill. They saved the most difficult hill for mile 50. It was absolutely brutal, the steepest and longest hill I've ever ridden. I had to stand up and pedal agonizingly slow to stay on the bike, but still managed to ride through it.
This official race pic showed what a grind the bike was.
The Run - 2:32:11
When I first got off my bike, my legs felt about as bad as I feared they would. It was like stepping off a treadmill mixed with getting off a multi-day cruise mixed with a terrible charlie horse in both legs. After getting into my run gear, I went to reset my watch so I could see how long it was taking and see my pace. I inadvertently turned the watch all the way off and couldn't get it back on. So I was running just on feel.
Lap 1 - Feeling strong
Lance captured me smiling at the end of lap one. I was more happy to see family than I was feeling great.
I didn't feel nearly as good as this picture would have you believe, but the first 4.4 mile lap was pretty smooth. I want to say I only stopped to walk at the water stations, but I know I stopped a couple times. There were a ton of walkers and at that point I was hopeful I wouldn't be one of them. Then I ran for what seemed like a long while only to see the "Mile 1" sign. That stung. I adopted Lance's "1 going on 2, 1 going on 2" mantra and adapted it to say, "1 going on 2, I get to see them at 4.5" Knowing I had smiling faces coming up made a big difference.
I ran especially hard and motivated in the half mile stretch near the expo center where they were playing music and was totally revitalized by seeing my dad, Caitlin and her dad and gave them all high fives.
The middle 4.4 miles was daunting.
Lap 2: The Struggle
After I got through the first lap, I was inspired for another half mile or so by the music and the crowds. But once you clear that area, you have about 3.5 miles of running with no crowd, no music and an area I came to call "death valley." There's sand, the temperatures were in the mid-high 80s and it was just brutal. I always thought I might run a couple miles and then walk a half or something, but I didn't plan on alternating every 50 yards like I did. I could feel the sunburn coming on, I was having incredibly painful irritation everywhere and was feeling the heat. I gutted out the middle lap, finding runners to talk to and loading up on fluids, but it wasn't pretty. It probably took close to an hour, but I had little highs like getting to the halfway point and keeping up the "six, going on seven, I get to see them at nine" mantra.
Lap 3: The finish in sight
OK, most of lap three wasn't much prettier than lap two, but knowing it was the last one made it much more tolerable. I made a few friends along the way, trying to inspire each other to keep running and gut out the last few miles. I convinced one guy to run all the downhills with me and power walk the uphills. That was nice, but in general it was slow and achy and I couldn't wait to be done. With just over a mile to go, I was talking to a guy and he told me I was at 7:05. I told him that was my cue and took off running, determined not to stop until I crossed the finish line.
When I was half a mile away, someone asked it I wanted a beer. "FUCK YES!" I exclaimed, before noticing little kids around. Whoops. I started drinking the beer immediately. I didn't know how I wanted to pose at the end, but I figured pouring beer on myself could be fun. I did it a little early, and had an empty half crushed can with me as I fist pumped and high fived my way through the finish.
High fives for everyone! OK, mostly just for my dad here. There's nothing like a high five from your dad while competing.
Airplane! Kind of...I don't know what this was.
Floating across the finish line. That was what it was all for.
I did it! The sign says 8:30, but my wave was 75 minutes after the start.
My dad, Caitlin and her dad were all brave enough to hug me after the race. I'm sure I smelled horrendous and was soaking wet. It was so great to have them there. And our friends Madison and Katie made it just in time to see me finish.
After stretching, telling a couple quick anecdotes about the race and checking my fantasy football teams, we grabbed my bike and gear and headed home to a shower, two pizzas and pumpkin beer. It was quite the day. It was fun at times, but mostly I just felt good to have done it and experienced the challenge. My first thought was that I'd never do a half or full Ironman again, but now I'm not sure. I know I could do a full. I'd need to feel inspired. Whether that's someone to do it with me or something, I know I could do a full. And maybe I will. But for now I'm just going to keep recovering from the half and feeling good about what I did.
