This year I focused on speed and did three sprint triathlons. A friend invited me to participate in the Las Vegas marathon in December, and I thought that sounded like a nice way to end the year without interfering with anything else. But then I got to thinking, “Why bother?” I don’t mean why bother running a marathon, but why bother paying the $175 entry fee, driving 6 hours to Vegas, paying $100 for a hotel, running, driving 6 hours back, all for a medal, t-shirt, and some snacks? Is it really worth upwards of $400 and two days of time? Plus I’d prefer to do it a different weekend, and I’m not a fan of the strip in Las Vegas. I was just there for a trade show and if I could avoid ever going back I would. I’m just not into that scene.

Now, if I were running to qualify for Boston, that would be a different situation. Or if the marathon were a mere hour drive away, and cost $80, that would also be a different situation. But given the time, expense, and lack of alternatives, I started wondering whether or not I shouldn’t just run my own unassisted marathon. After all, what do I really need, especially in the winter?

On my first marathon I had the need for two things; 1) a potty, and 2) liquids. Using the restroom at the beginning and end of the “event” isn’t an issue, since I’d be at home. And along the course I would most likely run there is a park with a restroom, so I’d have that halfway spot as well. And then there’s my secret spot right where…well, we won’t go there. Or at least you won’t. So I think the matter of the potty can easily be taken care of. As far as liquids, how much do I really need? On a warm day I might need more than I could feasibly carry, but this will be in December/January, so it seems like I could carry enough in my hydration belt. Plus there is water at the park (although it might be turned off in the winter). Worst case scenario, I can go plant water along the running trail right before I start running, so that it won’t freeze or get too cold. So that issue seems like it can be taken care of fairly easily as well.

So let’s see…I get to sleep at home in my own bed, I can start whenever I want, I can choose the date, I save $400 and 2-3 days of travel…where’s the downside to this plan?

If you’ve run an unassisted marathon, or do training runs that are longer than marathon distance, what tips do you have?

Now, you might be thinking “Why not do unassisted triathlons?” Some people do, but I see more value in paying to do a triathlon. There’s something to be said for having someone put buoys in the water and save you from drowning. There’s something to be said about having a transition area. There’s something to be said about having traffic control for the bike portion. But when  you’re just running and nothing else, and it’s during the cooler part of the year, I don’t see the attraction in paying for a marathon, unless it’s for charity, or you’re trying to qualify for something else. Or, unlike me, you might be a social animal who likes to run with other people. I’m not super anti-social, but I like having some “alone” time when I work out and time to listen to audiobooks.

I was a bit worried about Stansbury for two reasons; 1) I strained the deltoid muscles in my right arm about two weeks before the race and my arm had been bothering me and had cut into my workouts, so I wasn’t sure how I would do on the swim, and 2) I went to a tradeshow for two days during the week prior to the race and ate too much good food, which resulted in my putting on a few pounds.

On the plus side, we were able to stay with some friends of ours who live less than a mile from the race, so we drove out last night to sleep at their house. We were treated with every measure of hospitality, but as we started going to bed, all heck broke loose. My 3 1/2 year old and 1 1/2 year old decided that 10:30 pm was a good time to hop on pop, and as I was trying to go to bed I was suddenly attacked by one kid and then the other. For the next 10 minutes as I lay there on the air mattress I was alternatively a horse, slide, car, beanbag, punching bag, and trampoline. I don’t think those triathletes who don’t have kids have any clue what it’s like to do triathlons with kids. Finally discipline was restored after I moved to the couch…well, a few minutes after I moved to the couch, and I settled in for the night.

I woke up before my alarm, which means I got a good night’s rest. Because the race area was so close, I was able to ride my bike there by myself and allow my wife and kids some time to sleep in.

I arrived around 7 am to find the transition area already filling up. It was open-racking, meaning no assigned spots, and that means people want to get there early to get a good spot. But the race was fairly small so almost any spot was a decent spot. I grabbed a good one on the perimeter, close enough to the bike exit so that I didn’t have to go far in my bike shoes on the way to the bike course nor on the way in from it.

I spotted Te Koi Smith, my friend who got me into triathlon, and he racked up next to me. I also happened to be right next to Justin and Michelle, a couple from our neighborhood who were both racing that day, she in the sprint and he in the olympic.

This race also marked the first time I went out swimming before the race. I find that I tend to get into my rhythm on the swim 5-10 minutes into it, but in a sprint race where the swim is only 12 minutes long, that means I get into my rhythm right at the end. This time I made sure I was in the water early and swam around for five minutes to get warmed up and my wetsuit adjusted. My injured arm felt good, so that was a relief.

Swim

At 8:15 am or so we were off. I’ve never been buffeted and banged about so much on the swim as in this race, which was strange since I’ve been in plenty of larger races. I just happened to get stuck in a cluster somehow. I didn’t get hurt at all, but I just couldn’t get through to the front of the pack and kept having to stop and try and find a way through or around, but it didn’t happen. I’d guess I lost perhaps a minute due to this, but no biggie.

The worst part of the swim was that after turning the second buoy, the sun was directly in our eyes. We couldn’t see anything other than the swimmers right around us. We were all swimming in a somewhat similar direction, but we had no idea until we were on top of the third buoy whether we were really going in the right direction. Somehow we made it there. Despite this, I felt like this was the best I had ever done at sighting and swimming straight during a triathlon. The only problem with swimming straight is that the people who aren’t swimming straight keep bumping into you. I got a lot of that in this race. It probably didn’t help that we started swimming just after the olympic racers passed us to start their second lap, and so we were having to swim through them. I think the race would have been better if they had either started us 15 minutes later, after all the olympic racers were well ahead of us or out of the water, or if they had just started us first.

T1

I didn’t get too dizzy getting out of my wetsuit or into my bike shoes, which is a good thing. And I remembered my towel this time! Of course the one time I remember my towel, the sprinklers for a strip of lawn at the top of the transition area turned on, sending streams of water through the transition area, and my towel that was laid out for the purpose of drying my feet after the swim was completely soaked. Not just wet, but as wet as a towel could possible get. Gushing. My backpack was also soaking wet where it was laying on the pavement. Nice. Somebody please turn those off next year?

Bike

I had some trouble getting my shoes into my clips at the start. Sometimes your feet clip in immediately, no problem, and other times they keep slipping off. This time they kept slipping off. I probably lost 10-15 seconds there, so again, no biggie.

I’ve never had so many people pass me within the first five minutes of getting on the bike. My theory for this is that whereas I’m relatively good on the swim compared to the bike and run, most other people are relatively bad. Thus I was early out of the water, but then these super fast guys were zipping by me on the bike. I mean, there was no way I could keep up with these guys on the bike, although evidently I had on the swim just fine. Luckily I was seeing a few O’s on legs, which meant some of the people passing me were doing the olympic distance, and while that meant they were already twice as tired as me yet still going faster, it also meant I wasn’t really racing against them.

This course had more sharp turns and less straightaway than any other course I’ve been on, but it wasn’t too bad. It was very, very flat. Not a hill to speak of. I’d guess the total elevation change was less than 25 feet.

T2

I made sure not to step on my sopping wet towel as I got into my running shoes. Other than that, everything went smoothly and I was off on the run.

Run

“Alrighty, this is it,” I thought. “The last part of the last triathlon of the season.” I’ve never gone all out on the run, because I’ve got it stuck in my head that I have to pace myself to not wear out. But this time I wanted to push it, so instead of doing 8:00 miles, which is still pushing it but doable for me, I tried to maintain a pace around 7:30 or so.

The course stayed on one road for the first .75 miles, and as I passed that I thought “Ok, on the way back this is where I’ll start sprinting.”

The run went onto an island in the middle of the lake we had swam in, and as I neared the halfway point I saw the leader coming back. He didn’t seem to be all that far ahead of me, but he did look like he was going quite a bit faster. I saw Te Koi in 5th place, not too far behind.

As I ran, I tried to focus on the next guy in front of me and pass him. I’m not competitive, really, but it gave me something to shoot for. Once I passed one guy, I’d focus on the next one. I think I passed 3-4 guys, and nobody passed me, so I was making my way up in the overall rankings.

I passed a guy just before the .75 mark, and started pushing it quite a bit more, getting my pace up under 7:00. I don’t know how much I held to that, especially because there were some slight uphill portions on the return, but every time I looked down at my watch I was hitting 6:40 or 6:50 it seemed. I knew I was certainly pushing it more than I ever had before for this long of a distance.

There was just one guy I could see in front of me, and I made it my goal to pass him before the finish. I was running as hard as I could at that point, my breathing being the primary bottleneck. My legs felt great, I just couldn’t get enough air into my lungs.

