Misha Misha Misha!

On Saturday I completed Ironman Florida with my friend Cedric.  An Ironman is a triathlon where you swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles and run 26.2 miles (a marathon). For each of us this was our second Ironman; we completed Ironman Arizona together back in April of 2007.

Highlights:

• I finished in under 12 hours: 11:43:11!
• Cedric finished in just over 10 hours: 10:09:27!
• We each improved our Arizona times by two hours.
• My run time was within ten minutes of my marathon record!
• Improved all my times (even the transitions) except for the swim.
• Continued my tradition of a massage in the bike-to-run transition.
• Negative splits on the bike and run.
• Lots of jellyfish and rays in the water.
• Several compliments on my beard.

My swim time (1:33:15) over ten minutes slower than it was at Arizona (1:22:44).  I blame the waves, but it was also hard to spot the buoys in all the commotion.  Also I really neglected training for the swim portion this year. There were tons of pink meanie jellyfish in the water, several of them passed just inches from my face, but I managed to avoid getting stung.  The water was super clear and I was able to see lots of rays on the bottom of the sea floor before I got out too deep.

All my other times (bike, run and even my transitions) were faster than in Arizona.

The largest improvement was the bike leg where my time (6:03:18) was over 80 minutes faster than it was at Arizona (7:26:31).  Most racers were on aerodynamic tri bikes, with some wearing rocketeer-style aerodynamic helmets. Even the few road bikes I saw all had aero-bars. I had none of these so it felt great to pass people these people on my road bike while I was sitting upright eating a snack.

I had read that with such a flat road course you risk fatiguing your muscles because you use the same same ones the whole time (as opposed to when you ride hills), so I tried to stand every ten miles while riding.  Standing while riding made me go even faster and I really flew on those parts (exceeding 25 miles per hour at times).

After the bike ride my lower back was killing me, so I continued my ironman tradition of getting a massage in the bike-to-run transition. The chiropractor helped tremendously and I was off on the run shortly after.

My run went great. My time of 3:39:03 was more than 50 minutes faster than my Arizona time (4:31:04), and within ten minutes of my fastest marathon ever (3:29:07 - Bizz Johnson). Proportionately speaking, this was an even bigger improvement than my bike ride. As you can see from my gps track, it was very consistent. It didn’t start so smoothly: I had hot spots on my feet from my bike pedals and this was exacerbated by the thin shoes (new balance minimus).  From the very beginning of the run my left foot was very numb.  I was worried I’d accidentally trip myself so I stopped in the fourth mile to loosen my shoelace and that seemed to help.  You can see that mile 4 was a bit slower as a result. My calves were very tight for the first few miles, but I kept running and they seemed to get better. Once I saw that there were only a few miles left, I felt like I had some extra gas in the tank and sped up, passing lots of people and feeling really good.  I think I got really lucky with timing, it felt like I couldn’t keep up the pace much longer and when I got to the finish I was pretty light-headed. While running the course I got several compliments on my beard from spectators and afterwards Cedric pointed out that I was probably the only bearded racer on the whole course. Ironmen tend to have a fairly clean-cut look (“fascist” was the way Cedric described it). 

The fastest way to complete a race (or a leg, in the case of multisport race) is with a negative split, where you go faster on the second half than you did on the first half. I was stoked to realize that I had done this in the run, where my pace in the first half was 8:31 and my pace in the second half was 8:12. I also did it on the bike portion, where my speed on the first half was 17.56 mph and my speed on the second half was 19.50 mph. With the bike ride there was a prominent headwind going out (and therefore a tailwind returning), so that probably helped with the speed, but the run was a double loop and therefore had no such boost. I suspect I also negative split the swim since it was much easier for me to see the buoys on the second lap once all the fast swimmers passed me, but the race didn’t report the swim splits, even though they measured them with timing mats. 

I ate constantly on race day. Here’s roughly what I can remember eating:

• 2 servings of instant oatmeal
• 1 bottle of ensure high protein
• an apple
• 32 ounces of gatorade g2
• 50 ounces of Ironman Perform (Power bar’s crappy gatorade clone)
• A ton of water
• 7 banana halves
• 6 cookies
• 7 Lara bars
• 10 Gu shots (flavored sugar gel)
• 6 Shot Blocks (like gummy fruit)
• 3 slices of pizza
• 3 cups of chicken broth
• 3 cups of cola
• 3 orange wedges

Finish line photo by Maureen