Vineman 70.3 2011 race report.
I waited and waited, but it would appear that my race report is not going to write itself, so I guess I'll have to write it. Curses.
I covered some of the pre-race stuff, including goals, here, so I don't have to repeat that. And *spoiler alert!* I'll just go ahead and say.. I did, in fact, get a Vineman PR, and beat my 7:30 from 2006. Whee!
That morning
The swim is in a very narrow river, which I guess is why they have 9 billion waves. To promote fairness, they randomize which wave starts when, so that neither the old folks nor the young folks always have to start last every year. In theory, this is great. In practice.. it turns out I'm not the luckiest of humans. 5 years ago, my wave was one of the last ones to start. This year, my wave was 3rd to last. (I'm going to assume that in the 4 intervening years, my wave was first every time.) That means we arrived right around 6am and my wave didn't go off for over two hours, at 8:22. 1.75 hours after Priscilla's, an hour after Karen's, 20 minutes after Jen and Laurie's (Texas Iron women were well represented out there!), and 8 minutes before poor Tony, in the next to last wave.
I killed time by chatting with team mates and with random strangers, hitting the porta potty (which had MUCH more manageable lines than 2006), trying to figure out what I should eat and when, since I had breakfast so many hours ago and seeing others off into their waves.
My weekend partner in crime/running coach, Karen, ready to race
(An interesting aside.. as we came down the hill into transition there was a bike shop tent set up for assistance and whatnot. Karen got her tires pumped up there, but it was kinda chaotic and I didn't want to deal with that, so I just went straight down into transition, figuring I'd borrow someone's pump down there. Turns out? When you don't have to check your bike in the day before, nobody brings their pump race morning, because they just pump their tires before they leave the house/car. I should remember this in the future. I had pumped my tires the day before, and they ended up being fine for the race, but it was an unnecessary stressor that morning. Shoulda just had the bike shop do it.)
Finally decided I was done with the portapotty and thusly willing to put on my wetsuit, then hooked up with Kelly, who sauntered in casually late (transition never closes, so if you're in a late wave, you can just show up right before your wave and rack at the last minute. Unless you're carpooling with someone in an earlier wave, of course), the only one of our group in my age group, and we headed down to the water.
Kelly, just about the cutest thing ever, and also disgustingly fast
We waded in as soon as the wave before us went, and treaded water for 8 minutes (hurray, wetsuits.. otherwise this would have been exhausting before the race even started), unable to hear anything on the shore, such as when our wave might actually start. Water felt great (and much warmer than the high 50s air temp), my body and brain both felt pretty ready, everyone was excited, and we were pumped to start. Someone yelled there were 30 seconds to go, and we all wished each other good luck, and then we were off!
Swim 1.2 miles
I ended up in the second row, near the middle. I took off and went out fast, just trying not to get too caught up in the fray. It was pretty painless where I was. There's always some hitting and shoving and kicking, but people were relatively well behaved, and despite the narrow swim corridor, things cleared out around me pretty quickly. I was settled in much faster than I normally am in a mass start, breathing every 4 strokes within a few minutes, sighting to the right off the shoreline (yay, my exclusive-right-breathing-during-a-race pays off!).
Lots of women from my wave much faster than me, speeding off into the distance, but no feet that I could latch onto the draft. Just did my own thing and tried to go strong but comfortable. My arms were actually fairly fatigued, which I'd also noticed the day before during our 15 minute practice swim. I blame (a) not having done a ton of wetsuit swims in training and (b) the ridiculous amount of swimming Jamie'd been having me do in the last few weeks, trying to keep my cardio up without killing me in the ridiculous Austin heat. But even though they were fatigued, I tried to keep them moving and strong, just telling myself this was all I needed to do with my arms today, so I could wear them out completely during the swim.
I ran into two things that I'd noted from my Vineman 2006 race report out there.. one was taking in water while breathing. This actually only happened to me once this year, but it was pretty bad. I turned to breathe and got a lungful of water. So much that I couldn't breathe at all, and I started coughing and sputtering badly. I could force air out, but each time I'd try to breathe in, I'd get more water or start choking again. At one point I hadn't managed an inhale for a rather alarming number of seconds, and oddly, instead of breast stroking or something where I was likely to actually be able to FIND air, I stuck my face back in the water and kept swimming faster. I think I just mentally needed to maintain normalcy, rather than panicking and ending up sinking and getting pulled by a kayak for excessive flailing. And sure enough, next time I turned my head to breathe, my body took over again, and I was able to get a partial breath which sustained me until my next breath, when things basically returned to normal. It's just amazing how we can overcome those instincts to panic, though. As much as I hate it, I think that hypoxic breathing stuff may actually be helping, if only in a "learn to control your panic when you can't breathe" perspective.
The second similarity from 2006 is how freakin' long this swim is. Most tri swims are rectangles, so you turn fairly frequently. This is a straight out and back, and it curves as you go, so you can't see where the turnaround is. And it takes forever. 0.6 miles might not sound like that much, but.. it is.
Fortunately the course provides its own entertainment! As you swim along, you can just glance in any direction and find people walking. Yes, walking. The entire swim. The river is 3-7feet deep, and over next to the shore you can find folks trudging along in knee to waist deep water. I was already passing red-capped men from the wave in front of me, and now I was coming upon swim caps from waves before them, walking along, looking somewhat defeated. I'm not sure if they walked the entire swim, but.. it's certainly possible to. Some people ended up inadvertently dragging their fingertips or knuckles on the bottom, but my combination of staying in the very middle of the river and having very stubby arms meant I never hit bottom (and I certainly never stood up to walk).
A hundred years later, I finally made it out to the turnaround, swam around the folks walking around the turn buoy, then headed back in. Even though the current isn't strong at all, and you can't feel it as you swim upstream, it felt a little like it helped push you back down. Or maybe it's just the happiness of knowing you're over half done. I tried to dig a little deeper into the water and push my way back in. My arms were even tireder now, but I felt like I was having a good, solid swim. Nothing had gone horribly wrong, and I really hoped I would finally have a swim time that reflected my actual ability to swim, rather than one that was a pace slower than I train at.