About .3 before the finish, I passed the guy I had targeted, and then started going up a slight incline. I didn’t want a repeat of Park City where some guy zoomed past me right at the finish line, so I kept up the sprinting, imagining some guy trying to catch up with me. I started to wonder if I was going to pass out at the end, because I had never run like this before, but as I passed the finish line I felt pretty good. Out of breath, but overall pretty good.

Final Results

Te Koi came in 2nd in his age group…which is the same age group as me. He actually was awarded 1st place in our age group, because the guy who got 1st came in 3rd overall, which means they don’t count him for awards. I came in 6th (or 5th, if they gave awards beyond 3rd place), about 6:20 behind him. I came in 14th overall with a total time of 1:16:32. The first place guy came in at 1:07:38. They haven’t posted complete results yet, so I don’t know exactly what my splits are, but I’ll post those once I get them. I’m eager to see how my swim compares to the other two, as well as my run. The bike is impossible to compare, but it’s easier with those other two events. No matter what, I know I put more into it, and I’m sure I went faster on the run than I ever have before. And it’s a relief just to have actually made it to every race I signed up for this season and to have not had any flats, injuries, etc. that would have really put a damper on a race.

It has been fun to actually feel slightly competitive in these events. It’s not about beating the other guys, but it’s fun to realize I’m within striking distance. The 3rd place guy in my age group had a time of 1:12:07, just four and a half minutes ahead of me. If I could have swam a minute faster, biked 2-3 minutes faster, and have ran a minute faster, I could have had a podium finish. That doesn’t seem like that much to shave off each event. And when you figure that guy probably weighs in at 160 and has 3% body fat, whereas I’m weighing in at 195 lbs, I feel pretty good about where I’m at. I bet if you strapped 35 lbs on that guy’s back he’d lose at least four minutes on his time.

Ok, final results are in:

Swim: 16:00
T1: 1:13
Bike: 34:52 – Pace: 19.3 mph
T2: 1:02
Run: 23:27 – Pace: 7:34
Total: 1:16:32

Interesting, my swim time was 1-1.5 minutes longer than my other two races, so my estimate that getting caught behind people cost me a minute sounds about right.

My run time seems slower than what it felt like, let me tell you. But it sounds about right for the first 2.25 miles.

Here were the winner’s times:

Swim: 14:32
T1: 0:53
Bike: 32:02 – Pace: 21.0 mph
T2: 0:49
Run: 19:26 – Pace: 6:16
Total: 1:07:38

I just need to shave 9 minutes off. No problem

Future plans?

I’m not sure. Ironman at some point, but probably not next year. I wouldn’t mind training for the Las Vegas marathon this December. It seems like it would be fairly easy to fit into my schedule, but we’ll see. I’ll think about it next week after I take a little nap.

Scofield is an actual town of about 30 people, located just south of the reservoir itself. We saw it, but not very well. But based on what we saw of the reservoir, it looks like a beautiful place to live. If I were a billionaire, I’d have one of my 50 vacation homes built at this place, along with a big garage to house my solid-gold rocket car. The more I travel around Utah, the more I realize how beautiful the state is, and how much of a great place it is to live if you’re into triathlon.

At my last triathlon I went by myself and slept in my car, and I didn’t like it one bit. The car part was fine, I just felt like it was such a waste not having my wife and kids there. This time I didn’t repeat the mistake, although I did make another one by not reserving a proper camp spot ahead of time. By “proper” I mean there are two campgrounds at Scofield; Mountain View and Madsen Bay. The event itself is held at the Mountain View campground, and so camping there makes all the sense in the world, since everyone else who has a spot there is also there for the triathlon, which means everyone is trying to get to bed early and isn’t going to be up late partying, or at least one would assume, and when you wake up you don’t have to go anywhere. However, I didn’t know about this.

At the beginning of the week, it occurred to me I had no idea what we were doing about lodging. That is, I had planned on camping, but had made no more attempt to plan things out than to come up with that idea. Can’t someone else do the rest? I quickly found out that all the camp spots at Mountain View were taken, but that there were still some spots at Madsen Bay, a mere two miles away. No problem, I thought, we’ll camp there, and while my wife and the kids are still sleeping I’ll bike the two miles down to Mountain View, and then they can wake up an hour later, throw everything in the back of the mini-van, and arrive in time to see me start on the swim. I made reservations, feeling a bit lucky, and that was that.

Yesterday afternoon we arrived while the sun was still shining, found our reserved spot, and set up tent. The kids were excited, and so far I felt like things were working out quite well. Then night fell, and all became chaos. Babies crying (not ours), people yelling, pounding of some sort, cars pulling in and out at 2 am, etc. Oh, and despite the forecast of an overnight low of 44 degrees, it got to freezing, and perhaps a bit below it. At least I assume that if you wake up and there is thick frost all over your tent and car this means the temperature got to below freezing. We weren’t quite prepared for freezing temperatures, and so while we didn’t freeze, we weren’t completely comfortable. I was even less comfortable because I had decided, even though I think I swore that the last time would be the last time, to shave my arms and legs again, and that felt really weird in the sleeping bag. But sleep we did, somewhat fitfully, and we awoke mostly rested. The kids did great, and both my wife and I have had much worse night’s sleeps.

So I wake up, go to the restrooms, and realize there is no way I can ride my bike two miles without gloves, in shorts, to the race area. It’s freezing, and the 50 foot walk to the restrooms is enough to completely numb my flip-flop adorned feet. No, we’re going to need a new plan.

Luckily, I had visited the transition area the evening before to check it out and saw that we were assigned areas to rack our bikes. In other words, there’s not much of an advantage to arriving early in the transition area because you can’t stake out “the best spot”. You’re assigned a spot, and that’s all there is to it. I think I like things this way, and not just because it allowed us to all drive to the race area together and not leave me worrying about being “late”.

We packed up the kids, threw the frost-covered tent in the back of the mini-van, cranked up the heater, and drove the two miles to the race area. Upon arriving there, I noticed the temperature was 10-20 degrees warmer than at the other campground. I don’t know what aspect of the natural surroundings led to this phenomenon, but I was grateful for it.

I was able to see my old coach (old as in ex, not that he’s old) David Warden, whom I had never seen in action, let alone competed against. In this case we would be in the same age group and I thought maybe, just maybe I could pull off some sort of miracle, beat David, and really impress him. Well, not really. David has 0% body fat, drinks diesel fuel, and has Russian mafia connections who take out anyone in a race who appears as though they might give David any trouble. I decided it would be a better goal to merely try and be off my bike and starting the run by the time David finished the entire race.

I got set up in transition, got my wetsuit on (I forgot anti-chafe for my neck, ankles, and wrists, dang it! and that was after my new checklist system!), and made my way to the water. Expecting the water to be freezing based on the temperatures when I woke up, I was pleasantly surprised to find the water to be not cold at all. Maybe my feet were still frozen from walking around at the campground, but the water felt warmer than any outdoor water I’ve ever swam in.

I’ve decided I’m done holding back on the swim. I swam out a little bit to warm up, and then swam back and found a place at the front of the pack, treading water and waiting for the horn. I find my wife and kids and wave to them, they see me. Yes, it’s better with family. There’s the horn, and we’re off. Nothing too different than any other swim, other than at one point I got completely sandwiched between two guys for a few seconds. Not my idea of a good time, so I dropped back a bit to let them pass. I always feel horrible about how I swim at events. I feel as though I’m flailing about, about to drown, and have horrible form. All my training seems to go out the window. It’s only later when I look at my time that I think “Well gee, I must have been doing ok since I was swimming faster than I normally do in a pool where I feel great.” What I was not sure about on this swim was whether the measurements were correct or not. At the Park City triathlon I did a few weeks ago, my time was well over a minute faster, and I don’t think I swam as hard or as well there. I’m thinking one or the other was a tad bit off, but I could be wrong.

One thing I missed were the wetsuit strippers. It’s so nice to have someone else yank that wetsuit off you. Instead, I did the stomping game in the transition area, having a little trouble due to the lack of Body Glide or any similar product on my ankles. What I do know what that I didn’t almost pass out and fall against the bike rack, like I did at Park City. I felt quite a bit more stable. But I had neglected to set my Garmin to “bike” mode. Doh. Anyway, the first transition went smoothly for the most part.

Coming out of T1, you have a choice–get on your bike immediately, and crank up a fairly steep hill, or run up the short hill with your bike and mount at the top. I chose to get right on my bike. But my bike wasn’t quite in the right gear. Chain slips, and I’m worried it’s going to derail, but it doesn’t. I make it up the hill and I’m on my way.

As I get on the road, I’m soaking wet, and although the sun is out and things are warming up, it is the coldest ride I’ve ever had. Not too cold, but noticeably chilly compared to other events.

