I signed up for this race back in November and in the interim, stuff happened. After having a great (PR, BQ!) race at the Newport Marathon, training for Eagleman didn’t get off the ground well. A lousy, cold, rainy spring kept me indoors on the trainer for a lot of my bike work. I also kept swimming in the pool instead of hitting the open water in early May like I usually do. Despite this I was feeling pretty good heading into my taper week and all the fitness markers were pointing toward a good race.
A couple weeks ago my step-mom became very ill with an aggressive form of lung cancer and passed away. The funeral was scheduled for the Tuesday before this race. My travel plans changed in an instant. I drove down to a family member’s place near DC, then the following day drove to my Dad’s in North Carolina. After the funeral I spent a few days with my Dad which was something I haven’t gotten to do since the Beach2Battleship ironman trip in 2015. During this week away, my oldest son was sick and my wife was a rockstar taking care of him, bringing him to the pediatrician a few times and holding down the fort during exam week at school.
Friday before the race I got a final spin in on the bike in race trim before loading the car up to drive the Cambridge, MD. I met my friend Joe at the YMCA near transition where we were camping for the weekend. We drove over to Sailwinds for packet pickup and after dinner set up the tent.
Saturday morning we went for a (very) short ride and jog to check out transition and the frist couple miles of the run course. Beth had invited us to the QT2 breakfast at Denny’s where we had “interesting” service from the wait staff. After breakfast we dropped the bikes off at transition and set about relaxin for the rest of the day. We wandered over to Beth’s homestay at some point to get in the shade and John gave us a “motivational” talk about the course. He had been out for a 2 hour ride that morning, his talk was something like “I don’t know…you guys are really in for it…it’s going to suck out there…so hot…no shade…I went through all my water really quickly…you guys aren’t going to have much fun”. Eventually, we went to dinner where the waitress was amused by Joe and I splitting a plate of pasta.
Race Day! Woke up super early to get some more fluids in with breakfast. I found myself nervous about the heat, I’ve struggled some mentally with hot races since my seizure in 2014. After getting to transition I met up with Nate who was at the next rack over, we hung out to watch the start of the pro races and then I went to find my swim wave. While putting on my wetsuit I “cracked” over the heat issue and decided to treat it as a training race, I would cap my heart rate a lot lower than usual for a half-ironman and practice all the cooling strategies and enjoy myself.
In water start with the second half of my age-group, felt really good in the waer, much smoother than my few open water swims in training had felt. Probably due to the reasonable (73) water temps. I felt confident and worked my way through a bunch of swimmers. The way the course was laid out, the return trip felt really long, but I was quickly running up the boat ramp to the wetsuit strippers and then into transition. Not my best swim, not my worst.
After a decent transition I was starting on the bike course, I was capping my heart rate at 150 on the bike, where I normally shoot for an average around 160 in a half distance race. Despite this limit, because the course is so very flat I was cranking, headed for a really great bike split. I was also doing all the good stuff; drinking lots of fluids and dumping water on my head, neck and arms at each aid station. At the final aid station though I tossed the water bottle after dumping it on me and right after tossing it I realized I had passed the “throw trash by here” sign and when I looked to the left before accelerating back to speed I saw the ref on the motorcycle and she starting writing me up for a penalty. I have no issue with being penalized as I did throw the bottle after the sign (though I threw it sort of panicked as I realized I missed the sign). I was irritated with the ref because I asked her where the penalty tent was (was it on the remaining miles of the bike course or in transition) and while I dodged empty bottles on the road (thrown by other competitors) she replied “I don’t know”. So I rode along after that, kicking myself for a stupid decision and penalty, I pulled into the tent 2 miles from the finish and upon starting the stopwatch the volunteer asks me “what color card did the ref show you?”. “She didn’t show me a card, I threw a bottle just after the sign and she wrote me up but didn’t know where the tent was”. He decided I should serve 5 minutes so that no matter what the penalty was I wouldn’t get DQ’d. “whatever, OK”. Afte the 5 minute penalty I rode the last 2 miles with my head not really in the game.
Racked my bike, got my running shoes on and decided that since I wasn’t chasing a PR I had peed all over myself enough on the bike and would hit the porta potty before starting the run. I set out at 7:00 minute pace and watched the heart rate creep up a bit quicker than I expected it to, so I decided to just run at 150 whatever the pace was and practice hot weather protocol. So each aid station, ice into the kit, water on each arm and over my head, gatorade and red bull/coke if I wasn’t past the table by that point. I actually felt pretty decent for a lot of the run, just HOT, temp was in the 90’s and this course has no shade except for a little section between mile 6 and 7. Despite running easy in the furnace of Eagleman I passed a bunch of people including 10 in my age group on run and ended up 19th in my age-group and 130th overall.
Post race I immediately ran into Nate who was 4th in his age-group and scored a slot to 70.3 worlds in September. Joe fought through the heat and got on his age-group podium too. I had to hang out for a while before getting back into transition, was great to see some of the people from breakfast the day before. Also great to run into Pat Wheeler for the first time in a couple years, used his phone to let my wife know I stayed out of the med tent and would be heading home in an hour or so.
Eventually got my bike and gear out of transition, took a shower at the Y and Joe helped me break down the campsite and got on the road back to Cape Cod sometime around 3 in the afternoon. During my drive home I got a message from Nate that if I had stayed for roll-down I could have scored a slot to Chattanooga for September, but prior to the race I had decided to turn that down to invest the funds in going long next year…
Reflecting on this race for the past week, I’m torn in a bunch of different ways. I’m upset with myself because I mentally cracked before the race even started and I made a stupid mistake at the end of the bike course that cost me 5 minutes and messed with my head some more. I’m pleased though that if you take out the penalty my time was about 15 minutes off my PR for a half-distance race. A lot of people going full-gas were about 15 minutes off their times due to the heat, so being in that ballpark time-wise while taking it easy on the bike and run shows me that my fitness is in a good place. I need to be confident in that fitness going into the rest of my season; Rev3 St. Andrews on July 9th and Ironman 70.3 Maine in August.