I was expecting the swim to end as it did last time, where we took a sharp right to head in perpendicular to shore, but instead we swam straight up onto a slanted part of shore. Not too much congestion as I trudged out of the water and up to the timing mat (you can enjoy a video of me emerging here! I like this new video trend ASI has going on. Uh, I'm the short one in the full-sleeve wetsuit and the green cap. All those dudes in red caps started 8 minutes before me. Take that, redcaps!). As I got to the mat, there was a woman standing on the mat telling us to be careful because it was slippery. Normally this wouldn't be notable for my race report, except later I found out that this warning volunteer was inspired by Priscilla, who was in the third wave, dramatically slipping as she crossed the timing mat.
(When I looked up my pictures and saw that ASI had swim-exit video, the first thing I did was go see if they got Priscilla falling. And they just barely did! She falls right out of the visible picture, and you can hear the crowd gasp. Also they got a couple pictures of her mid-fall. You can go here to enjoy it. Sorry, Priscilla!)
T1
As I ran down the carpet into transition, dodging men who were going slower than I was and peeling off the upper half of my wetsuit, I glanced at my watch. 34! My previous best was in the 38s, so I was elated by that. Finally a good half Iron swim!
I found my bike without incident, peeled off the bottom of my wetsuit pretty quickly, jammed my wetsuit, goggles and swimcap into my transition bag (everything had to be in the bag, so they could transport your gear to the finish line, since this was a point-to-point bike course), swung my bike off the rack, and ran out of transition. (I had been debating wearing arm warmers, because it was in the high 50s that morning, but, as I predicted, I was so warm from the swim and so set on getting in and out as quickly as possible, I never even considered putting them on once I got to them.)
I crossed the mount line, and kept right on running. 2:28 for T1. Not too shabby for a somewhat logistically complicated transition.
Bike 56 miles
The mount line for this race is a mess. It's at the bottom of a not-insignificant curving hill, and in 2006, since I was in one of the last waves, I got to watch a whole lot of people mount right at the line in completely the wrong gear, start riding, and immediately fall over. I didn't want to do that. I also didn't particularly want to run up the hill in my bike shoes. So I decided to go barefoot and run my bike up the hill, then do a shoeless mount at the top of the hill. That was great, in theory. But my feet were cold and very soft from swimming, and the road was rough and unforgiving. So I ran up the hill going, "Ow. Dammit. Ow. OW." as tons of people passed me, riding up the hill. Might need to rethink that one again next time.
But it was fine, got mounted up at the top without incident (always a fear with so many people watching and wondering why you're not wearing shoes), and set out for a 56 mile ride. Managed to get my feet in my shoes quickly, and then out onto River Road, the most congested and crowded part of the course. A narrow road with cars going in both directions, little to no shoulder, and people passing. All those red-capped men I'd gloatingly passed were now seeking vengeance, and this would continue for the next 56 miles. And all the women in my age group I beat, as well. And all the men from the two waves behind me. But I'm used to that, and I actually felt pretty good on my bike, so I didn't fret it.
Made it through the tricky part where you turn off River Road on a >90 degree right turn directly into a short, steep downhill onto a narrow, winding road, surprised to see they'd put a photographer right there. I'm not sure that's a place that needs MORE potential distractions/wrecks.
It did make for some dramatic-looking pictures, though (especially if anyone DID wreck)
Then it was just a lot of riding through a lot of grapes. Despite being a stronger rider now, there were actually MORE hills than I remembered there being. Short, steep hills, mostly with preceding downhills for momentum. Got out of the saddle for some of them. None of them were prohibitively bad, and it was nice to use some different muscles. I felt strong. I felt like I was riding well, even when I was being passed so often. I was even passing a few people, and I made a few friendly comments when I could, encouraging or pointing out the beauty of the course. I figured a lot of those people were me-five-years-ago, out there doing their first 70.3 and feeling overwhelmed and proud and in awe.
And it is certainly beautiful out there. Hills and vineyards and trees and cows and more hills and very, very bad roads. Man, those roads were bad. Potholes and cracks all over the place. Especially bad on some of the downhills, where you had to weave around to avoid falling in to them. The course was LITTERED with things that flew off peoples' bikes. You could have stocked a bike shop with the water bottles, tires, sponges, nutrition, and even someone's entire hydration system that were strewn across the road after each buckle or bump in the road. Tony actually lost all his bike nutrition during the ride, a fact that came back to haunt him during a rough run. Of course, that being said, he COMPLETELY schooled me on the bike, passing me less than 20 miles in (despite starting 8 minutes behind me), riding by and asking, "Hey, lady, what high school do YOU go to?" He's a charmer.
Green on green, as I ride past one of the many vineyards out in Sonoma
I tried out a new nutrition strategy this race, and it actually worked out really well. Normally I uh.. don't really have a real nutrition strategy. Yes, I've done four full Ironman races and this was my fifth half, and I still hadn't even come up with a true plan. Normally I say, "Okay, all of these packages of things are 200-250 calories.. I'll just try to eat one package during each hour." That obviously works well enough to have gotten me through four Ironmans, but I thought maybe I'd try doing something a little more formal. So my plan was to eat 2 Clif Blocks every 15 minutes for the first 45 minutes of each hour, then 3 Honey Stinger blocks at the end of each hour. 248 calories an hour. More than I normally manage to take in, and hopefully a good amount. And on an actual schedule, so I don't look down and notice 2 hours have passed and I'm 200 calories behind. I was afraid I would either not pay enough attention to the time to have this work, or end up completely clock-obsessed, but it ended up working out perfectly. And since I had to drink water to wash down each thing, I drank water at the very least four times an hour. Worked out really well. With the exception of electrolytes. I had Ironman Perform in my water bottle, and I intended to drink the one I started with and pick up a replacement out there, but I only ended up drinking maybe half of the one I took. With eating and drinking that frequently, there just wasn't all that much time that I WASN'T eating or drinking water, which left very little time to drink anything else. With it being as cool as it was out there, this wasn't an issue, but it's something I'll need to figure out for next time.
I mostly tried to ignore my bike computer for everything but timing when I should be eating, but as I hit every hour, I couldn't resist looking at my distance, to see what my average speed was. I was pretty terrified to look at my distance as my computer hit hour 1. What if it said 14 miles? What if I was going the exact same speed I went 5 years ago? But when I looked, even with the congestion from the start and the technical bits and the hills, it said I'd gone 17.2 miles. I was thrilled. I wasn't sure if I could keep that up, since I knew Chalk Hill still loomed up ahead, and since 17 is fast for me, and who knows what starting that fast would do to my legs, but I was happy to at least have started so strong. Then at hour two.. I was still right at 17 miles for that hour. I started to wonder if I might actually get close to my goal of "as close to 3 hours as possible".
