This past weekend, I raced in my first half-ironman, the Harvest Moon Long Course at Aurora Reservoir. I'd done a pretty good job of keeping myself in denial that it was so close, but by the time Friday and packet pick-up rolled around, I was doing a pretty good job of freaking out. Surprisingly, I slept ok Friday night. Well, maybe there was some Tylenol PM involved. :-)
I arrived at the Reservoir Saturday morning apparently at entirely the
wrong time...there was a loooong line of cars waiting to get in. From
what I understand, people who got there earlier and later didn't have
any wait at all, but I sat there for about 20 minutes before being able
to park. I got my bike down off the rack and went to pump up my tires.
Got the front one pumped up, and then my pump decided to eat the end
off the valve stem of my tube. Doh.
Yeah, you kind of need that or the tube won't hold air. I grabbed a
spare tube out of the back of the car and the rest of my stuff,
figuring I would figure it out and/or find someone to help me in
transition. I found a decent spot, plopped my stuff down, and went off
to get my timing chip and body marking. Fortunately, on my way back, I
ran into my friend Hillary's husband, Ben, who was doing the duathlon and
knows a lot about bikes, so I commandeered him to help me change my
tire.
We got it changed, went to pump it up, and the freaking pump ate the
end off the valve stem again! Luckily, Ben had a spare tube and a floor
pump, so he grabbed those and changed the tire for me AGAIN.
So, by this time, it's less than half an hour till the race starts and
I am totally unprepared. The good thing about this was that it didn't
give me time to freak out too much! By the time I got my stuff laid
out, it was time to head down to the water. I met up with a friend that was doing the race as well, and we walked down to the beach and got our wetsuits on and
warmed up a bit. Before I knew it, it was time to go.
The swim was much better than I anticipated. This race was small
enough, and the waves spaced out far enough that there really wasn't
much crazy stuff going on. I tried to set a pace that was comfortable,
but where I was still working hard. The first buoy was a LONG way out.
It took forever to get to it! Out by the turnaround and on the way back
in, the waves started picking up a bit, resulting in a few inadvertent
mouthfuls of water. Before I knew it, I was done with the swim, and
heading up the beach to transition.
T1 felt like it took forever, but my time really wasn't that bad. The
water temperature was warmer than the air at that point, and it was
COLD. There was a relay team on the rack next to me, waiting for their
swimmer, and they were nice enough to help me put on my arm warmers
since I was shaking and I couldn't get them on my wet arms. I grabbed a
lunabar and headed out for the bike.
I stuffed the lunabar down while trying not to crash, since I had
forgotten to eat all my breakfast with all the tire drama pre-race.
The first half of the bike was a lot of fun. It was
fast, and I felt really good, so I pushed hard, maybe faster than I
should have. We did a short out and back and then went into a BIG loop.
There was a car of people who were leapfrogging the course cheering for
their friend, who was not far behind me. I joked with them, and they
kind of adopted me for the rest of the race, which was fun. They even
offered me a donut at one point, which I probably would have taken if it had been a jelly donut instead of powdered. :-D
The bike course was really not very interesting, out in the middle of
nowhere, practically in Kansas. With the weather and the clouds, we
couldn't even see the mountains, so it was just farmland with lots of
big long rolling hills. My legs started feeling a bit tired around mile
30, and little did I know that the worst was yet to come. Around mile
42 or so, there was a BIG hill that completely wiped me out, but there was still 15 miles or so back to the finish, pretty much all uphill. Ouch. I did a lot of
out-of-the-saddle climbing just to try to keep moving forward. I knew
the last part of the course was uphill, but didn't think it would be as
bad as it was! My adopted friends, as well as Hillary and my friend
Shannon were at the bottom of the hill outside of transition, cheering
away.
T2 was pretty uneventful. The relay team was there, having just sent
their runner out, so I chatted with them while I got changed over. I
got to say hi to Shannon on my way out of transition, and got a quick
hug, and I was off.
My legs felt really good to start the run, but I tried to keep things
under control, since I knew I had a long way to go. It was slightly
disheartening to see guys coming in to the finish as I was heading out,
knowing that they were done and I still had 13 miles to run! My friend
Sonja had written in her ironman race report about keeping a smile on her
face the whole race and how good it made her feel, so I was going to
try to do the same thing. It was amazing, I felt good, I loved smiling
at people (lots of people coming back in on the out and back course),
exchanged lots of comments with people, it was fun! I passed my friend Cody on
his way back in around 3.5 miles and then saw Ben around 4.5. I hit the
turnaround, still feeling pretty good. It started drizzling just a
little around that point, which actually felt a little nice. But then
it really started raining around 8. Which wasn't so fun. I kept
smiling, though! By this point, there wasn't much traffic out on the
course (all the normal people had already finished!) so it was getting
harder to stay motivated and positive. I was still feeling pretty
decent, though, which lasted till probably around 11.5, at which point
my legs decided that they were DONE. The last mile had a lot more
walking than I had hoped for, and my smile definitely slipped a bit.
I came around the last corner into the finish area, and I could see Tyler, and my smile came back! I ran over and grabbed Tyler's hand, and
he ran across the finish line with me. He did AWESOME! They were pretty far
out from the finish line, so it was a long way for little legs to go. Hillary was there, as
well as Amy and Becky (my #1 fan!) and they were
all cheering like crazy. To be honest, the finish is a little blurry. I
remember hearing some comments about how cute Tyler was, and vaguely
remember the announcer saying my name, and that's about it. I got
across the finish, and scooped Tyler up for a big hug, and then my friends
were there, hugging me. Amazingly, I don't think I even cried!
The weird thing has been how anti-climactic it's all been. I didn't
really expect to get hit this hard by the blahs afterward, and I really
thought the high would last longer! By Sunday afternoon, I was in the middle of a major post-race letdown, with a big feeling of "now what?" I'm thinking about signing up for the Denver half-marathon next month (after seriously contemplating signing up for a half-marathon THIS weekend, I've since gotten over that little bit of insanity), and then who knows...
Results:
Swim 44:48
T1 3:42
Bike 3:38:06 (15.4 mph)
T2 3:19
Run 2:32:13 (11:38 pace)
Overall 7:02:06
I was expecting much closer to 8 hours, so to be just over 7 is
awesome. I think the swim may have been a bit short, or maybe I just
kicked butt. :-p The bike was about 20 minutes faster than I was expecting, and my run
was just about what I thought. I'm really happy with how it went, but if I had
to do it over, I would try to get my run distance up a bit further
beforehand, so maybe I wouldn't crash between 11 and 12. And I think I
probably will do it again, just not too soon. :-D
A huge thanks to Ben, for helping me change my tires, and to Hillary for the pictures, and to Shannon, Becky, and Amy for coming out and cheering. Amy came out on a pretty crappy weather day, just over two weeks after a double mastectomy. To cheer for me. That's pretty humbling. I wish I had a picture, but I had "For Amy" marked on my arm, and thought of her frequently during the time I was out on the course (and there was a LOT of time to think!). 7 measly hours on a race course is nothing compared to what she's going through, but she's doing it with strength and courage and grace, and she inspires me on a daily basis. Thank you, Amy. Love ya, sister!
Here is the link to the rest of the pictures from the race!