I’m feeling fine on the ride. Not excellent, nothing special, but good enough. The route is an out-and-back, so I’m waiting to see who is in first, and how far ahead of me they are. About 5 miles in, David Warden passes me going the opposite direction, followed closely by a guy in a BYU triathlon outfit. The bike is about 12 miles, so David is about 2 miles ahead of me at this point, and certainly pulling even further ahead. But I still feel pretty good about where I am compared to someone as experienced and in shape as David.

The ride is fairly flat, with false flats thrown in that you don’t realize aren’t flat until you turn around at the halfway point and you’re screaming past everyone else who is working hard and going slow that last mile or so before the turnaround.

I pass a rider or two, and 4-5 riders pass me. The steepest/longest uphill is a quarter of a mile or so at the end of the bike ride, and I’m feeling fine and ready for the run as I see my wife and kids again and wave. I get into T2, rack my bike the wrong way, but no biggie, struggle a little getting my shoes and belt on and switching my Garmin to “run” mode, and then jog out. Immediately there is a steep hill, and I decide to walk most of it rather than tire my muscles out immediately going up it. In retrospect, I probably should have jogged up it. Walking is so slow, and I could have easily recovered from it on the subsequent downhill.

As I started out on a mild downhill I’m feeling great, doing about 7:30 miles or so. There’s the wife and kids again–my 1 year old has trouble recognizing me in my outfit with everyone else in a similar one. I don’t just mean everyone is wearing tight spandex. I mean me and about 10 others guys all had the same exact outfits on. I got mine at David Warden’s recommendation, and he’s wearing the same one. I later find out his brother is in the race, and he’s wearing the same one too. I can’t help wondering if everyone else with a black, one piece DeSoto lifefoil is wearing it thanks to David. Back to the run.

I probably should have been pushing it harder, but again, live and learn. I’m still not used to these short races where endurance is not the name of the game, so I’m still holding back a bit and being careful. I at least have the presence of mind to know that I should go faster on the downhill portions where it’s easy to do so, I just should have gone even faster than I did.

One nice thing about this run is you can see the whole thing the whole time. You know where you are, and where you’re going. I’m not passing anyone, and nobody seems to be passing me. I’m running somewhat by myself. Not sure how much I like that. I think I do better when there is someone I can try to keep up with. That worked out well at Park City.

As I enter the home stretch, a guy blazes past me on the uphill portion. “Ok,” I think, “I’ll just keep up with this guy and then sprint past him at the finish.” There’s just one problem–I can’t keep up with him. I start trying to sprint, and I still can’t keep up with him. I run as fast as I can up the hill, and when it flattens out towards the finish I’m sprinting as hard as I can, but I end up behind the guy by 20 seconds. And darn it, he’s in my age group, so he pushes me one notch down in the rankings. But at least it’s not as bad as at Park City where the guy snuck up on me and passed me right at the finish line to beat me by 2 seconds.

Final Times & Standings
ib number: 291
gender: M
overall place: 23 out of 133
division place: 7 out of 14
gender place: 22 out of 82
time: 1:20:20
swim: 14:47
t1: 2:10
bike: 35:49
t2: 1:47
run: 25:49

As it turns out, David Warden took 1st, without any help from his Russian friends. Just for fun, let’s compare our times. Here are his:

time: 1:03:54
swim: 13:15
t1: 1:06
bike: 28:45
t2: 0:51
run: 20:00

Now, overall he beat me by 16:34, which seems like an insurmountable lead. How could I ever get that fast? But then I start looking at the individual portions.

Swim – He was ahead of me by 1:32, but I think I could get there. I’m not swimming at my fastest right now, nor doing anything special to train. I just go and swim twice a week for 1,500 meters, without much else to it. I’m sure I could improve by 1:30 or more.

t1 – His transition time was half mine, a full minute faster. Don’t get me wrong, it takes skill to do a quick transition, but skills can be learned. It doesn’t take strength or stamina. It’s more a matter of planning and technique. There’s another minute I could pick up.

Bike – David was 7:03 faster on the bike, and that means about 20% faster in this case. That would be tough, but I could certainly improve. Dropping another 20 lbs would help quite a bit even if I did nothing else, and trust me, I’ve got 20 lbs of stuff hanging on me that isn’t doing me any good. Add to that the fact that I haven’t been doing anything special with my bike training, merely going out and riding three times a week for an hour, and while improving by 20% might be a multi-year effort, it doesn’t feel impossible.

t2 – Wow! 51 seconds is amazing. Seriously, I wish I had video of Dave’s transitions to see how he does it. But there’s another minute I could pick up.

Run – The run is by far where I have the most room for improvement. Again, dropping 20 lbs would help quite a bit. I am actually following a training plan pretty strictly here, and I have gotten a bit faster in the past year. I probably could have run a minute faster today without killing myself or bonking. If I really focused could I get my 8:20 minute mile down to David’s 6:27? That seems like a bit of a stretch. 7:20 seems somewhat realistic, and that would take 3 minutes off my time.

Add it up, and shaving a minute off the swim, t1, and t2 seems realistic and pretty easy. With some effort maybe 3 minutes off the bike and run for a total of perhaps 9 minutes. That would have taken me down to a bit over 1:11 in this case, which is hardly close to David’s 1:03, but that would have put me in the top 10 overall, and in third place for my age group, and I’d feel pretty good about that. Something to shoot for, perhaps?

Many thanks to BBSC for putting on the event. I think they do a great job. And I love that they had a kids triathlon as well. I can’t wait for my kids to be old enough to participate.

Oh, and the free showers at the Mountain View campground are great. I was able to get cleaned up before driving home, as well as rinse off my wetsuit there rather than packing it wet and dirty in the back of the car.

Once I was ready to start training, I mapped out the year, and decided to focus on speed this year, rather than endurance. I chose three sprint-distance triathlons, the Park City triathlon being the first, and the other two being Stansbury and Scofield.

One downer about the Park City triathlon is that it has a split-transition, meaning you don’t end up where you start. The swim is held in the Jordanelle reservoir (don’t let that fool you into thinking this is the “Jordanelle Triathlon”, it’s not), you then bike to Park City, and you run from there and end up there. This means that before the race you get a shuttle down to Jordanelle, and after the race they ferry the gear you left at Jordanelle to the finish line. My family was planning on camping out and then watching me, but given the split transition and two kids ages 1 and 3 we decided I would just go by myself, sleep in the back of our mini-van, and race without spectators. This being the first race I’ve done without family there to watch me, I have to say I was surprised how much it all felt like a waste. I really missed having my family there, and afterward as I saw kids playing around I thought “Man, my kids would be loving this right now.” I’ve decided I’ll probably never do a split-transition race ever again, as much as I did enjoy this race overall. Now here’s how it all went down…

Due to the split transition I had to rack my bike on Friday, the night before the race, so I headed up there Friday afternoon with my mini-van packed with triathlon gear, sleeping mats, and a sleeping bag. The first transition area (T1) by Jordanelle had assigned areas for bikes, so getting there early wasn’t a huge priority like it would be if there were open racking, and you wanted to get a good spot. I dropped my bike off, making sure the tires were full and all the nuts and bolts were tightened. I didn’t leave any other gear there, because although they had overnight security, it’s just too easy for a helmet, pump, or other gear to “wander” off. Especially pumps, since people tend to borrow those and then forget where they were borrowed from. I also realized while there that I had forgotten to bring a towel to wipe my feet on in between the swim and getting on my bike. I don’t think it’s the first time.

I then headed to check-in in Park City. I drove the bike route as I went, which was nicely marked with orange traffic cones every 50 meters or so. The first thing I noticed was that coming straight out of the Jordanelle park area you get on the highway and ride a mile or so up a fairly steep hill. At least I would be getting warmed up right out of the gate. As I drove, I remember thinking “Gee, this seems kind of long for a sprint-distance triathlon” but I’ve also noticed how sometimes, counter-intuitively, the distance seems greater when driven than when biked.

Arriving in Park City, I checked in on the second-floor of the hotel, got my body-marking done (I always seem to wear clothing that makes this inconvenient), got my t-shirt and goodie bag, and then got back in the car to check out the area. I saw a Bed, Bath, and Beyond and decided to go in and buy a towel. I then found T2 tucked in the middle of a townhome and retail complex. There were several parking spots around, which I decided would make a good place to camp out for the night. I could then wake up and walk right over to T2 to set up my shoes and everything for the run, and then walk a few more feet to get on the shuttle to the race. Also, there were porta-potties right there, so if I woke up during the night and really had to go, I wouldn’t have to take the vagrancy to the new level of relieving myself in the nearby parking garage. I parked and started setting up bed in the back of the min-van with some inflatable camping/hiking sleeping pads.

