Patriot's Half Ironman Race Report

• Distance: 1.2 Mile Swim, 56 Mile Bike, 13.1 Mile Run
• Time: 5 hr 47 min 44 sec overall; 46:18 Swim, 6:39 T1, 2:56:03 Bike, 1:21 T2, 1:57:26 Run
• Place: 41 out of 81 in age group, 174 out of 382 men, 208 out of 537 overall
• Weather: Sunny, 5 mph winds, air temps in the low 60's at the start and low 80's at the end, water temp of 74 degrees

The day started out a little cooler than my recent races have, but the lower temps allowed the water temp to drop several degrees overnight making the race wetsuit legal. There were two things about the race that I was made aware of during packet pick-up the day before. The first was that there would be an extremely long jog between exiting the James River and reaching the transition area. I'm not sure of the exact distance but it had to be at least 200-300 yards. The second was that the outgoing current in the James River would make some of the rectangular shaped swim course a little more challenging. That was an understatement. I started the race in the 4th of six waves and began my swim towards the first turn buoy which was way off in the distance. Even though it was difficult to tell, the further I got from the shore the stronger the current was moving from right to left. About half way to the turn buoy I noticed that all of the swimmers were spread out over a large area on both sides of me. I wasn't sure which group of swimmers was fighting the current more, but I figured if I stayed somewhere in the middle of both then I would be ok. The first turn buoy was just about in the middle of the river so it was where the current was moving the fastest. All of the swimmers seemed to converge at that turn about the same time and the current made the left turn difficult for the people already down stream of the buoy. After the turn I could tell the current was helping carry me down to the next buoy, but the next turn heading back to shore was going to be just as much of an uphill fight. Once I made the turn I tried to stay as close to the left as possible, but the current was still able to pull me a little bit off of the line I wanted to swim. My swim time was a lot slower than I was expecting but I couldn't kick myself too much since the current was more to blame than my swim stroke. I exited the water and started jogging up through the field to the transition area. Once I arrived at my rack I found an unpleasant surprise. After I had left the transition area to walk to the swim start one of the six people assigned to my rack had apparently decided that his bike should be racked on the end where mine was at, so he moved everyone's stuff down one spot to make room for his bike. This same person just happened to finish the swim and arrive at the rack just moments before I did, and was sitting on the ground getting his bike gear on in front of both his spot and my "new" spot. This confused me at first because I knew exactly where my bike was suppose to be, but when I got there and didn't immediately see it, my first thought was that I must have turned down the wrong aisle. Once I realized what had happened I was a little pissed but decided not to say anything to him. Instead I just gave him a look like "are you going to get out of the way so I can get to my stuff that you moved?". Within a few seconds he grabbed his bike and left, so I proceeded to get my bike stuff on. I had to waste some time looking for one of my socks because he had shuffled things around moving everything. At this point I understood some of the stories I had heard in the past about people letting the air out of tires when they found someone had moved their stuff. I got my revenge by beating him by over 20 minutes in the overall race time. Moving on to the bike course, I kept trying to keep my speed in check since I knew I had to run a half marathon at the end, but I felt pretty strong and continued to make some moves on the bike. There was one guy on the bike course that seemed to ride almost the same pace as me for nearly the entire ride. We probably passed each other back and forth at least twenty times. Towards the end of the ride it became annoying sort of like a bug that won't leave you alone, but I'm sure he probably felt the same way. My bike time was a little better than the previous half ironman I did, but I was hoping for even faster than it was. I liked the bike course a lot, but by the time I hit the 50 mile point I was ready to start the run. I knew when I began the run that there was no way I could beat my best time, so I tried to visualize what I would be thinking and feeling during my upcoming ironman. I felt strong for the first half of the run but I could tell by the second half that I was starting to tire. When I had a few miles left to go, I started to imagine being in the ironman and having to do this whole run course one more time. I felt like I could probably do it again if I had to, but adding the extra 56 miles of biking before the run would definitely make a difference. More training will be needed. I noticed the finishers medal that they handed out for this race had a typo on it which was appropriate for the swim course. Instead of the correct 1.2 mile swim distance, the medal had a 13.1 mile swim engraved on it. Even though my time didn't reflect it, I felt slightly better after this race than my previous half ironman, and I didn't have the same level of soreness as I did before either. I've got eight weeks to go before the big race and a lot of miles left to train in order to prepared.