Ironman Muncie 70.3 (July 12, 2014)
Everyone thinks I'm crazy but 3:11 am is plenty early, but such an awesome time to get up for a race... ok maybe a little early, but once you get going and on a race day nothing is to early! The drive in is one of my favorite things as you hit the high way and see all the other "crazies" out there with their bikes loaded on the back or the M-Dot stickers on the back of their vehicles, such a fun/exciting view.
Once there and parked it was time to load up the bike and everything I'll need for the rest of the day into transition. Once in transition it was time to pull all the stuff out and set up my spot for each leg of the race! Once that was set, time to go get my arms marked up and then things get serious... Oh and it was actually wetsuit legal! Someone dumped enough ice in the lake over the evening to get it cold enough and bring the temp to where we were aloud to use the wetsuit, score makes me feel soooo much more comfortable in the water! Once I got it all comfy it was time to find teammates and say hi before I take off on the swim and not see them for a little while.
Announcer gets on the speakers and tells us time, and I realize I gotta hit the john before I go otherwise my stomach and bladder isn't going to like me to well early on the bike... So I skip the line in transition and figured the lines if any would be better at the big section of johns down the hill. Nope wrong idea, apparently everyone and the twin brother had the same idea... time to wait in a line. Then the announcer comes on the speakers and says just a few minutes till the Pro's go off, and once the Pro's go off then I have 15 mins... So I'm really getting nervous cause I still have to get my wetsuit on afterwards, and try and squeeze a quick warm up in. Finally got i and out and "quickly" jumped in my wetsuit, if you have never put a wetsuit on... let me tell you there is no quickly to putting a wetsuit on, luckily a friend was there to help me zip up in the end. Got down to the beach front jumped in the water to get a few strokes in and feel good in the water, then I look up and realize no orange caps in the warm up section... I look over to the start line/shoot, and well they are all lined up in the water waiting for the gun to go off. I think that was the time my stomach dropped and thought I was gonna miss my start to the race, squeezed through the group about to walk through the gate and jumped into the water with the rest of the group 2 min before, nothing like cutting it close.
The gun goes off and we are off in the water, grabbing each other hitting each other and feeling crammed next to each other for a good portion at the beginning, but by the right turn we were finally stretched out, but that prob was partially to me not being right next to the buoys. Finally made it to the end of the swim (38:05) and phew glad that was over, now the question when getting out of the water, do I let the stripers strip me or do it myself in transition. I chose the stripers figured they are there, one less thing I have to deal with, interesting but def made that part easy!
T1 (3:07) went smoothly after the long run up, took it slow to make sure not to miss anything and I didn't... got my bike and heading onto the next part of the journey. First time racing on the RS and boy I tell ya it's fast, almost too fast! Really enjoyed racing on it, but I did find out I need a different saddle the Tritone for me did not do so hot on the man hood afterwards! The course was beautiful and fast as they had stated plenty flat and beautiful Indiana country land.
Sadly while biking after hitting an average of 22mph and only having 2 pro's lap me on my first lap, which I didn't feel was that bad... I started to feel it in my quads... Uh oh, def not a good thing. Cramps started to set in and I knew this was not good so the second lap was slower just to try and save some for my run, but that didn't go so hot... Finally off the highway back through the little quaint subdivision and back to transition (2:45:50)
T2 (4:00)almost goes flawlessly until my shoe pops off my bike before getting all the way into transition, run back grab that and run my way to rack my bike and get ready to head out on the run leg of the race. Again knowing my legs were a little rocked I decided to take it easy and slow, figure I wouldn't miss anything, yeah just kidding, left transition without my number, and you have to have it... so back to transition I go to pick it up, almost running into a few people, since no one is expecting me to be coming that way. Finally out on the course ready to rock this run.
For those that don't know this is my second Half Ironman and this one coming off the bike was completely different than the last one coming off my road bike, my legs felt so much fresher than last year. But that didn't last long as I may have pushed to hard on the bike and fried my legs. Felt cramping set in on my legs with in the first mile, ok luckily I had a few packets of electrolytes so I save those and hopefully space them out enough to recover my legs and be able to run the whole half marathon. Well sadly that didn't go as planned, the run ended up falling out once again. 6.5 miles in it was walking time, if I attempted to run I wasn't gonna finish so it was time to be mentally smart and walk, get stuff at the aid stations and try to start the recovery process. I told myself in the end no matter what I'm running through on the finish shoot and not walking like last year at Steelhead. well after racing 12.85 miles and walking pretty much 6.5-7 miles of that, and thanks to the guy at the bottom of the last hill pushing and encouraging people that there is only a .25 mile left and it's the last hill, I changed my running strides and figured out how to run without cramping and falling down, and you know what I finished at a slight run/jog! I was so happy not having to walk down that shoot with all those people watching, made me feel soo accomplished! (2:59:26) an hour slower than planned.
and with that I was done... minus the onset of cramping especially trying to step up into my Jeep, my calf just balled up oops. So that was my race report for Muncie 70.3, I know I said I was going to post my race report for my XTERRA, well this post was long enough I won't drag on with the fun post of the XTERRA, yes that will be fun. So please stay tuned and check out my XTERRA post in the next day or two.
Thanks all for reading and check out my page for the Racing For Steve-O foundation and what awesome things this organization is about!
Doug Eubank
No comments:
Post a Comment