As it got dark, I realized I had parked under a lamppost, and I’d be better off moving to a darker part of the parking lot. I did so, trying to avoid the gaze of anyone in the area, which was semi-private as it was behind a business which I would later find out was a bowling alley, but which was occupied alternatively by employees on smoking breaks and a policeman. I saw a policeman come around once or twice, and ducked down in my car. He looked like he was merely doing the rounds, and I didn’t think there was much chance he could see me laying on the floor of my van, but I already felt like a vagrant and didn’t want to give him any excuse to give the mini-van a closer look.

Around 9:30 I got to sleep on what was a soft enough but not wide enough camping pad. It was warm, so I wasn’t covered by the sleeping bag, although I was wearing clothes so I wasn’t immodest or anything, luckily. At 10:30 pm I was awakened by a loud crack and a yell of “Police!”

“What the heck is going on?” I thought.

Then I saw a policeman standing outside the van, shining a big mag-lite in, which he then used to bang on the window again and then again shouted “Police!” Oh boy.

I opened the side door of the van while kneeling on top of my sleeping bag, feeling every bit the vagrant now. The policeman shone his flashlight in my face and asked “What are you doing here?!”

“I’m here for the triathlon tomorrow” I responded, “Is that ok?”

“Just catching some z’s?”

“Yep.”

“Ok, I won’t bother you any more then.”

And off he went. “Well, thanks for waking me up for that,” I thought. Between the adrenalin flow and the noise of bowling pins being knocked over, it took me a good half hour to get to sleep again. That night I dreamt I woke up 20 years later, still in the mini-van in the parking lot, but with a long beard and nobody knew who I was. Ok, I didn’t really dream that, that’s just a little embellishment at no extra charge.

Sometime between going to sleep and 3 am, it turned from warm to cold. I woke up shivering, and realized the cheap sleeping bag I had wasn’t going to be enough to keep me warm all night. I spent the next few hours waking up every 30 minutes or so to try and get more comfortable on the narrow pad, while not allowing the sleeping bag to open and what little heat there was out. When 5:30 am came, I was ready to be done with sleeping in the van, but only because I wanted to go back home and get in my nice, soft, warm bed, and not because I was ready to jump in a 50-degree lake.

I turned on the car to get the heater going and ate some fruit leather and drank some water. I packed everything up, and when 6:00 came around and they opened T2 I went and put my run gear in a strategic spot (also assigned, at least by section if not specific place). I then went back to my car to stay warm, then went to get dress in a porta-potty, then back to the car to warm up some more, and then decided it would probably be a good idea to go wait for the shuttle. Turns out I should have stayed in the car longer, because I just missed the first shuttle, and spent the next 20 minutes shivering in the cold. Other people started putting their wetsuits on at this point, which I should have done, but I was worried the shuttle would come while I was in the middle of it. So I froze.

The shuttle came, and we had an uneventful ride to T1. Upon arriving, someone on a megaphone called out that the sprint race would start in 20 minutes. I rushed to get my gear ready, including putting on my wetsuit and sunscreen…not in that order. I made it down to the water and worked towards the front and center of the group. They gave us a quick orientation on where to swim (there had been no pre-race orientation), and suddenly the air-horn went off and we went off as well. It was cold, but not shockingly cold. But given that I was still a bit lethargic from the night’s sleep, I felt completely unprepared for the swim. I wish I would have taken the time to jog around and open up my lungs, or get some swimming in before to get warmed up. Surprisingly, I swam the 750 meters in 13:33, which is a decent time for me. I say surprising because I felt completely out of it as I swam, and after running up the boat ramp and getting to my bike, I was so dizzy I fell against the bike rack and had trouble standing up.

In fact, I just looked and the fastest male in the entire event only finished the swim in 12:34, so not even a full minute ahead of me. Dang, now I feel even better. In fact, if I were just a little more on top of my game I’m sure I could have gotten there with the first place guy. Well, maybe next time.

Once in my bike shoes and holding on to my bike, I regained my balance and ran out of transition, mounted the bike, and was off. I made my way out of the park, and on to the highway with the long hill. It wasn’t as bad in real life as it had seemed when driving it. It took a while, but I felt fine. In retrospect, I would have put more effort into that hill and I probably could have shaved a minute or two off my bike time. But my endurance training has got it stuck in my head that you don’t push things hard early in the race and I am going to have to unlearn that a bit for these sprint events.

Everything went fine on the bike until I got to a spot where we turn left off a frontage road, go over the highway, and then on to the frontage road on the other side. The left turn comes after a high-speed area, and I didn’t realize how little turning room I would have. As I turned, I was keeping my eye on the pavement to make sure I wouldn’t hit any gravel patches. All of a sudden, I saw the edge of the pavement coming closer and closer, and realized I couldn’t turn sharply enough to avoid going off the road. Off the road I went, into a bunch of gravel, and I thought “Oh man, I’m going down.” Somehow, I didn’t go down, which is as miraculous to me now as it was then, but I did lose all my speed while still in high gear, and as I tried to shift and get some traction on the gravel, my chain slipped off. I stopped, unclipped, and lost a good minute getting my chain back on.

Once the chain was back on, I was fine, and made my way along the road and into town. Both of my transition times were satisfactory for me (they had wetsuit strippers at the end of the swim which helped a lot), and after T2 I was quickly out on my run. The run was mostly on an asphalt running trail, which is what I train on around my house, so I felt at home. The trail was mostly flat, with only some slight uphill portions on the way out, which meant some slight downhill on the way back. I felt good and tried to maintain a faster than normal pace on the way out, and then started pushing it on the way back, especially the last mile or so as I passed 2-3 people. The last third of a mile I started pushing myself harder, but not hard enough–some guy passed me right at the finish line and beat me by two seconds, pushing me down to 17th overall among the males.

Final stats:
bib number: 275
gender: M
overall place: 21 out of 102
division place (age group): 7 out of 14
gender place: 17 out of 62
time: 1:25:52
swim: 13:33
t1: 2:40
bike: 44:16
t2: 1:04
run: 24:21

By comparison, here are the times from the guy who won:

time: 1:09:25
pace: 0:
swim: 12:34
t1: 1:13
bike: 35:25
t2: 0:32
run: 19:42

Interesting, I must have beat him out of transition, which means he must have had some sort of problem in there. But he certainly made up for it later.

Final thoughts? Fun, but it would have been more fun with my family there. The next one is in a month, but I’ve got a vacation in the middle, so we’ll see if I end up any faster by then.

Who’s got some recommendations?

Training for an Ironman requires 15-20 hours per week of training (or if not actual training time, then training-related time), maybe more, if you’re slow at the gym like I am and you factor in drive time. It’s an incredible sacrifice not only for the individual, but that individual’s family. Then there is the money involved in getting to the event and back, which is a few grand if you’re taking the whole family as I’ve been planning on doing. For me, to spend upwards of 400 hours on training and a few thousand dollars on travel and lodging, only to end up with the event being postponed or the swim canceled isn’t an endeavor in which I want to participate.

It’s not that the time would be wasted, of course. I’d still have the health benefits of all that training. But I don’t like the uncertainty of not knowing whether the event I’m training for is going to happen. Of course there’s always the risk that an Ironman might be canceled, or that at least the swim portion might be canceled, but generally I’d say that risk is fairly low compared to the risk that Florida Ironman 2010 will be canceled or turned into a duathlon.

As for doing a duathlon, I’m not into it. For me, if I do an Ironman without the swim, it’s not really an Ironman. If I were on the spot and they announced the day of the race that the swim was canceled, I might still participate, even though I wouldn’t go around telling people afterward that I had “Finished an Ironman”. But if I were already there, and had already spent the money and had done the training, then why not at least get a good bike/run brick workout in? But I wouldn’t buy plane tickets to do an Ironman duathlon, even if I had already done the training.

If the folks who run Ironman had already announced a different swim venue, then that might have changed my mind. But with the time having approached for me to start my training in earnest, I feel I need to make a decision one way or the other, and given the uncertainty (and the other personal factors I mentioned at the beginning) I’m deciding to drop out. Perhaps the oil will never hit Panama City, and come November I’ll be thinking “Dang, I could be there right now.” But that really isn’t the point. The point is that right now, in June, I don’t know what’s going to happen, and that’s all I need to know.

Now the question is this–do I get my partial refund now? Do I wait and hope that perhaps they will give full refunds if oil hits the beaches and they cancel the event? Will they postpone the event and give us the option of doing the race in 2011? Does anybody know what they did for participants after the recent cancellation of the Japan Ironman?

What would be really nice would be if they would let me trade my Florida Ironman 2010 registration for the St. George Ironman 2011 in Utah.

