Cedar Point - first half-iron race report

On Sunday, I finished my first half-ironman. The day started well and got better, until I finished with a kind of exuberant high that I had never anticipated.

This race report, or novel, has three parts. I haven't written a race report for a while and apparently have a lot to say :)
First some history, then some reflections on training this year, and finally actual excited babble about Sunday.


1. History

This has been a long time coming. After swimming for years, I started trying this jogging thing in 2005, but it took many tries of Couch-to-5K to make it off the couch all the way to a 5k.
2007: First 5k race
2008: First sprint tri
2009: Joined Team Z, first 4 mile run, first 10K, first 40 mile ride
2010: First half-marathon, first Ironman spectating (Moo!)
2011: Half-marathon PR, first running injury
2012: First 60 mile bike ride, first 20 hr training week, first half-ironman

So that's some history. Over the last three years, I've watched many people ramp up their distances and abilities much faster, and if this were a children's story, now I would say "Slow and steady wins the race," but this isn't a story, and having watched teammates *actually* win, I can guarantee, that they are not doing it by being slow. :) However, "Slow and steady" *is* helping me win against me of 1, 3 or 5 years ago, and that's the race I am competing in at every workout and timed event.


2. Training

Speaking of workouts, apparently, if you go to them consistently, it is possible to get stronger. I'd heard rumors to this effect, and decided to try it out.

When I joined in 2009, Ed told us that there are 11 scheduled workouts per week (when we actually have Sunday swim) but until this year, I'd never actually had an "11" week. This year, I aimed for that, and while I didn't often achieve it, I went to oodles of bootcamp (thanks Kerri, Julie, Jodi, and Iwan!), track (thanks Denis and Tony!), Thursday bikes (thanks Nelson and Kate, indoors and out!), swim practice (with Sherri, part of the few, the proud, the discontinued, GW Rec swimmers!), long runs (thanks Obo!) and long bikes (thanks Leanne, Keri, and Dennis for hanging back with me on the hardest days). I don't have everything in my electronic logs, but what I do have tells me that I've worked out for almost *300* hours this year, and have covered more than 1500 miles.


3. Race Day

Even with all that training, I was nervous about the cutoffs for race day. Since my half was overlapping a full race, I wasn't worried about them taking my chip, but I wanted to actually make the time cutoff that was written down. I expected to have a comfortable swim faster than 45 minutes, I hoped for a bike that would let me meet the 2:30pm cutoff and then I wanted to finish the run.

The race day started perfectly, with a calm lake and plenty of time to warm up since I was in the last wave. Coming out of the water, I was a little sad to not have met my dream goal of a sub-40 min swim, but was happy with my time since I'd taken more than two weeks off from swimming after a terrible ear infection.

I had a slow T1, putting on my socks carefully, but it was worth it not to have a sore foot from a misplaced seam for the last 20 miles of the bike. Two years ago, at Musselman, I didn't finish the bike leg of the half aquavelo. This year, with more training and a better approach to nutrition (ie, take some!), I finished the Musselman bike in a little less than 4.5 hrs. Since this course was flatter, I was hoping to both be faster, and to feel better at the end of the ride. At the end of the Musselman bike, I was very hobble-y and feeble and feeling like that for 13.1 miles would have been a kind of torture. For Cedar Point, I was able to finish the bike in less than 4.25 hrs, which was wonderful. It wasn't a negative split, but apparently there was wind?

I try not to base my success on other people's performance, but it was still super exciting to pass 2 people in the last 4 miles of the bike. (Passing people changing a tire doesn't count, Marie, these were actual biking people that I had to accelerate past!). It was also great to see both of those women make it out onto the run.

My bike to run transition was slow. I had some of the same post-biking pain as I had had from Musselman, so I gave myself permission to walk for a few minutes to get myself together. By mile marker 1, I felt that even if I walked the next 12.1 miles, I would have had an amazing day. Getting to root for the fast full-iron people who were passing me, and the faster half people who were heading back in started a ridiculous positive feedback loop. I would be excited for someone and cheer, they would cheer or smile, and I would feel more excited!

Since I was feeling so happy, I tried to switch to full time running, or 4/1 run/walk, but that wasn't as awesome, so by mile 4, I found myself walking most of the time again, but now feeling some failure everytime I didn't make it to 4 minutes of running.

9 miles of failure didn't sound like fun, so I made a much smaller goal, and made my watch beep every 30 seconds (sorry to everyone who had to listen to that). That meant that every 30 seconds I could choose to continue running, or take a little break. Running for 30 seconds was the goal. If I happened to run for a second 30 second interval, it was bonus greatness and 3 intervals in a row made me feel like a rock star. This approach helped my attitude spiral back up and also helped me negative split the run. By running a little less than 75% of the time, I felt amazing, and was able to shout exuberantly at Linda that I was having the best day ever and mean it when I was about 68 miles into my day. The excitement made me want to high five Cliff every time I saw him, whether he wanted it or not!

I'd made goals to do with time, but I hadn't made a goal for my attitude. If I had, that run would have blown it out of the water.

I ended up running my half-marathon in 3:19, which was pretty awesome. Based on my long runs, I thought a 3:16 was feasible but unlikely, so being so close and feeling that great was amazing. It also was almost as fast as my first stand alone half-marathon in 2010 which at the time represented a kind of exertion that left me feeling ill for hours.

One of the best things I've learned this year is the wonder of clean clothes after the race. After changing and a little free ART, I was ready to cheer for the next 7 or so hours, as long as it didn't involve stepping over anything (poor, sore hip flexors) or standing up/sitting down (poor, sore quads & glutes).

Watching so many other people have amazing days kept me awake and excited through Patti's epic finish, which was amazing to be there for. I also loved watching first-time ironman-cheerers experience how amazingly emotional that epic day can be even from the sidelines. I'm running out of adjectives to describe this, so imagine some more sentences with variations on epic, amazing, giddy, and exuberant.


In conclusion, I am not going to be rushing off to sign up for a full-iron distance race after this, but I can imagine signing up for another half-iron, which I wasn't expecting. I'll need some new goals, since I met all of mine for this race, but I'm sure there are some out there :)

I'm looking forward to cheering for Waterman's "A" racers and expect that I'll be able to jump around again by then :)

Congratulations to everyone else who raced last weekend and thanks for helping feed my unprecedented positive energy feedback loop. Best wishes for people whose "A" races are upcoming and I wish that every one of you could experience a day as awesome as mine (though possibly a little shorter, which just means more awesomeness per minute)