#eagleman70.3

My only real goals were to finish and to have fun, but of course I had some ideas in my head about how fast I could do each segment. My ideas were way off. I had fun, and while I feel some disappointment at my times, I chalk it up as a learning experience. I learned a little about pacing in a long race, about dealing with heat, and that I need to work on open water swimming.

A little background: My first tri was the Celebrating Heroes Sprint at Centennial Park in 2013. Last year I did two olympic tris: the Columbia Tri in May, and since I didn't get to swim in that one I did the Baltimore Tri in October. These two years have been building toward Eagleman 70.3 in 2015. 

My family and I drove to Cambridge Friday evening. Saturday I went to packet pickup and listened to the briefing. There wasn't much new info there since I had read the athlete's guide at least 8 times, but it was nice that the announcer took the bib numbers of the first timers so he could recognize them on race day. Next I racked my bike, tried not to be intimidated by all of the fancy tri-bikes, and then met my wife and kids for lunch at the Cambridge Airport. Saturday night we met a friend (who was also racing) at Bob Evans in Easton so I could get my traditional pre-race pancake dinner.

Sunday Morning I got up at 3:30. I didn't want to bother with the shuttle bus so I left early and found parking near the park. I set up transition, and then spent the next 45 minutes fighting nerves and making ridiculously minor adjustments to pass the time. Finally my friend and I went to watch the pros go and wait for our waves.

Swim: 57:58

The announcer said my name as I walked into the water, and that got me pumped. I stayed toward the back, and when the horn sounded I waited for everyone else to swim. But most people started walking. I tried to swim but wasn't keeping up with the guys walking next to me, so I just walked. Eventually we all started swimming.

The swim was fairly uneventful, but just seemed to go on forever. I'm a slow swimmer, but I expected to finish 45-48 minutes. So I was pretty disappointed when I got on the bike and saw that it had been almost an hour. I've been swimming a lot this spring, but my last open water swim was the Baltimore Tri in October. Maybe that had something to do with it.

T1: 2:58

I took my time to make sure I got suncreen in all the right places.

Bike: 3:03:01, 18.36 mph

During the bike my mind was constantly on the 5 lengths rule. I tried my best to abide by it, and this may have made me push a little harder to pass when I started creeping to close to the bike in front of me. Whenever someone passed me I would even coast for a few seconds to make sure I was moving out of the draft zone. At times it was frustrating when I had to slow behind a bike as a line of bikes passed us. But I saw two people get blue cards, one of whom was (probably inadvertently) drafting off me, so it was good to know that the rules were being enforced.  

I rode the course two weeks ago and averaged 16.8 mph, and even that was fast for me. So I was really pushing it during the race. But it was so much fun!  After 40 miles I was on course to finish in under 3 hours, which would have been amazing. But the last 16 were into the wind and I slowed.

Some moments I remember from the bike: 1) Feeling the urge to shout to the people near me "Can you believe we are actually doing a 70.3? This is awesome!" and 2) seeing people out on the run as I got close to the end of the bike, and realizing that the absolute last thing in the world I wanted to do at that moment was go run for 2 hours. But I saw my family cheering for me as I reached the dismount line, and that lifted me up temporarily.

T2: 4:06

Again with the sunscreen. But this time I didn't such a great job. I still have a very intricate sunburn pattern.

Run: 2:30:31

I headed out of T2 running, but quickly started cramping. I felt like my legs were on the verge of locking up completely all the way to the aid station. I walked through the aid station and took my time getting sponges and water, and surprisingly the cramping was gone when I started running again.

I felt okay for a while, but then the heat and fatigue started to get to me. Maybe I pushed too hard on the bike, or maybe I just wasn't used to the heat. I started feeling chills even thought it was broiling hot, and that scared me. When I started feeling really bad I would walk until I felt like I could run again. I've never walked in a race unless I was in pain, but that day nothing hurt, I was just so tired. And hot. It was brutal. Running is normally my strongest (least weak?) of the three disciplines, but not that day. It seemed like there were more walkers than runners. I kept walking/running like this until I could see the park and hear the crowd. Then I started to run, and ran all the way in to hear my name as I crossed the finish line and see my wife and kids cheering for me.

My final time was 6:38:34. I was 136th in my age group (out of 232 finishers), 1150 over all out of 2592. I am actually pretty happy with that for my first 70.3. I’ve heard that temperatures near the park were 95 to 97 degrees, but the 85% humidity made it feel like 123 degrees. Wow!