When I did Oceanside, my training plan was “each week swim a little farther, bike a little farther, run a little farther.” It worked, in that I finished the half-Ironman, but it didn’t work very well in that it took me over 7 hours. In preparation for Oceanside all I had under my belt were two sprint-distance triathlons. This time I had those events, plus another sprint, my first olympic, and a full marathon. Having done one half-Ironman already, I had a good idea of what I was up against, where I needed to hold back, and where I could let loose a bit. Also, I was weighing in about 15 lbs lighter than at Oceanside, and this time had a new tri-bike instead of my old road bike. This new bike was a disadvantage as well as an advantage, since I had only got it a few weeks before, and therefore wasn’t completely adjusted to riding it. But I figured that overall it would be a benefit. Given these improvements in my training, physical condition, and equipment, I decided to set a goal of finishing the race in under 6 hours.

Brynn and I made a family trip out of the event by driving up with our two-year old daughter and 4-month old son. The plan was to drive up Thursday, check in and prep for the race on Friday, race Saturday, relax Sunday, and drive home Monday.

The trip from Salt Lake City to Boise is about 6 hours, and fortunately both kids slept most of the way, or at least didn’t scream. Unfortunately that pattern didn’t hold the whole time we were in Boise, but I don’t believe in giving kids opium so what’s a parent to do? We stayed with my wife’s second parents, the Newby’s, who treated us with the utmost hospitality and Joan, the mom, was an absolute life-saver the day of the event as my wife tried to enjoy things while herding the two kids and their diapers. But let’s get on to the details of the event…

Friday – Athlete Check-in

Friday morning we woke up, and I got ready to drive from Meridian, where we were staying, to downtown Boise to check in. Thus began what turned out to be a bit of a nightmare, the only silver lining of which was that I was able to familiarize myself with a large portion of Boise. Getting downtown wasn’t a problem. I quickly arrived and found out where the Qwest Arena was. The problem was finding somewhere to park. The information packet, unless I missed something, had no information or recommendations on where to park for check-in.

There were plenty of spots in the area, but they were all taken. Even the “No Parking–Loading Zone Only–Tow-Away Zone” spots were taken by what were obviously athletes checking in. I should have grabbed one of those, but decided I would find a metered spot somewhere. In retrospect, I should have paid for parking in a garage, but I was set on not spending $4, and at the time I didn’t think it would take me 45 minutes to find a spot.

One of the problems downtown Boise shares with many other metro areas is that those who founded the city did not plan for our modern day, meaning their streets are not wide enough to accommodate two-way automobile traffic. The city therefore has no choice but to make all the streets one-way streets. This meant I couldn’t just circle the block until a parking spot opened up, but rather I would drive by the arena, want to turn left, but be forced to go straight or turn right. I would turn right, but then I couldn’t turn right on the next street either, but I certainly didn’t want to go left, not that I really wanted to go straight either, but if I went straight then theoretically I would be able to turn right at the next street. I would turn right, but then realize I was now too far away from the arena to park, so I would try to find my way back. Whoops, I turned right again too early, and wasn’t able to scope out a block where parking would result in a reasonable walk. That meant repeating the process all over again, but turning right one block later so that I could have the right approach to the arena. Of course a parking spot would not be available, so then I had to repeat the process again or try something else. You know, I’m not sure it took just 45 minutes. Maybe it was an hour and a half. All I know is I am now quite familiar with all the streets of downtown Boise.

My recommendation for future Boise half-Ironman participants? Be prepared to pay to park in a parking garage. Or…Google the OfficeMax store. There’s a small, almost hidden street there that is metered, and there were several open spots, and it’s just a one-block walk to the arena. There’s just one problem–you can only pay for an hour on the meter.

As I exited my car, there was a parking meter cop printing out a ticket and putting it on an athlete’s car. This probably should have been a warning to me. But in my mind I thought “They must just be hanging out and forgot they only have an hour to get back to their car, it couldn’t possibly take a whole hour to walk to the arena and check in.”

I jogged over to the arena, and found a half-hour line for check-in. Let me say right now that the volunteers were wonderful. But someone, somewhere, could have made some small changes that would have eliminated this check-in line, or at least cut it in half. You see, the first booth was the primary bottleneck, because there was only one person there. There were actually three volunteers there, but only one of them was checking people in. Why the other two weren’t, or couldn’t, I don’t know, but it seems like giving them the ability to check people in would be fairly simple.

As I stood in line and got a sense of how slow it was moving, I started to sweat a bit. Maybe I wasn’t going to make it back to my car in time to avoid a ticket, and instead of paying $4 for a parking garage, I was going to pay $25 for a parking ticket. I tried to mentally will the line to move faster, but it slowly shuffled along, as though everyone in it were saying “Hey, there will be enough rushing around tomorrow, today we can just relax and take it easy.”

Once I got through the first station, things moved a bit more briskly, but I kept checking the time nervously, and as soon as I had my gear bag and everything in hand, I ran through the area where they try to sell you stuff and jogged back to my car. Turns out I had 8 minutes left on the meter, but better safe than sorry.

Friday – Getting Home

If finding parking in downtown Boise was an exercise in frustration, the drive home was quite a bit worse. As I drove off, leaving the parking meter cop disappointed at his loss, I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. I knew I was supposed to go up the street on one side of the Qwest Arena and get back on the 84 to go back home, but I found myself on a one-way street that took me by Boise State University. Then I was going around the University. Then I was driving through old, tree-lined streets. A few more attempts to get back downtown and I was thoroughly lost. In my head I kept thinking “I just need to get back downtown, then I can get on the freeway” but the more I thought “I bet if I turn here I’ll end up there” the more I ended up in what appeared to be suburbs. The tall trees and lack of huge mountains, like we have in Utah, made it so that I had no idea what direction I was really headed in.

I tried using the Google Maps application on my Blackberry, but it was loading too slow and it was dangerous to try and make it work while driving. And I didn’t stop to do it because I kept thinking “Oh, right over there, I think I can see downtown!” I think it took me about an hour to get back on the freeway. Then I missed my exit, got off on the next one, and got lost in an industrial area. By the time I got home, I had been gone for 4-5 hours, and this ate substantially into the time I had wanted to spend dropping off my bike at the first transition area, driving the bike course and seeing the run course.

I arrived home, we put the kids in the car, got my bike on top and the other gear in the trunk, and took off to Lucky Peak Reservoir.

Whoops – Shuttle Tickets

In my rush to not get a parking ticket, I had forgotten to ask as check-in about tickets for the shuttle. You see, the transitions for Boise are different than many other triathlons. In most triathlons you have a transition area that is near the swim area, and after you swim you go to transition and get on your bike, leave, and then return to the same spot, get in your running shoes, leave, and finish back in the same spot. At Boise, you bike from the transition area, but you never return there. Instead, you bike to a second and separate transition area downtown. Now, just save this information in the back of your mind for later.

T1 (the transition area from which you swim and then start your bike course) does not have a lot of room. There is virtually no room for parking. The information packet says you can buy shuttle tickets online prior to the end of May so that you don’t have to have someone drive up and drop you off. If you don’t get them prior to the end of May, the packet says you can get them at the “Information Booth” the day before race day. I hadn’t planned on using the shuttle, figuring my wife could just drive me up, but then we decided that due to the late 2 pm start and the napping needs of our children it would be better for me to take the shuttle up by myself, and my wife and kids would miss the swim start and just see me later on at the bike-to-run transition and then the finish.

I assumed the information booth was located somewhere in the Qwest Arena where check-in was, but I hadn’t seen it while checking in, and in my rush forgot to ask someone. But no worries, the information packet said the information booth was open on Friday until 8 pm, so we figured we would drive the bike course, which ends up downtown by the arena, and then I could run in and see if I could buy a shuttle ticket. More on how this worked out below.

Friday – Bike drop-off

You’re allowed to drop your bike off at T1 the day before the race, along with your helmet and shoes and anything else you can attach to your bike. I did this and tied a garbage bag around the seat, and another around my handlebars and helmet in case it rained, which I believe it did that night.

T1 is located to one side of Lucky Peak Reservoir. To get there you drive across the dam. As we neared T1, there were cars parked along side the road with people getting their bikes off of or out of them, and more people parking in a line behind the cars already parked. I decided to drive on past all these cars and see if there were some spots at the very spot. There were plenty of open spots at the front, which saved me from an extra five minutes of walking in the hot sun.

The spots are all assigned in T1 and T2, which is kind of nice because it means it doesn’t matter when you get there–it’s not as though all the good spots will be taken. It turned out I had a pretty good spot, right on the end of a row, and instead of another row behind me, there was a tree planter which meant I didn’t have to worry about bumping into people behind me as I got my bike out after the swim. I set my bike up, used the restroom (I was a quite hydrated at this point and having to pee every hour), and went to check out the swim start. Having satisfied myself, we left to drive the bike course.

Friday – Driving the Course

When I did Oceanside I’m not even sure I looked at a map before the race. I just showed up and did it. This time around I had checked out maps, and decided to drive the course so that I would know better what to expect.

