I woke up at 3:30 or 4 and tossed and turned a bit, but managed to fall back asleep. I then awoke to my alarm at 4:45, got dressed and ate my bagel with cream cheese, a Go-gurt (I am a kid in an adult's body) and half a banana. My sister accompanied me down to transition and body marking, which didn't take much time at all since I had dropped off my bike the day prior (Good story there - the boyfriend and I misread the schedule and thought the cut off for bike drop-off and bag turn-in was 5 pm, but it was 3 pm. We ended up with a mere 10 minutes to get all of our things put together and situated in transition. Not pretty.).
After making sure everything was ready to go, I headed back to the hotel room (we were at the race site hotel, which was very convenient) to put on my wetsuit. With about 30 minutes until race start, we walked out to the boardwalk area to meet Th. (the boyfriend) and to head down to the water.
The Swim: 1:13:31.
Th. and I were suited up, so we bid our familes adieu after taking a few photos, headed over the timing mat and packed in with the rest of the sardines. We decided to head to the right side of the beach, thinking this way we could pick our line in to the buoys and avoid some of the mass melee. As it turned out, we did not go over far enough and ended up getting sandwiched, but more on that later. I practiced the breathing techniques I learned at VQ earlier in the season and felt surprisingly calm. A few butterflies were lingering in my belly, but they were all flying in the same direction, so that was good. :) I expected the cannon to go off randomly, as Erin H. had warned me, and sure enough, it did (it would've been nice if they had given us a 2 minute warning or something). They played one of my favorite "get fired up" songs ever - Van Halen's "Panama" - as we were walking into the water across the sandbar, and that put a big smile on my face. I figured it was a positive omen for the day.
For that entire first stretch of the swim, which was oh, probably 800 meters, I got totally clobbered, swam on top of, hit in the face, pushed; you name it, it happened. This was the most brutal swim I've had yet - and the thing that confirmed it was when some guy literally ran into my right shoulder head first and knocked it right out of socket. I yelled a certain four-letter profanity, looked around for kayaks, and when I saw none, I decided to just sit there for a moment (while in excruciating pain) and let it work it's way back into the correct position. Fortunately, it did just that, but not without some tears and additional profanity. Fortunately, the pain lessened a bit as the swim continued, and I pulled through the first half of the swim in 33 minutes, much faster than I had expected. I got a quick sip of fresh water and tried to wade through all the people that were cutting off the first buoy on the second lap. I was amazed that so many people felt it was okay to cheat. I dolphin-dived my way into the second lap and slowed my pace a touch (perhaps a bit more than I had to).
On the edge of the rectangle - cutting across to head back in to the beach - there was some major chop, but other than that, the waves weren't nearly as bad as I had expected them to be, though most of the pro male and female times were about 3 to 6 minutes slower. Considering that, and the fact that I dislocated my shoulder on this swim, a 1:13 is pretty damn impressive (for me at least)! I took 10 minutes off my IM CDA 2008 swim time.
The Bike: 5:40:18
Starting out on the bike after a pretty crazy transition, my legs did not feel as they had felt on my training ride two days prior. I pushed my pace and sailed past a lot of folks, aiming to keep my power between 170 and 180 as Cortino and I had discussed. The terrain was very flat and this course is completely lacking on the technical side, so I had that to my advantage. However, once I got to mile 40 or so, I was not feeling so great. My stomach felt fine, but in general I just did not have the endurance I'd felt on a lot of those long rides with VQ. By about mile 70 or 80 when I caught up with Th., my power average had fallen below 160, which was not good. In retrospect, I did not fuel particularly well. I dropped my salt tabs, drank mostly water out of my aero bottle (I had Gatorade in my other bottles but did not use them very frequently), and had mush in place of broken-up Chewy and Nutri Grain bars (I will never use the "breaking up bars into halves" strategy again). I did eat three bananas and 5 gus, which helped considerably, but overall I was not particularly thrilled with my bike split. By mile 100, I could not ride in my aero bars anymore as my neck muscles could no longer hold my head up. Something was just not right. I was really, really glad to get off my bike in T2.
That said, I took an hour and forty-four minutes off my IM CDA bike time last year. CDA has a much more challenging bike course, but even so, 1:44 is nothing to sneeze at.
The Run: 4:50:18
By the time I got to T2, I was feeling pretty cooked. I kept telling myself that I could start slow and find my legs, get some nutrition and everything would be okay. But the thoughts were definitely there - "Why am I doing this?" "Why don't I just call it a day and tell people I felt awful (which I did)?" I guess being persistent (STUBBORN) has its advantages, because as soon as I got to about mile 3, I thought, well, I've come this far, so I might as well keep going. And somewhere in the back of my mind (and trust me, it was in the back of my mind because at this point I was hurting) I knew that I would really hate myself if I wound up with a DNF.
So I toughed it out and ran 5, walked 1 (or walked 2 when necessary). Occasionally if I was feeling really bad I would run 3 and walk 1 or 2 (minutes). This strategy ended up working pretty well; I must have been running at an 8:50/9 minute pace when I was running because in the end I averaged an 11:04 pace. I didn't fuel very well again, mainly because my stomach was sloshing around. I did throw up twice as well, which hasn't happened to me before. Not once throughout the entire race did I have to pee, which is a good confirmation I did not take in enough nutrition; to boot I think I may have had 1 gu throughout the entire run, plus a few grapes, then I drank mostly water because I could not stomach the Gatorade.
The only really challenging aspect on the run otherwise was that it got dark early due to daylight savings and the state park was REALLY dark. It was very difficult to see the orange cones that were out there.
On the last few miles, I knew that I could finish in 12 hours if I jogged the last mile or so, so I did. The home stretch wasn't quite as fun as Coeur D'Alene's, with the 400 meters or so downhill into the finish line, but there was definitely some fantastic crowd support. A lot of people bemoaned the "spring break" atmosphere with the dinky clubs and silly head shops, but I thought it was kinda fun. I'll take palm trees and the ocean any day. ANY DAY.
In the end, it was a fantastic day, and it always is crossing that finish line. I'm so excited to do it all over again, hopefully with an 11:00 or 11:10 finish (at Ironman Louisville in August 2010). In the meantime, I will take some R&R time, and then start up with some marathon training for the Rock 'n Roll Mardi Gras Marathon at the end of February.
Peace!
Peace!
Krysten