Hour 3 was a little tougher. More bad roads. More hills. My left glute was getting pretty unhappy. If I stretched it out, either by pushing my knee out to the side or by standing up in my saddle, it would feel better for a few minutes, but then it would tighten up again. Not tremendous pain, but really uncomfortable, and certainly slowed me down to come out of my aero bars to stretch it so often.
Chalk Hill was still there. Started going uphill. Kept going uphill. Road curved. Still going uphill. I passed a girl and said, "I sure hope this is Chalk Hill." And she said she hoped so, too. Not that it was horrible, I just would have hated to still have a hill ahead that was longer or steeper. But I passed a lot of people going up the hill.
(Side note: For this 56 mile ride, I saw exactly one race marshal on a motorcycle. Which is a shame, because I saw a fair amount of egregious drafting out there. As I approached the base of Chalk Hill, a big guy passed me with a little guy tucked in DIRECTLY behind him. Not even vaguely subtle in his drafting, just sitting directly on the big guy's wheel. The big guy dropped him on the hill, and then I passed them BOTH on the way up. Pansy-ass drafter. Of course, on the next big downhill, they both passed me again, once again with the little guy nestled in behind the big guy. I almost yelled much profanity in his direction, but I hoped maybe karma would come back to bite him in the ass eventually. I have no idea if it did, but I prefer to believe it did. Regardless, I outclimbed his ass on Chalk Hill.)
After Chalk Hill, I knew it was a pretty short ride to get to the high school in Windsor. We came into a town with a left turn ahead, and a volunteer yelled out that this was our last hill. Yay! Came around the corner, downshifted and started climbing the hill, and then I couldn't pedal. My chain was locked up completely. Moment of extreme panic as I tried to figure out which foot to unclip so I could step down before I fell sideways, and somehow I managed to unclip, get a foot down, and wheel myself off the road before anyone behind me ran me over or fell because I stopped right in front of them. Whew. Got off onto the shoulder and off my bike, desperately hoping my bike wouldn't do what it tends to do, which is lodge the chain between the derailleur and the bike. That usually takes me about 5 minutes to dislodge, and I end up completely covered in chain grease. Fortunately it wasn't that bad, and a little spin of the pedals got the chain back on, and I managed to start back up in the middle of the hill with no momentum in a very wrong gear, and I was only out a minute or two because of it. Could have been MUCH worse.
Rode through the outskirts of Windsor, where Karen and I had done our warm-up ride the day before. Now I knew exactly how far I had to go. And I knew where the emus were, and sure enough they were there at the fence cheering for me.
A few last turns and we were almost to the high school. We were riding along beside the runners, and I knew we were close. But I hadn't really paid much attention to how the bike comes back into transition. I wasn't sure how many turns we had left, or where the dismount line was. As I turned into the school, I realized we were MUCH closer to transition than I'd thought. I frantically reached down to unvelcro my left shoe and slip my foot out on top of my shoe. As I started to reach for the right shoe, we turned again, and right after that turn was the dismount line. Crap! I ended up just having to unclip my right foot and leave the shoe on.
(I had watched 3 hours come and go while I was on the bike, and I was a little bummed about that, but my total bike time was 3:16:34, 17.09 mph, which I'm actually thrilled with. I maintained a steady pace the whole way through, unlike CdA where I started out faster and then slowly got slower and slower. And that's only 2 minutes slower than my bike in New Orleans, which was pancake flat, and Vineman is a much tougher course. So yay!)
T2
This was by far my proudest moment of the race. In general, this is not a spectator course. There's people cheering at the swim, but most people leave after their athlete goes through, so there's less people cheering for the later waves. There's practically nobody cheering on the bike, because they don't want people driving the course to cheer for their athletes. And there's really nobody on the run course cheering, either. But the one place where there's a lot of spectators is when you're at the high school, finishing the bike and starting and finishing the run.
So I ran my bike through the gauntlet of cheering spectators wearing one bike shoe and one completely bare foot, slap-clomp, slap-clomp, slap-clomp. As a bonus, the one shoe still clipped in was dragging on the ground as I ran my bike. Slap-clomp-scrraaaapppe. Hi, everyone! Yes, I'm (comparatively) slow on the bike, and evidently new to the sport of triathlon! Why is this the longest section of sidewalk ever?
But I did eventually make it to transition, found my rack without incident, ran down to the little tree I used as a landmark, racked my bike, then executed my favorite plan: peeing and putting on my shoes (this time with bonus bike-shoe-removal).
Transition was roughly 1/4 concrete and 3/4 grass, so I made sure to pick a grassy area the day before. Sat down and put on my socks and shoes, then grabbed my ziploc bag of goodies. By then I was done peeing, so I was up and out of transition quickly!
2:37 total. Not bad for all that I got accomplished, and for a relatively big and unwieldy transition area.
Run 13.1 miles
As I ran out of transition, I dug into my ziploc bag and distributed my goodies. Took one gu immediately and shoved the other two in my singlet pockets. Shoved a small baggie of salt pills in there, as well. Then took the two barrettes out of my hair and replaced them with my alligator Sweaty Bands headband. Was this strictly necessary? No, and in fact nobody noticed its awesomeness, even the people I was with, until I pointed it out after the race. But *I* knew I looked adorable, and that's all that matters.
Plus I did it all while running, so no time was lost
My legs felt pretty good. My left foot, The Problematic One, was a little uncomfortable at first. It felt a little like my sock was out of place, so I spent the first few miles trying to shift my foot around in my shoe. Eventually that annoyance seemed to fade and didn't bother me again.
Mile 1 came pretty quickly, and I checked my watch just to see how I was doing, and it told me 8:15. That's too fast to start out at, so I ratcheted back my effort a bit. I decided to run by feel. That's worked really well for me in training.
So I just ran. I ran through most of the aid stations, grabbing water and ice and drinking on the run. It was about 70, which is FANTASTIC when you're used to 90s and 100s. But it was sunny. And there's no shade on this course. And it starts to wear on you after a while.