Driving the course was fairly uneventful, but one note about the Micron Property. The information packet tells you that you cannot bike it the day before the race, but you can certainly drive it. The only problem is that the street names on the bike course map don’t conform to the names on the Micron Property, and thus we got lost on the Micron Property and drove all the way around it. It appeared several other cars were equally confused as they were also driving all around and criss-crossing paths with us.

We had gotten a ways away from Micron when we realized that due to our late start driving the course, our kids were going to need to eat soon, we needed to eat soon, and we didn’t have time to eat before going to the information booth downtown. So we cut the bike course trip short by not driving to the turnaround point, and we started on it towards downtown.

Friday – The Information Booth

Rather than messing around with parking, I parked in the “No Parking–Unloading Zone” parking right outside the arena. My wife was in the car, so if they really wanted to tow the car she could just drive away and pick me up.

It was a little bit after 7 pm, well ahead of the 8 pm closing of the information booth, but when I got inside the arena the inner doors were all locked and nobody was around. Two female athletes came out of an elevator and  asked me if I knew how to get in. They said they had taken the elevator to see if they could get in from another floor, but had met with defeat (one of them was missing the bib number stickers from her race packet and was trying to get them). Unable to get in, we left to see if perhaps there was an information booth outside somewhere. They went one way and I went another. I found an Ironman staff member (not a volunteer) putting banners on the fences for T2, and asked him if he knew where the information booth was, the one that was allegedly open until 8 pm. He called someone, and that person said I could buy shuttle passes the next morning. Apparently the information booth was a hoax of some sort, only referenced in the information packet for entertainment purposes.

Anyway, we decided Brynn would just drop me off at the reservoir, and then take the kids home for a nap. Forget the shuttle.

Friday Night

We found some food and comfort at Golden Corral (I wasn’t the only athlete eating there, I noticed from the blue wristbands others were wearing), went home, and got to bed. I have to admit it was nice not having to stress out that evening since the race didn’t start until 2 pm the next day. Leave the stressing for the morning.

Saturday Morning – Gear Bags

I suppose it’s clear once you’ve done it, but I think the information packet could explain things a bit better. In the first paragraph of the shuttle tickets section above, I explained how there are two transition areas. You leave your wetsuit and other swim gear at the first transition area, and you never go back there. So how does your stuff meet up with you again? You’re given a swim transition bag, and after you’re done with your swim you stuff your wetsuit, goggles, cap, and everything else you’re not going to take on your bike into that bag, tie the strings, and drop it in the appropriate box. The bag is numbered (if you got your stickers and stuck one on), as are the boxes, and that evening you pick up the bag at the second transition area where your bike is stored during the run.

But wait, there’s another bag! What about the stuff you wear before the swim? Like shorts, a shirt, a hat, etc.? There’s a “morning clothes bag” for that. You drop this bag off with volunteers prior to beginning the swim.

Yet one more! The final bag is your run gear bag. You see, you’re going to come in to T2 on your bike, and now you need to put on your running shoes, socks, hat, sunglasses, etc. Where is this stuff? It’s in your run gear bag, which you drop off at T2 Saturday morning.

Saturday Morning – Pre-race

So on Saturday morning I got all three gear bags ready, and we drove downtown to T2. There was a small parking lot on the corner right next to T2, so we quickly pulled in there, I ran into T2, found my spot (which again was a great spot, right at the entrance of T2 which meant I could quickly get off my bike and into my running shoes rather than having to run the length of T2 in my bike shoes), left my bag there, and got back in the car. It all took about two minutes, which in part made up for the hassle of the day before.

We then drove up to Lucky Peak Reservoir so that Brynn could drop me off there with my other two gear bags. As we got to the reservoir and turned right to drive across the dam, we were stopped by a man of the law. He informed us that there was no traffic allowed across the dam the day of the race. Uhhh…could I get out and walk? Nope. Uhhh…did this mean the only way to get to the race was to take the shuttle? Of course not, the man informed me, all I had to do was drive to the bottom of the reservoir, and my wife could drop me off there.

“But how do I get to the top of the reservoir?”

“You hike up.”

“I hike up?”

“Yeah, see all those people on that trail down there?”

“Yeah…”

What I saw was a dirt trail extending from a recreation area at the bottom of the reservoir and winding up and around it towards T1. It looked pretty steep, and pretty long. And the day was already quite warm.

We drove down, I got all my gear, and I started following the others up the trail, carrying my heavy gear bags, the strings on which were cutting into my hands, which might be the cause of my pinkies being numb for two days afterward. The hike was hot, dusty, steep, and about 1/2 mile long. I also think it may have re-strained my left soleus which slowed me down during the run portion later.

In other words, taking the shuttle is a good idea. If only the information packet had informed us that not taking the shuttle meant you get to start your half-Ironman off with a 1/2 mile hike in the hot sun.

Pre-race Excitement…and Sunburn

T1 is an asphalt parking lot without much shade. Getting there early means waiting around in very hot sun, and this is when I got my feet burned walking around in flip-flops. At least I was smart enough to put sunblock on my neck.

I chatted with a few people, kept drinking lots of fluids (which I was losing rapidly in the hot sun), and waited in the potty line. One more complaint–why are there only 4 porta-potties in T1 where everybody is hanging out, but 40 of them down the hill towards the swim start where nobody hangs out until right before the swim?

One great thing they had in T1 was a guy with an electric pump checking tire pressure. I don’t remember seeing this at Oceanside, and it was great to be able to pump up the tires quickly and correctly without having to bring your own big pump.

A new rule was announced, apparently created within two hours of the start, that only pros can have their shoes clipped onto their bikes. Everyone else has to put their shoes on prior to exiting T1. Since I’ve never gotten on my bike with the shoes already clipped on, this wasn’t an issue for me, except that I had been feeling a bit adventurous and had thought of trying it this time around. The rule put an end to that which was probably a good thing.

As I waited around in the sun, trying to find some shade, I realized I was still wearing my sunglasses. The sunglasses I was supposed to wear on my run. The sunglasses I was not going to wear on my bike because they’re not made for biking and get in the way and slip down my nose. The sunglasses I don’t wear on my bike because I have a super neat LG Superleggera aero helmet with a visor on it. The sunglasses I had meant to leave at T2 that morning when I dropped my run-gear bag off there. I quickly realized there was no way for me to get my sunglasses down to T2 without carrying them on the bike. It took me a few minutes more to realize there was no way to carry them safely other than to wear them. I considered the pros and cons, and decided that wearing the sunglasses on the bike would be more detrimental than not having them on the run, and so put them in my morning gear bag. 1st mistake of the day–darn.

Pre-Swim

Normally I’m pretty nervous in the hour or so before a race, but this time I was feeling pretty relaxed. After all, this was just a warm-up for the full Ironman in November, and I had already done a half before, so what was there to be nervous about? I was so relaxed, in fact, that I wasn’t keeping track of time and hadn’t had my tires checked yet when the race announcer yelled out “T1 closes in 5 minutes!”

I grabbed my bike and ran over to get it checked. Then ran back to my rack, stripped off my shorts and t-shirt to expose my black superman one-piece underneath, and ran with my morning clothes bag, wetsuit, goggles, earplugs, and swim cap to join the throng over in the swim area. After using the bathroom again, I gave my morning clothes bag to a volunteer, put my wetsuit on up to my waist, and go in line with my wave.

As we waited for the swim we struggled to keep our feet cool by standing in the shadow of other people or standing on the white painted lines that were cooler than the black asphalt. It really was quite warm, and the people who had fully suited up and put their swim caps on too early were sweating profusely. I decided to wait until the last minute.

The Swim

The race has a wave start, and having turned 35 in May I was just barely in the men’s 35-39 wave, which started at 2:25 (the male pros were the first wave, at 2:00). We made our way towards the front of the line and the water as wave after wave started every five minutes. When the last wave in front of us went in the water I started getting my wetsuit, goggles, earplugs, etc. in place. I checked the seal on my goggles several times, not wanting to repeat my last half-Ironman experience in which I put sunscreen on my face which prevented my goggles from sealing and ended up swimming the entire 1.2 miles with goggles full of water.

We walked into the water and swam to the start line where we floated, treading water and waiting for the horn. Somehow I had ended up right where I didn’t want to be–right in the middle. Not only the middle from side to side, but the middle front to back. But I didn’t have too much time to correct things because the horn sounded and we were off.

In every other triathlon the swim start has been hectic. Feet in my face, people swimming over me, my own feet kicking other people, swimming too hard and getting out of breath, etc. A few days prior to the race I asked Heath at PowerTri what his #1 swim tip for racing was, and he said “just relax”. As I started out, I thought “Ok, I’m just going to pretend I’m doing a normal workout at the pool.” I started swimming slowly, focused on my form and breathing, taking breaths on both sides every three strokes.

