I AM AN (half) IRONMAN!!!!

well, we did it. the world's hardest half ironman.

at least that's what they call it. and i would have to agree with them as it would certainly be tough to get one harder. the course was pretty brutal. it was all climbing. there were about 5 miles of flats but otherwise you were going up or down at sometimes 10% grades for long periods. the run was the same. it was flat for about 1/2 mile and the rest was 6% grade with no flats.

and, this was done after doing a sprint and two warm up olympic triathlons.

so how'd we do? not fast! there was a winner and it wasn't us. :-) we came in 338th and 339th of 400 people. but the first 150 were pretty extreme. also we didn't have a very good day with my first pond swimming - ( read below next post ), bike disasters ( again ) and being generally slow. how could we have done? if everything had worked out - the bikes, swim and run all went as we can do them we would have maybe cracked 225. but i am guessing nothing went perfect for anyone so we are happy with the weekend!

i wrote a big writeup on the swimming. the running and biking were pretty non-eventful, other than the Resa's bike losing the chain. also this was our last event with our old bikes. my new one showed up yesterday and i am busy the rest of the day setting it up. in a few hours we go for the first ride on it - a 2 hour fun ride. :-)

beta-alanine is the bomb. just mentioning that. if anyone out there gets sore after a long workout - or during it. get beta-alanine. its huge improvement. i did more than an ironman on a very hard course saturday and sunday and am looking forward to hitting it hard tonight (tuesday) on the new bike.

my weight is now 189, down from 215 about a year ago. i think i am about 5 from my best weight.



thats all the good stuff. now the tricky thing: we cant eat anything while going that hard. neither of us can eat anything we have tried and not felt the puke fairy nosing around. if anyone out there has had this and has an tip on what to eat... please let me know! we are thinking of moving away from the energy bars / goos / candies / drinks to things like lasagna and potato soup and stuff. we used to do that while doing the longer adventure races and it worked then. hopefully it does again or we are in big trouble.


ok, weekly scores:

mentally: 7 - started off with 0.01 after the first two disaster swims. thought about just going to the car and calling the whole year off. after the next two great swims i bump mental to about 10+. and then take away 3 for the food issues. so a final of 7. had some of the highest and lowest points of the last 16 months all on the same weekend. came out way ahead though. feel pretty happy too.

physically: 9 - surprised at my recovery time/ability. its life time best right now. bonked badly on the final half marathon run due to lack of food. biggest problem for us now.

workouts: 9 - did more than we needed with 28 miles run, 120 biked and about 3 swam over the weekend. did everything at a very good pace for us, other than the runs - which, how fast can you walk up a 10% grade?


no events on the calendar now except the ironman in 95 days. feels pretty good mentally too, to just get to settle in for the summer without another worried weekend. we might find a half marathon or half ironman just for fun, but it wont be for time. this last weekend was that way, but we also learned so much and had to do all of our first time mistakes. ( i have a NASTY sunburn LOL )

see you next week, i feel i am on the home stretch starting today.