But I was feeling good. I was running past all the people who were walking up the hills. I was passing the folks who passed me on the bike. I powered up the big hill (which blissfully DOES have some shade) and yelled encouragement to the folks going both directions. I saw Priscilla coming back in, almost finished, then Karen shortly thereafter. Saw Kelly coming back in looking amazing and WAY WAY WAY ahead of me (and having passed Jen and Laurie who started 20 minutes before us), then saw Jen coming back in, also looking really strong.
(Around here I passed a guy who I'd passed earlier on the bike going up Chalk Hill, and he'd said he needed to tie a rope to me to get up the hill. He was a bigger guy, who then blew by me on the subsequent downhill, and I never saw him again until the run. Just after I ran by, I thought I felt something weird, and I heard him yell that I'd dropped something. I yelled back, "Crap, is it my salt?" and he said it was, and I might want that. So I turned around and ran back, and he was nice enough to have picked it up off the ground and handed it to me when I got there. It wasn't hot out there, but I was still diligently taking my salt as planned.)
Around mile 5, I realized I was going to need a portapotty. My modified bike nutrition was actually part of a strategy to try to eliminate this portapotty need on the run, eating all sugar-food (blocks) and no solid food (like Clifbars or sandwiches or poptarts). Obviously this experiment failed, and the solid foods on the bike were not the problem. At the turn leading down to La Crema, I saw two unoccupied portapotties at an aid station. I grabbed a cup of water and took it into the portapotty with me, took care of the stomach while eating a gu and drinking my water (is that disgusting? Have I lost all sense of what's disgusting at this point?), then got out as quickly as possible.
I had just seen Laurie, and that made me realize that one of my goals was likely not achievable. My true goals were time goals: beat my previous Vineman PR (sub-7:33) and get a half Ironman PR (sub-5:55:42), but I had some secondary goals just to keep me motivated out there. (1) I didn't want to have the slowest time of our Austin group out there, (2) I didn't want to be the last person from our group to actually cross the finish line, and (3) I wanted to try to see if I could catch Laurie on the run. This wasn't really fair to a recently-surgeried Laurie, but hey, I didn't say I was PROUD of these goals. But given where I saw her, I knew she was too many miles ahead of me at that point to catch her, and so I gave up goal 3 while celebrating the fact that that meant Laurie was having a solid race out there.
Turned into La Crema and started my loop around the vineyard. It was pretty, but it was largely shadeless and on a rocky dirt trail, which didn't feel great this late in the race. I did get to see Katherine, who I hadn't seen in forever, and I wished her well when she told me her back had given out. Ugh.
Jazz hands for the photographer as I ran through La Crema
Back out onto the road, and more than half done. I'd glanced at my watch as I passed over the (presumably) halfway timing mat, and it was just under 1 hour. Like.. JUST under. Way too close for comfort. Way slower than I had wanted, but with the salt dropping plus the portapotty, not too surprising. It should be mostly downhill on the way back, though, and I could pick it up a bit.
I felt strong on the way back in. The sun was starting to get to me a bit, and I was dumping more water over my head, but I was running well. I felt good. There weren't that many people still coming out as I went back in, but they were still trickling out, and I cheered for them, as people cheered for me in 2006 when I was back there.
I was passing a lot of people. I passed a guy who was hobbling. Another guy asked what was wrong, and he said he was cramping. The first guy told him to get some electrolytes in him, grab some gatorade at the next aid station. I felt good and was ahead of my salt, so I took out my baggie of two salt pills and handed them to the guy as I ran by. He thanked me profusely. Hopefully it helped.
I was watching ahead of me, still hoping to achieve sub-goal 2: not being the last one to physically cross the finish line. I knew I couldn't catch Laurie, but I hadn't seen Tony coming back in. It could have been that he was running back in while I was in the portapotty and I missed him, or it could be that he was doing the loop around La Crema when I was, in which case there was hope I could catch him.
With less than 1 mile to go, I saw him ahead. Walking. Uhoh. You can't feel good about passing someone if they're walking! But as I got closer, he started running again. As I passed him, I said, "Hey, man, what nursing home do YOU live at?" (true, he's exactly the same age as me, but it felt appropriate given his high school comment earlier, and he did laugh), and then I told him that there should be no more walking. I figured he would stay with me, but he fell back as I picked it up.
I felt really good in the last mile, though certainly the last mile seemed to last forever. Passed more people, stole energy from the cheering crowds, and pushed through. Turned some corners and was back at the high school, then one more corner and into the finish chute! My Texas Iron compatriots were all lined up along the finish chute, and I gave them all high fives as I ran by and across the finish line!
Not my actual finish time. And hey, for fun you can compare this finish line photo to my 2006 finish line photo
After
So I never caught Laurie, but I did manage to not have the slowest time (barely! our group was a force to be reckoned with out there, especially Kelly "I missed a Clearwater slot by one place" Green) and not be the last one to cross the finish line (barely! sorry, Tony, except you still kicked my ass overall, since you started way after I did..).
I knew it was a Vineman PR, by about 1:40. That's pretty funny, how different an athlete I was back then. I didn't think it was a half Ironman PR, but later that day I looked up my New Orleans time, and sure enough, it was a PR! Whee!
Vineman 2006
Swim: 0:42:31 (2:12/100m)
T1: 0:04:41
Bike: 3:56:23 (14.21 mph)
T2: 0:05:02
Run: 02:44:27 (12:33/mile)
Finish: 7:33:08
New Orleans 70.3 2010
Swim: 0:39:53 (2:05/100m)
T1: 0:01:54
Bike: 3:14:08 (17.31 mph)
T2: 0:01:57
Run: 1:57:50 (8:59/mile)
Total: 5:55:42
Vineman 2011
Swim: 0:34:12 (1:48/100m)
T1: 0:02:28
Bike: 3:16:34 (17.09 mph)
T2: 0:02:37
Run: 1:58:19 (9:01/mile)
Total: 5:54:10
A PR in every discipline from Vineman 2006. Most decidedly. A few minutes slower on bike, run and both transitions from New Orleans, but the swim was faster enough at Vineman to make the total time a 1.5 minute PR!
Overall I'm really happy with my race. I'm a little mystified by the run, because I felt like I was running much stronger than my time reflects. Nothing was really ever Wrong either, so I can't blame it on anything. Just wasn't there that day, I guess. But I'm so new to this whole sub-2 half marathon phenomenon that I can't complain about a sub-2 half marathon, especially at the end of a triathlon!