Soon, my muscles started loosening up and I started pulling a little harder and breathing on the same side every two strokes. As I would lift my head to sight, I kept seeing people to my right, people to my left, but nobody directly in front of me for 25-30 meters. This was great because I could swim straight ahead with my head down and not worry about running into someone. I’ve never had this happen before and it seemed strange since I was right in the middle of everyone at the start. But every time I sighted I had a clear path ahead, and I didn’t touch a single person’s foot with my hands until the very end of the race.

As we neared the first turn, I could feel my strength really coming on and I started pulling a lot harder. Apparently I pulled too hard because a minute after turning the buoy I noticed I had passed everyone. Not forwards, but to the side. I was 25 meters outside where everyone else was swimming. Not far enough that a kayaker had to come steer me back on course, but far enough that I felt a bit lonely. I was having some issues seeing clearly with my goggles (the lake water seemed to be sticking to the insides in big drops), but I thought I could see the next turn and so decided to go in a straight line towards it, rather than returning to the crowd, which would only make the distances farther and put me back in the crowd. I didn’t want to be that close to everyone else.

I was feeling quite good as I made the last turn. I’ve never been able to focus so well on swimming and ignore the giant fish and snapping turtles in the murky water that want to eat my toes. I know there isn’t any such thing in this lake, but somehow not being able to see the bottom always makes me feel like something is going to bite my foot off. Must be that book I read when I was a kid about the old man’s pond with the giant snapping turtle in it.

As I neared shore, I realized I should have been swimming harder. I was feeling great and not at all tired out like I normally do at the end of the swim. Normally I get out of the water and feel like I’m going to pass out. This time I just felt great, and wished I had pushed just a little bit harder. But it was too late for that. I stood up as soon as I could and started getting my wetsuit unzipped as I ran up the boat ramp.

T1

Something else Boise has that Oceanside doesn’t–wetsuit strippers! I’m glad I didn’t try to take my wetsuit off by myself right out of the water, as I would have had something not tickled the back of my mind. No, it wasn’t a line in the information packet informing us that there would be wetsuit strippers (that would have been nice), I just didn’t feel like I should take it off immediately out of the water because it seemed like I’d be in everyone’s way. When I saw the strippers I couldn’t help but grin, and I ran over, laid down on the carpet, and two guys grabbed the waist of my wetsuit and ripped it off my legs in a flash, pulled me up, and shoved the wetsuit into my arms and I was off running towards my bike.

Once at my bike, I realized my spot wasn’t as fortunate as I thought it was. I had mistook which side of the rack I was supposed to get my bike from, so after I was all changed and ready to go, I realized I had to run around the rack to the other side because my bike wasn’t going to fit under the rack. This only added a few seconds since I was at the end of the rack (thank goodness I wasn’t in the middle of a long one) but it was a mistake nonetheless that I should have noticed during the hour and a half I was standing around in T1 before the swim, doing nothing.

I got everything on, including my Garmin, and ran towards the bike start. I hadn’t worn a watch nor seen the time when I came out of the swim, so I had no idea what my time was at this point. But I was pretty sure I had beat my previous time at Oceanside of almost 41 minutes.

The Bike

The bike starts out with a short downhill, which is nice to get firmly on the bike, and then a small climb to the dam, which is flat all the way across. At the end of the dam you start the downward descent out of the canyon. I was looking forward to hitting 40 mph, but as the road turned we were hit with a gust of wind so strong that it started slowing us down and required us to put some effort into maintaining speed–even on a steep hill. This would be the beginning of what turned out to be the windiest bike ride of my life.

I’m not sure what details to share about the bike ride. It was on roads, there were some decent hills (nothing like The Big Hill at Oceanside), and the volunteers, spectators, and traffic control were great. What set this ride apart from any other was the WIND! I’ve hit some pretty good winds before, but this was like nothing else I’ve experienced. I figured the winds were around 30 mph. They were brutal. On areas where we should have been riding at 20-25 mph, we were going 5-10 mph, in aero position, in low gear, just trying to dodge the wind and keep moving. A slight downhill felt like a steep hill because of the headwind. A steep downhill felt like flat. Fortunately, there were a few times when the wind was at our backs and so going up a steeper hill felt like a mild hill, and a mild hill felt like flat. Flat felt like downhill as we rode 30 mph and couldn’t feel a trace of breeze because we were moving with the wind. It was at these times that my aero-helmet started feeling pretty warm, and it almost felt good when we would hit another headwind that would cool me down.

During the bike I had the new experience of feeling like I couldn’t take in any more liquids. Normally I can drink quite a bit, but my stomach was feeling just a tiny bit queasy, and I didn’t want to be the guy on the side of the road hacking up his stomach and being taken out of the race. I didn’t feel thirsty, but I did feel like I needed more energy, and much of it was stored in my drink that I had made extra goopy for this purpose. I trusted my gut instead of my head, and I think that was the right decision, even though at the end of the bike ride I hadn’t finished off my first drink bottle and hadn’t touched the second. All I took in during the bike was two packages of Gu Chomps, two Gus, and perhaps 18 oz of EFS sports drink.

As we neared the final stage of the bike, I realized I was ahead of where I thought I would be. I was thinking 3 hrs at the fastest, but more likely 3:20 or so. I knew that a 40:00 combined swim and T1 and a combined 3:20 bike and T2 would put me where I needed to be to run a 2:00 half marathon and reach my goal of doing a sub-6 hour half-Ironman. As I saw that my bike ride was going to be closer to the 3:00 side of things, I started to feel pretty good about reaching my goal, or maybe even coming in 10-20 minutes ahead of it.

My one concern was how low on energy I was feeling. As I was about five minutes from the end of the bike, I started feeling tired. The kind of tired where you just want to lay down in bed and go to sleep. I did NOT feel like running a half marathon at this point.

T2

I pulled into T2 at just over 3 hours. That felt good. At this point I realized I was on the wrong side of the rack again. I ended up having to lift my bike over the rack to put it on correctly.

I took my bike shoes off, put my socks on (I was planning on going sockless but changed my mind the morning of), and got my shoes on. I stood up, and jogged through the transition area towards the run start, turned the corner, ran through some buildings, and out into the start area that ran parallel to the finish.

The Run

The bib numbers we wear have our names on them, but they must not have at Oceanside, because people were calling my name out. I couldn’t get used to this, because I kept thinking somebody I knew was there and recognized me. I’d look at the person who called out “Way to go Josh!” and I’d think “Who in the world is that? Do I know this person?” Even after I realized what was going on, it would still catch me off guard. But I think it was a great thing in that it helped make the race feel more friendly and personable. I’m guessing it made the volunteers feel more of a connection as well.

This is where I first saw my wife and kids and Joan Newby who had come along to help out. They waved, I waved, and ran on. Due to the nature of the run course they were able to see me several more times during the run.

As I started the run I realized I needed to pee. I saw one guy peeing in some bushes in a highly public area–I guess he had to go so bad he couldn’t worry about propriety, or rules, for that matter. I found a porta-potty at the first aid station next to the river along which the run course wends its way, and decided it was worth the 1:00 to 1:30 I was going to lose by going, since the potty was quite a way behind the aid station, plus I wasn’t counting on this being a quick pee.

Upon exiting I did feel quite a bit better, and lighter. I took my friend Te Koi’s tip of filling my cap with the ice handed out at the aid station, which felt great on my head and seemed to do a good job of keeping my body temp low. At this point the temperature was around 77 degrees, and even though much of the run is shaded, it was still plenty warm.

Did I mention I didn’t feel like running? It wasn’t getting better as I ran more. The first half felt pretty brutal. Whereas I normally run 9:00 min miles if I’m doing a 13 mile training run, I was now struggling to keep 10:00 miles, and I knew that whatever advantage I had gotten on the bike was now being eroded away. But I didn’t know exactly how much. I didn’t have a total time for the event so far, and I had forgotten to start my watch immediately out of T2, so I knew things were a little bit off and I couldn’t depend on my Garmin to tell me whether I was 1-2 minutes from goal. I knew it would tell me if I was 10-20 minutes away from my goal, but I couldn’t trust it to be more precise due to my haphazard management of it.

As I finished the first half of the half marathon, I started to feel a little better. My running muscles seemed to be picking up energy, most likely from the aid stations, and I was getting into a better rhythm. But I was also experiencing some pain in my lower left leg, the soleus area, and I was still tired.

It’s hard to express in words how hot and tired I felt. As we crossed over the large, fast running river, I kept feeling the temptation to jump in and float down. Sure, I’d probably drown, but that water would feel sooooo good.

