Well, here it goes….it was a 16 hour day so brace yourself for a long read. You may find yourself expecting caddy fees after going all “18 holes” with me on this :)
The Swim: All 200 pros started at 6:45am. That left 1600 athletes for the mass start at 7am. What a crush of people! I’m amazed that I got through it without getting whacked. No shortage of body contact, though. No time to look at fishes – I had to constantly focus on my positioning.
T1: You want to know the real reason for my 11 minute transition times? After a nice fresh water shower, I had a personal volunteer who helped me get drinking water, provide towels, help pull on my jog bra, and apply suntan lotion. Tell me again what the upside to getting on the bike was?
You may have noticed the “pull on the jog bra” part. That’s right. Someone was there to help do that! Because I was wet, getting a jog bra on was hard work. I really needed the help!
I know what you are thinking; all the help should have made me faster in the transition zone. But, keep in mind that I was here for the experience – and living large in the transition zone was part of the experience. Why rush it?
Bike part I: From my point of view, the bike ride had two distinct parts...the good part and the bad part!
The bike out to Hawi (the bike turnaround point at mile 59) was great. I was enjoying the scenery, happy with my pace and feeling good. Life was a breeze. The only bad part: this part of the ride was the genesis of my only injury on the day. At one aid station I was handed a Gatorade bottle with a defective lid – so that when I tried to squirt it out into my aerobar water bottle, the Gatorade spewed out the sides all over my bike and body. I stopped to get some water to wash it off. An overly helpful aid station volunteer tried to help me and squirted water all over me. My shoes and socks got wet. I’m pretty sure that was the beginning of my blister (believe it or not, I actually had band-aids with me!). Wind conditions weren’t great from mile 40 to the turnaround. I had a headwind/cross wind for 19 miles, but my overall pace was still pretty good.
Bike part II: Near the turnaround point was when I started having feet problems. My feet – mostly my toes – and mostly on the left foot -- felt like they were on fire. I found that stopping to take my shoes off helped alleviate the problem for 10 or so miles. After 10 miles, I would live with the pain for another 5 to 10 miles before stopping again to take my shoes off. This went on for the entire ride back into town. I even stopped 3 miles before the end of the bike portion! One aid station (the Hilton team) got me a block of ice to put my feet on. At some point I put a band-aid on my growing blister. Still, take away my feet, I was feeling strong. I got a small tailwind for 19 or so miles but that rapidly turned into a headwind for the ride into town. I knew I was running behind plan on the bike ride and I was starting to worry about the run. I knew I didn’t want to be finishing at midnight!
T2: Another 11 minute transition. Another personal spa session. Let’s just say I was happy to jettison my bike shoes.
Run: I started out strong. Then it started getting dark and I started to worry about getting tired, not from all the exercise, but because it would soon be past my bed time. In the heat of the moment, I decided to try drinking Cola to give me a caffeine boost – even though I’ve never tried it in training sessions. I’m telling you, cola over ice never tasted so good.
Around dusk the volunteers handed out glow sticks so the athletes could be seen in the dark. And it did get dark. They might have lost a participant or two. Around mile 18 they had a message board for friends/family to post personalized messages of encouragement (limited to 25 characters). Well, Ted and Hope thought it would be funny to post “Shoes untied?” or something like that. Well what I saw was “S E United”. Yeah, right – what the heck was that all about? And, contrary to the intent of the post, I stopped to really ponder the message. It was hard to get going again. Confused though I was I did go again! Right on through to the finish!