And it was a great way to celebrate five years of doing half Ironman triathlons with the friend who was there for my first one. Thanks for a great time, Karen!
I covered some of the pre-race stuff, including goals, here, so I don't have to repeat that. And *spoiler alert!* I'll just go ahead and say.. I did, in fact, get a Vineman PR, and beat my 7:30 from 2006. Whee!
That morning
The swim is in a very narrow river, which I guess is why they have 9 billion waves. To promote fairness, they randomize which wave starts when, so that neither the old folks nor the young folks always have to start last every year. In theory, this is great. In practice.. it turns out I'm not the luckiest of humans. 5 years ago, my wave was one of the last ones to start. This year, my wave was 3rd to last. (I'm going to assume that in the 4 intervening years, my wave was first every time.) That means we arrived right around 6am and my wave didn't go off for over two hours, at 8:22. 1.75 hours after Priscilla's, an hour after Karen's, 20 minutes after Jen and Laurie's (Texas Iron women were well represented out there!), and 8 minutes before poor Tony, in the next to last wave.
I killed time by chatting with team mates and with random strangers, hitting the porta potty (which had MUCH more manageable lines than 2006), trying to figure out what I should eat and when, since I had breakfast so many hours ago and seeing others off into their waves.
My weekend partner in crime/running coach, Karen, ready to race
(An interesting aside.. as we came down the hill into transition there was a bike shop tent set up for assistance and whatnot. Karen got her tires pumped up there, but it was kinda chaotic and I didn't want to deal with that, so I just went straight down into transition, figuring I'd borrow someone's pump down there. Turns out? When you don't have to check your bike in the day before, nobody brings their pump race morning, because they just pump their tires before they leave the house/car. I should remember this in the future. I had pumped my tires the day before, and they ended up being fine for the race, but it was an unnecessary stressor that morning. Shoulda just had the bike shop do it.)
Finally decided I was done with the portapotty and thusly willing to put on my wetsuit, then hooked up with Kelly, who sauntered in casually late (transition never closes, so if you're in a late wave, you can just show up right before your wave and rack at the last minute. Unless you're carpooling with someone in an earlier wave, of course), the only one of our group in my age group, and we headed down to the water.
Kelly, just about the cutest thing ever, and also disgustingly fast
We waded in as soon as the wave before us went, and treaded water for 8 minutes (hurray, wetsuits.. otherwise this would have been exhausting before the race even started), unable to hear anything on the shore, such as when our wave might actually start. Water felt great (and much warmer than the high 50s air temp), my body and brain both felt pretty ready, everyone was excited, and we were pumped to start. Someone yelled there were 30 seconds to go, and we all wished each other good luck, and then we were off!
Swim 1.2 miles
I ended up in the second row, near the middle. I took off and went out fast, just trying not to get too caught up in the fray. It was pretty painless where I was. There's always some hitting and shoving and kicking, but people were relatively well behaved, and despite the narrow swim corridor, things cleared out around me pretty quickly. I was settled in much faster than I normally am in a mass start, breathing every 4 strokes within a few minutes, sighting to the right off the shoreline (yay, my exclusive-right-breathing-during-a-race pays off!).
Lots of women from my wave much faster than me, speeding off into the distance, but no feet that I could latch onto the draft. Just did my own thing and tried to go strong but comfortable. My arms were actually fairly fatigued, which I'd also noticed the day before during our 15 minute practice swim. I blame (a) not having done a ton of wetsuit swims in training and (b) the ridiculous amount of swimming Jamie'd been having me do in the last few weeks, trying to keep my cardio up without killing me in the ridiculous Austin heat. But even though they were fatigued, I tried to keep them moving and strong, just telling myself this was all I needed to do with my arms today, so I could wear them out completely during the swim.
I ran into two things that I'd noted from my Vineman 2006 race report out there.. one was taking in water while breathing. This actually only happened to me once this year, but it was pretty bad. I turned to breathe and got a lungful of water. So much that I couldn't breathe at all, and I started coughing and sputtering badly. I could force air out, but each time I'd try to breathe in, I'd get more water or start choking again. At one point I hadn't managed an inhale for a rather alarming number of seconds, and oddly, instead of breast stroking or something where I was likely to actually be able to FIND air, I stuck my face back in the water and kept swimming faster. I think I just mentally needed to maintain normalcy, rather than panicking and ending up sinking and getting pulled by a kayak for excessive flailing. And sure enough, next time I turned my head to breathe, my body took over again, and I was able to get a partial breath which sustained me until my next breath, when things basically returned to normal. It's just amazing how we can overcome those instincts to panic, though. As much as I hate it, I think that hypoxic breathing stuff may actually be helping, if only in a "learn to control your panic when you can't breathe" perspective.
The second similarity from 2006 is how freakin' long this swim is. Most tri swims are rectangles, so you turn fairly frequently. This is a straight out and back, and it curves as you go, so you can't see where the turnaround is. And it takes forever. 0.6 miles might not sound like that much, but.. it is.
Fortunately the course provides its own entertainment! As you swim along, you can just glance in any direction and find people walking. Yes, walking. The entire swim. The river is 3-7feet deep, and over next to the shore you can find folks trudging along in knee to waist deep water. I was already passing red-capped men from the wave in front of me, and now I was coming upon swim caps from waves before them, walking along, looking somewhat defeated. I'm not sure if they walked the entire swim, but.. it's certainly possible to. Some people ended up inadvertently dragging their fingertips or knuckles on the bottom, but my combination of staying in the very middle of the river and having very stubby arms meant I never hit bottom (and I certainly never stood up to walk).
A hundred years later, I finally made it out to the turnaround, swam around the folks walking around the turn buoy, then headed back in. Even though the current isn't strong at all, and you can't feel it as you swim upstream, it felt a little like it helped push you back down. Or maybe it's just the happiness of knowing you're over half done. I tried to dig a little deeper into the water and push my way back in. My arms were even tireder now, but I felt like I was having a good, solid swim. Nothing had gone horribly wrong, and I really hoped I would finally have a swim time that reflected my actual ability to swim, rather than one that was a pace slower than I train at.