The time dragged on, and I wished I had my iPod and a good book to listen to. Most of all, I just wished I had the stomach to swallow another Gu or two, but I felt like if I did I would vomit for sure. All I could handle were small amounts of Gatorade, orange slices, sips of water, and chewing on ice. A small piece of banana took me five minutes to get down and I almost lost it once or twice while trying to swallow it. My stomach just wasn’t in the mood.

I started to wonder how close I was to meeting my goal. I knew my run time wasn’t going to be close to what I wanted it to be. But would my good bike time make up for it? What if I finished and I was 30 seconds past 6:00? What a bummer that would be, eh?

I walked the aid stations, and a few of the small hills (there are only very, very small hills on the run, it’s mostly quite flat–I probably shouldn’t even call the bumps “hills”). But mostly I just ran slower than I normally do. Keeping a 9:00 pace just seemed too hard mentally.

The two final miles seemed to drag on forever. But it felt a lot better than Oceanside, where by this time I was running all by myself for the most part, the majority of other participants having finished. This time I knew I was doing better than many, if not most of the other racers.

As I rounded the final turn and heard the crowd I picked up the pace to run to the finish. As it turns out, I was mostly alone, having nobody for a long ways in front of me and nobody I could hear behind me, so I got a healthy dose of cheering from the crowd and people calling out my name.

I looked up at the clock as I ran across the finish line and was able to make out three numbers; 6:26. What?! I had started 25 minutes after the race start, so this meant my time was…6:01 and some seconds. You gotta be kidding me! I wasn’t ticked, I was laughing. I couldn’t believe after all that I had come to within a minute and a few seconds of my sub-6 hour goal. All it would have required for me to make my goal was to have picked it up slightly on the bike, on the run, or on the swim. A few seconds here and there was all that had put me over the 6:00 mark.

I was thinking all this, but I was also desperate to find a porta potty, because now I realized I was seriously close not only to vomiting, but I could feel a massive diarrhea attack coming on. I had visions of simultaneously vomiting and having diarrhea right there at the finish line in front of the huge crowd. I caught a glimpse of two porta potties at the end and ran for them and somehow I was able to hold it until I got inside. I didn’t vomit, but…well, let’s just say when it came to the other end I did my job. I exited, feeling much better.

Now, at Oceanside you finished and were quickly escorted inside a tent full of food. Here, I finished, and stood there not sure where to go. There was no tent. There was no food or drink. There were a lot of people milling about. Where’s the darn food?! My wife found me and we ended up having to find a volunteer and ask them. We found out the food was about 100 meters down a path between two buildings. It was completely out of sight from the race finish. This too would have been nice to know beforehand.

We walked together down to the food, and after drinking a can of soda I felt well enough to eat a single slice of pizza, and 20 minutes or so later well enough to eat a few more bites of other food.

They were posting printouts of the times over on a wall, and I went and checked it out. As I read over from my name, I saw that the 6:26 time was wrong! I had actually finished in 5:57! They must have gotten something wrong somewhere, or my wave didn’t start on time, or something. Only after getting home to Utah and checking the website would I find out that no, the first time was right, and the 5:57 was wrong…at least I think it was. I swear that’s what my time was on the printout, however, so I’m still not entirely sure. But here’s what the website says, and what would seem to be more likely to be correct:

JOSHUA STEIMLE

What’s the lesson here? For me, I think I learned something about really giving it your all. If I had known I was going to be that close, I would have tried harder. I should have assumed it would be that close, and I should have tried as hard as I could. On a technical level, I should have worn a watch in addition to my Garmin, so that I could have known exactly how close I was.

Another lesson, however, is that you can’t make up for this type of thing in the last minute or two. In order to have met my goal, I would have had to run faster throughout the half marathon, or at least over a few miles. I couldn’t have made that up in the last mile or two. Maybe in three. Probably in four. Definitely in five or six. But if I had just maintained 10:00 miles instead of 10:20, that would have kept the run fairly easy, and I would have easily have made my goal.

Well, live and learn, kids. It’s all mental.

Summary

Overall, the race was great. The volunteers were great, the course was great, and things were very well organized 95% of the time. Where there is room for improvement is mostly in the information packet which often left me feeling confused, and which didn’t contain certain information that would have been quite helpful. Oh, and the t-shirt sizes, which are all too small (I know I’m not the only one with this problem). Normally I fit into a large just fine, but the large I’m wearing as I type this is smaller than some mediums I’ve tried on. I would have gotten a different size when they were handing them out, but I was in a rush to not get that parking ticket…

Thank you to the race organizers, the volunteers, PowerTri, my coach David Warden, the Newby family, my friends and family, and especially my wife for putting up with all my training.

Placings

#447 out of 784 participants.

#93 in my age group (male, ages 35-39) out of 175

The goal is to do it all in less than six hours, or an hour faster than my last half-Ironman a little over two years ago. That will require cutting about a half hour off the bike and another half hour off the run. I don’t think I can shave more than a few minutes off the swim, but we’ll see.

You see, I just finished my first marathon a week ago. I’ve been biking, swimming, and lifting weights under adult supervision since August of last year without any break for the winter, and I’m not taking a break until I do my full Ironman in November (Panama City, Florida). In planning out the year, my coach and I figured that based on event availability and my desire to complete a marathon prior to the Ironman that I should do the Salt Lake marathon in April, the Boise half-Ironman in June, and then the full Ironman in November. The only tight part was that it only gave me 8 weeks in between the marathon and the half-Ironman, including a week of recovery after the marathon.

Well, the marathon and the recovery week are over, so now I’ve got seven weeks left to train specifically for the half-Ironman. Obviously if the half-Ironman were my one race of the year, I probably wouldn’t have put the emphasis on running that I have for the past five months in order to gear up for the marathon, so maybe I’d be in better all-around shape for the half, but then again, maybe not, since running was always my worst thing and having trained for the marathon I’m feeling pretty good about my running these days.

So here’s my plan, again, in rough draft form, without much detail.

Note: This plan has been updated since I first posted it, after my coach took a look at it. I haven’t stuck to it perfectly (I completely missed my big brick on May 8th because I was busy voting Bob Bennett out of office), but other than that I’ve done a decent job so far. You’ll notice a lot of 10 minute bike rides in there. I ride my bike on my trainer for 10 minutes before each run to get me good and warmed up so that I don’t get another soleus strain, which I believe was caused in part by running cold.

First off, I have no doubt I’ll do better this time around. I had zero coaching for my first half-Ironman (other than general advice from friends), and I wasn’t doing much self-coaching either. I just went out and swam, biked, and ran a little farther each week. In retrospect, it’s something of a miracle I finished my first half, even if it did take me seven hours and thirteen minutes (includes a trip to the medical tent to take care of a sliced-open big toe that evidently happened during the swim–who ends up with a foot injury in the swim?!).

This time I’ve been religiously studying the Triathlete’s Training Bible (I guess since the word “bible” is used I should clarify that I don’t actually take the TTB to my church meetings), have had a coach (although he’s having to discontinue his coaching services to me due to his crazy busy schedule…but that’s a topic for another post), I weigh at least 10 lbs less, maybe 15 lbs less (can’t remember off the top of my head how much I weighed for my first one), I’ve already got a half under my belt, not to mention a marathon, I’ll be using a Garmin vs. just biking/running blind, etc. Oh, and I don’t plan on cutting my toe open on the swim. In just about every way I’ve got a huge advantage over my first half. Actually, in every way. I can’t think of a single advantage I had doing my first half-Ironman over this second one.

The med-tent visit alone took over 10 minutes, so that takes us down to 7 hours even, let’s say. I was running 12-13 minute miles, vs. 9 minute miles now, so let’s say 3:30 minutes shaved off per mile on the run x 13 miles = 45:30. We’re already down to about 6:15. Oh, on my first half-Ironman swim my goggles came off and I got sunscreen in my eyes. You better believe that added some time to my swim, so let’s take off five minutes there–6:10. And this time on the bike I’ll be in the aero position (I rode a road bike without aero bars last time). That should shave off at least five minutes, I would think.

The above time-savings don’t reflect anything about the course. Add to the list of positives that Boise has just over 400 ft of elevation difference on the bike ride (albeit a bit more consistently hilly, whereas Oceanside has one very large hill and then some smaller ones) vs. almost 800 ft. for Oceanside. The runs are both relatively flat, as near as I can tell. But I think the easier bike course should get me to within striking distance of doing a sub-6 hour half-Ironman, which I’d feel pretty darn good about at this point in my triathlon career.

There is some risk, however. Last year it rained. That would probably slow me down a little. But if nothing else, I’m pretty sure I won’t be as bad off as this guy when I finish. That guy’s experience makes my cut toe at Oceanside look like a pinprick.

Well, tomorrow is the first day of training, and here I am typing this up at 12:39 am. I’m not off to the best start when it comes to getting adequate rest.