Welland half Ironman

Sorry for the delay since my last post, it has been busy. First a week in California for a conference, then a week up North for work and then training training training. Did a race a few weeks ago, kind of meh about the results. Not so great, I was sick, had some major blackfly bikes and was coming off of 2 weeks away from home.

I'm sorry if this report formatting is weird. I entered it on a website called beginner triathlete. They have a really cool template for race reports that makes it easy to organize your thoughts... I will try my best to rearrange into my typical format.

Weather: 28C / 82F, Sunny and humid (for the canadians, the humidex was 40!!!)

Total Time = 6h 14m 6s
Overall Rank = 187/269
Age Group Rank = 16/19


I woke up early and drove down on Sunday morning. I didn't leave early enough and was scrambling to set of my transition and get down to the start in time. Didn't do a warm-up I just put on my wetsuit and swam the 15 meters to the start line (first in water start for me!). I am a little under trained right now, so I was just wanted to finish and it was going to be a long enough day without a warm-up.

Swim
00:34:23 | 200 yards | 01m 46s / 100yards
Age Group: 4/19
Overall: 64/269

For the swim, I was trying to take it easy. My bike isn't up to snuff right now, so I wanted to finish feeling strong and ready to tackle 3+ hours in the saddle. I think the swim may have been a little short, but oh well I came out of the water feeling like I had barely worked right on plan.

T1
Time: 04:59

Time includes a 425 m run from the swim exit to the transition area. I had a gu in transition before heading out on the bike

Bike
03:12:43 | 90 km | 28 km/hr
Age Group: 16/19
Overall: 228/269

My goal for this race was really just to finish. I didn't want to go to hard on the bike and have a bad run. Since my goal race isn't for over 4 months still (Florida) it was more of a training day. I've only had 1 90+ km bike and the second longest bike was 70K, so I wanted to make sure I was fresh for the run. Bike was overall good for me. I kept in my aerobic zone (zone 2) for pretty much the entire ride. I am not an overly fast cyclist (as you can probably tell from my time), but I think I could have pushed faster if this was a goal race. I need to find more races with flat bike courses! By the end of the bike, both my back and butt were starting to hurt, so I kept counting down the kms left (only an average monday night ride, turnaround point in normal ride, etc). Visualizing the distance with my regular riding routes definitely helped in the last bit.

What would you do differently?:Actually train for the race? (my swim and run distances were okay, but my bike has been more focused on form than distance thus far).

T2
Time: 01:20

Pretty quick, I was in a bit of a daze. I forgot to take any nutrition with me, and forgot to remove my tire inflator from my back pocket and reapply sun screen

Run
02:20:45 | 21.1 km | 6:30 min/km
Age Group: 16/19
Overall: 183/269

Run went okay. My goal was to just keep a steady pace. From the start of the run I knew if I raced conservatively I could get a big PR in this race. I just had to keep cool and not overheat on the run like I did at my last Half IM. At every aid station I walked a few step, took two waters (one dumped on my head) and an infinit. Plus a handfull of ice to put down my shirt and short. I got this tip from KathyG's (a BTer's) Lonestar report. I think that really saved me from getting too hot. I had to go to the bathroom pretty bad the entire course but there were no porta potties! So not cool. I finally found one at 16 kmish. Thank god!

There was a long stretch (about 2 miles) in the sun were there were no aid stations. Tried pretzels and a banana to try to boost my salt levels at the next aid station after that and it so didn't work. Pretzels are impossible to eat when you are running. I think at Florida, these will be more emergency foods if I am walking and not for when I am actually running. I ended up having stomach/GI problems for a few km and almost considered DNFing when we ran close to the finish line at 14.5 km. Luckily the stomach cramps eased up after a while and I was able to pick up the pace a bit. I ended up passing a tonne of people on the run course and was only passed by a few people. A lot of people were really suffering in the heat.

I ended up finishing taking 18 minutes off my previous Half IM time, and if you take the run into T1 out of the mix, it was 20 minutes off! Very happy overall. My run time was still 7 minutes slower than my slowest stand alone half Marathon (and over 20 minutes off my PR), but it was 12 minutes faster than I did in my previous half IM where the heat wasn't quite as bad, so I'm happy that I found a way to deal with it yesterday. All in all I took about 4 minutes off my swim time, 6 minutes off my bike time, and as stated, 12 minutes off my run time. It is pretty hard to be at all disappointed. I crossed the finish line with a huge smile on my face.

What would you do differently?: Not eaten the banana and pretzels. Biked more. Not raced in a dangerous humidex?

After the race I got some food, packed up transition and drove home. This is the first time they have had a half IM at this venue, and my only complaint is no porta potties on bike course and only ones on run course were around 16 km! I will definitely return to this race at some point to see what I can do in a half IM!

http://photos.mysportsshooter.com/v5/event_gallery_search.php?frmIndex=199&event=12711&photog=mysportsshooter

The bike photos aren't as easy to find since they aren't sorted by race number. My thighs look rather atrocious (sp???) in the last photo, but you can see how happy I am with my 18 minute PR!!!