I was expecting the swim to end as it did last time, where we took a sharp right to head in perpendicular to shore, but instead we swam straight up onto a slanted part of shore. Not too much congestion as I trudged out of the water and up to the timing mat (you can enjoy a video of me emerging here! I like this new video trend ASI has going on. Uh, I'm the short one in the full-sleeve wetsuit and the green cap. All those dudes in red caps started 8 minutes before me. Take that, redcaps!). As I got to the mat, there was a woman standing on the mat telling us to be careful because it was slippery. Normally this wouldn't be notable for my race report, except later I found out that this warning volunteer was inspired by Priscilla, who was in the third wave, dramatically slipping as she crossed the timing mat.
(When I looked up my pictures and saw that ASI had swim-exit video, the first thing I did was go see if they got Priscilla falling. And they just barely did! She falls right out of the visible picture, and you can hear the crowd gasp. Also they got a couple pictures of her mid-fall. You can go here to enjoy it. Sorry, Priscilla!)
T1
As I ran down the carpet into transition, dodging men who were going slower than I was and peeling off the upper half of my wetsuit, I glanced at my watch. 34! My previous best was in the 38s, so I was elated by that. Finally a good half Iron swim!
I found my bike without incident, peeled off the bottom of my wetsuit pretty quickly, jammed my wetsuit, goggles and swimcap into my transition bag (everything had to be in the bag, so they could transport your gear to the finish line, since this was a point-to-point bike course), swung my bike off the rack, and ran out of transition. (I had been debating wearing arm warmers, because it was in the high 50s that morning, but, as I predicted, I was so warm from the swim and so set on getting in and out as quickly as possible, I never even considered putting them on once I got to them.)
I crossed the mount line, and kept right on running. 2:28 for T1. Not too shabby for a somewhat logistically complicated transition.
Bike 56 miles
The mount line for this race is a mess. It's at the bottom of a not-insignificant curving hill, and in 2006, since I was in one of the last waves, I got to watch a whole lot of people mount right at the line in completely the wrong gear, start riding, and immediately fall over. I didn't want to do that. I also didn't particularly want to run up the hill in my bike shoes. So I decided to go barefoot and run my bike up the hill, then do a shoeless mount at the top of the hill. That was great, in theory. But my feet were cold and very soft from swimming, and the road was rough and unforgiving. So I ran up the hill going, "Ow. Dammit. Ow. OW." as tons of people passed me, riding up the hill. Might need to rethink that one again next time.
But it was fine, got mounted up at the top without incident (always a fear with so many people watching and wondering why you're not wearing shoes), and set out for a 56 mile ride. Managed to get my feet in my shoes quickly, and then out onto River Road, the most congested and crowded part of the course. A narrow road with cars going in both directions, little to no shoulder, and people passing. All those red-capped men I'd gloatingly passed were now seeking vengeance, and this would continue for the next 56 miles. And all the women in my age group I beat, as well. And all the men from the two waves behind me. But I'm used to that, and I actually felt pretty good on my bike, so I didn't fret it.
Made it through the tricky part where you turn off River Road on a >90 degree right turn directly into a short, steep downhill onto a narrow, winding road, surprised to see they'd put a photographer right there. I'm not sure that's a place that needs MORE potential distractions/wrecks.
It did make for some dramatic-looking pictures, though (especially if anyone DID wreck)
Then it was just a lot of riding through a lot of grapes. Despite being a stronger rider now, there were actually MORE hills than I remembered there being. Short, steep hills, mostly with preceding downhills for momentum. Got out of the saddle for some of them. None of them were prohibitively bad, and it was nice to use some different muscles. I felt strong. I felt like I was riding well, even when I was being passed so often. I was even passing a few people, and I made a few friendly comments when I could, encouraging or pointing out the beauty of the course. I figured a lot of those people were me-five-years-ago, out there doing their first 70.3 and feeling overwhelmed and proud and in awe.
And it is certainly beautiful out there. Hills and vineyards and trees and cows and more hills and very, very bad roads. Man, those roads were bad. Potholes and cracks all over the place. Especially bad on some of the downhills, where you had to weave around to avoid falling in to them. The course was LITTERED with things that flew off peoples' bikes. You could have stocked a bike shop with the water bottles, tires, sponges, nutrition, and even someone's entire hydration system that were strewn across the road after each buckle or bump in the road. Tony actually lost all his bike nutrition during the ride, a fact that came back to haunt him during a rough run. Of course, that being said, he COMPLETELY schooled me on the bike, passing me less than 20 miles in (despite starting 8 minutes behind me), riding by and asking, "Hey, lady, what high school do YOU go to?" He's a charmer.
Green on green, as I ride past one of the many vineyards out in Sonoma
I tried out a new nutrition strategy this race, and it actually worked out really well. Normally I uh.. don't really have a real nutrition strategy. Yes, I've done four full Ironman races and this was my fifth half, and I still hadn't even come up with a true plan. Normally I say, "Okay, all of these packages of things are 200-250 calories.. I'll just try to eat one package during each hour." That obviously works well enough to have gotten me through four Ironmans, but I thought maybe I'd try doing something a little more formal. So my plan was to eat 2 Clif Blocks every 15 minutes for the first 45 minutes of each hour, then 3 Honey Stinger blocks at the end of each hour. 248 calories an hour. More than I normally manage to take in, and hopefully a good amount. And on an actual schedule, so I don't look down and notice 2 hours have passed and I'm 200 calories behind. I was afraid I would either not pay enough attention to the time to have this work, or end up completely clock-obsessed, but it ended up working out perfectly. And since I had to drink water to wash down each thing, I drank water at the very least four times an hour. Worked out really well. With the exception of electrolytes. I had Ironman Perform in my water bottle, and I intended to drink the one I started with and pick up a replacement out there, but I only ended up drinking maybe half of the one I took. With eating and drinking that frequently, there just wasn't all that much time that I WASN'T eating or drinking water, which left very little time to drink anything else. With it being as cool as it was out there, this wasn't an issue, but it's something I'll need to figure out for next time.
I mostly tried to ignore my bike computer for everything but timing when I should be eating, but as I hit every hour, I couldn't resist looking at my distance, to see what my average speed was. I was pretty terrified to look at my distance as my computer hit hour 1. What if it said 14 miles? What if I was going the exact same speed I went 5 years ago? But when I looked, even with the congestion from the start and the technical bits and the hills, it said I'd gone 17.2 miles. I was thrilled. I wasn't sure if I could keep that up, since I knew Chalk Hill still loomed up ahead, and since 17 is fast for me, and who knows what starting that fast would do to my legs, but I was happy to at least have started so strong. Then at hour two.. I was still right at 17 miles for that hour. I started to wonder if I might actually get close to my goal of "as close to 3 hours as possible".
Hour 3 was a little tougher. More bad roads. More hills. My left glute was getting pretty unhappy. If I stretched it out, either by pushing my knee out to the side or by standing up in my saddle, it would feel better for a few minutes, but then it would tighten up again. Not tremendous pain, but really uncomfortable, and certainly slowed me down to come out of my aero bars to stretch it so often.
Chalk Hill was still there. Started going uphill. Kept going uphill. Road curved. Still going uphill. I passed a girl and said, "I sure hope this is Chalk Hill." And she said she hoped so, too. Not that it was horrible, I just would have hated to still have a hill ahead that was longer or steeper. But I passed a lot of people going up the hill.
(Side note: For this 56 mile ride, I saw exactly one race marshal on a motorcycle. Which is a shame, because I saw a fair amount of egregious drafting out there. As I approached the base of Chalk Hill, a big guy passed me with a little guy tucked in DIRECTLY behind him. Not even vaguely subtle in his drafting, just sitting directly on the big guy's wheel. The big guy dropped him on the hill, and then I passed them BOTH on the way up. Pansy-ass drafter. Of course, on the next big downhill, they both passed me again, once again with the little guy nestled in behind the big guy. I almost yelled much profanity in his direction, but I hoped maybe karma would come back to bite him in the ass eventually. I have no idea if it did, but I prefer to believe it did. Regardless, I outclimbed his ass on Chalk Hill.)
After Chalk Hill, I knew it was a pretty short ride to get to the high school in Windsor. We came into a town with a left turn ahead, and a volunteer yelled out that this was our last hill. Yay! Came around the corner, downshifted and started climbing the hill, and then I couldn't pedal. My chain was locked up completely. Moment of extreme panic as I tried to figure out which foot to unclip so I could step down before I fell sideways, and somehow I managed to unclip, get a foot down, and wheel myself off the road before anyone behind me ran me over or fell because I stopped right in front of them. Whew. Got off onto the shoulder and off my bike, desperately hoping my bike wouldn't do what it tends to do, which is lodge the chain between the derailleur and the bike. That usually takes me about 5 minutes to dislodge, and I end up completely covered in chain grease. Fortunately it wasn't that bad, and a little spin of the pedals got the chain back on, and I managed to start back up in the middle of the hill with no momentum in a very wrong gear, and I was only out a minute or two because of it. Could have been MUCH worse.
Rode through the outskirts of Windsor, where Karen and I had done our warm-up ride the day before. Now I knew exactly how far I had to go. And I knew where the emus were, and sure enough they were there at the fence cheering for me.
A few last turns and we were almost to the high school. We were riding along beside the runners, and I knew we were close. But I hadn't really paid much attention to how the bike comes back into transition. I wasn't sure how many turns we had left, or where the dismount line was. As I turned into the school, I realized we were MUCH closer to transition than I'd thought. I frantically reached down to unvelcro my left shoe and slip my foot out on top of my shoe. As I started to reach for the right shoe, we turned again, and right after that turn was the dismount line. Crap! I ended up just having to unclip my right foot and leave the shoe on.
(I had watched 3 hours come and go while I was on the bike, and I was a little bummed about that, but my total bike time was 3:16:34, 17.09 mph, which I'm actually thrilled with. I maintained a steady pace the whole way through, unlike CdA where I started out faster and then slowly got slower and slower. And that's only 2 minutes slower than my bike in New Orleans, which was pancake flat, and Vineman is a much tougher course. So yay!)
T2
This was by far my proudest moment of the race. In general, this is not a spectator course. There's people cheering at the swim, but most people leave after their athlete goes through, so there's less people cheering for the later waves. There's practically nobody cheering on the bike, because they don't want people driving the course to cheer for their athletes. And there's really nobody on the run course cheering, either. But the one place where there's a lot of spectators is when you're at the high school, finishing the bike and starting and finishing the run.
So I ran my bike through the gauntlet of cheering spectators wearing one bike shoe and one completely bare foot, slap-clomp, slap-clomp, slap-clomp. As a bonus, the one shoe still clipped in was dragging on the ground as I ran my bike. Slap-clomp-scrraaaapppe. Hi, everyone! Yes, I'm (comparatively) slow on the bike, and evidently new to the sport of triathlon! Why is this the longest section of sidewalk ever?
But I did eventually make it to transition, found my rack without incident, ran down to the little tree I used as a landmark, racked my bike, then executed my favorite plan: peeing and putting on my shoes (this time with bonus bike-shoe-removal).
Transition was roughly 1/4 concrete and 3/4 grass, so I made sure to pick a grassy area the day before. Sat down and put on my socks and shoes, then grabbed my ziploc bag of goodies. By then I was done peeing, so I was up and out of transition quickly!
2:37 total. Not bad for all that I got accomplished, and for a relatively big and unwieldy transition area.
Run 13.1 miles
As I ran out of transition, I dug into my ziploc bag and distributed my goodies. Took one gu immediately and shoved the other two in my singlet pockets. Shoved a small baggie of salt pills in there, as well. Then took the two barrettes out of my hair and replaced them with my alligator Sweaty Bands headband. Was this strictly necessary? No, and in fact nobody noticed its awesomeness, even the people I was with, until I pointed it out after the race. But *I* knew I looked adorable, and that's all that matters.
Plus I did it all while running, so no time was lost
My legs felt pretty good. My left foot, The Problematic One, was a little uncomfortable at first. It felt a little like my sock was out of place, so I spent the first few miles trying to shift my foot around in my shoe. Eventually that annoyance seemed to fade and didn't bother me again.
Mile 1 came pretty quickly, and I checked my watch just to see how I was doing, and it told me 8:15. That's too fast to start out at, so I ratcheted back my effort a bit. I decided to run by feel. That's worked really well for me in training.
So I just ran. I ran through most of the aid stations, grabbing water and ice and drinking on the run. It was about 70, which is FANTASTIC when you're used to 90s and 100s. But it was sunny. And there's no shade on this course. And it starts to wear on you after a while.
But I was feeling good. I was running past all the people who were walking up the hills. I was passing the folks who passed me on the bike. I powered up the big hill (which blissfully DOES have some shade) and yelled encouragement to the folks going both directions. I saw Priscilla coming back in, almost finished, then Karen shortly thereafter. Saw Kelly coming back in looking amazing and WAY WAY WAY ahead of me (and having passed Jen and Laurie who started 20 minutes before us), then saw Jen coming back in, also looking really strong.
(Around here I passed a guy who I'd passed earlier on the bike going up Chalk Hill, and he'd said he needed to tie a rope to me to get up the hill. He was a bigger guy, who then blew by me on the subsequent downhill, and I never saw him again until the run. Just after I ran by, I thought I felt something weird, and I heard him yell that I'd dropped something. I yelled back, "Crap, is it my salt?" and he said it was, and I might want that. So I turned around and ran back, and he was nice enough to have picked it up off the ground and handed it to me when I got there. It wasn't hot out there, but I was still diligently taking my salt as planned.)
Around mile 5, I realized I was going to need a portapotty. My modified bike nutrition was actually part of a strategy to try to eliminate this portapotty need on the run, eating all sugar-food (blocks) and no solid food (like Clifbars or sandwiches or poptarts). Obviously this experiment failed, and the solid foods on the bike were not the problem. At the turn leading down to La Crema, I saw two unoccupied portapotties at an aid station. I grabbed a cup of water and took it into the portapotty with me, took care of the stomach while eating a gu and drinking my water (is that disgusting? Have I lost all sense of what's disgusting at this point?), then got out as quickly as possible.
I had just seen Laurie, and that made me realize that one of my goals was likely not achievable. My true goals were time goals: beat my previous Vineman PR (sub-7:33) and get a half Ironman PR (sub-5:55:42), but I had some secondary goals just to keep me motivated out there. (1) I didn't want to have the slowest time of our Austin group out there, (2) I didn't want to be the last person from our group to actually cross the finish line, and (3) I wanted to try to see if I could catch Laurie on the run. This wasn't really fair to a recently-surgeried Laurie, but hey, I didn't say I was PROUD of these goals. But given where I saw her, I knew she was too many miles ahead of me at that point to catch her, and so I gave up goal 3 while celebrating the fact that that meant Laurie was having a solid race out there.
Turned into La Crema and started my loop around the vineyard. It was pretty, but it was largely shadeless and on a rocky dirt trail, which didn't feel great this late in the race. I did get to see Katherine, who I hadn't seen in forever, and I wished her well when she told me her back had given out. Ugh.
Jazz hands for the photographer as I ran through La Crema
Back out onto the road, and more than half done. I'd glanced at my watch as I passed over the (presumably) halfway timing mat, and it was just under 1 hour. Like.. JUST under. Way too close for comfort. Way slower than I had wanted, but with the salt dropping plus the portapotty, not too surprising. It should be mostly downhill on the way back, though, and I could pick it up a bit.
I felt strong on the way back in. The sun was starting to get to me a bit, and I was dumping more water over my head, but I was running well. I felt good. There weren't that many people still coming out as I went back in, but they were still trickling out, and I cheered for them, as people cheered for me in 2006 when I was back there.
I was passing a lot of people. I passed a guy who was hobbling. Another guy asked what was wrong, and he said he was cramping. The first guy told him to get some electrolytes in him, grab some gatorade at the next aid station. I felt good and was ahead of my salt, so I took out my baggie of two salt pills and handed them to the guy as I ran by. He thanked me profusely. Hopefully it helped.
I was watching ahead of me, still hoping to achieve sub-goal 2: not being the last one to physically cross the finish line. I knew I couldn't catch Laurie, but I hadn't seen Tony coming back in. It could have been that he was running back in while I was in the portapotty and I missed him, or it could be that he was doing the loop around La Crema when I was, in which case there was hope I could catch him.
With less than 1 mile to go, I saw him ahead. Walking. Uhoh. You can't feel good about passing someone if they're walking! But as I got closer, he started running again. As I passed him, I said, "Hey, man, what nursing home do YOU live at?" (true, he's exactly the same age as me, but it felt appropriate given his high school comment earlier, and he did laugh), and then I told him that there should be no more walking. I figured he would stay with me, but he fell back as I picked it up.
I felt really good in the last mile, though certainly the last mile seemed to last forever. Passed more people, stole energy from the cheering crowds, and pushed through. Turned some corners and was back at the high school, then one more corner and into the finish chute! My Texas Iron compatriots were all lined up along the finish chute, and I gave them all high fives as I ran by and across the finish line!
Not my actual finish time. And hey, for fun you can compare this finish line photo to my 2006 finish line photo
After
So I never caught Laurie, but I did manage to not have the slowest time (barely! our group was a force to be reckoned with out there, especially Kelly "I missed a Clearwater slot by one place" Green) and not be the last one to cross the finish line (barely! sorry, Tony, except you still kicked my ass overall, since you started way after I did..).
I knew it was a Vineman PR, by about 1:40. That's pretty funny, how different an athlete I was back then. I didn't think it was a half Ironman PR, but later that day I looked up my New Orleans time, and sure enough, it was a PR! Whee!
Vineman 2006
Swim: 0:42:31 (2:12/100m)
T1: 0:04:41
Bike: 3:56:23 (14.21 mph)
T2: 0:05:02
Run: 02:44:27 (12:33/mile)
Finish: 7:33:08
New Orleans 70.3 2010
Swim: 0:39:53 (2:05/100m)
T1: 0:01:54
Bike: 3:14:08 (17.31 mph)
T2: 0:01:57
Run: 1:57:50 (8:59/mile)
Total: 5:55:42
Vineman 2011
Swim: 0:34:12 (1:48/100m)
T1: 0:02:28
Bike: 3:16:34 (17.09 mph)
T2: 0:02:37
Run: 1:58:19 (9:01/mile)
Total: 5:54:10
A PR in every discipline from Vineman 2006. Most decidedly. A few minutes slower on bike, run and both transitions from New Orleans, but the swim was faster enough at Vineman to make the total time a 1.5 minute PR!
Overall I'm really happy with my race. I'm a little mystified by the run, because I felt like I was running much stronger than my time reflects. Nothing was really ever Wrong either, so I can't blame it on anything. Just wasn't there that day, I guess. But I'm so new to this whole sub-2 half marathon phenomenon that I can't complain about a sub-2 half marathon, especially at the end of a triathlon!
And it was a great way to celebrate five years of doing half Ironman triathlons with the friend who was there for my first one. Thanks for a great time, Karen!