Ironman Texas Race Report: on the road to KONA!

GOING TO KONA!

I am incredibly happy with the results of this race. I won my age group division by a comfortable margin and met my 'A' goal of an 11 hour finish time. Now we get to go to the big island in October! 

The week before:

I had a very careful diet in the week leading up to the race. One bottle of Biotta beet juice each day and my favorite pistachio cranberry quinoa for lunches. Packing is always the most stressful part so my whole room was covered in lists of different categories of things and small piles of stuff. Looked entirely ridiculous but I promise it worked out. Good news is it all fit into my Ogio transition bag.
Picked up Megan (my one-woman manager and cheer squad) up on the way to race check in so she could keep me on track!

Race morning:
I showed up when the transition opened so I could fill up my tires, put bottles on the bike and check my power meter. Lo and behold, the battery on my power meter isn't working. After a few minutes of panic, I decided to take the battery out of my heart rate strap and put it in the power meter as my only advantage in triathlon is the bike leg. I figured I could decide while riding if I wanted to switch it back before the run started and that there was no use in panicking more when there was nothing I could do to change it. Lesson learned for next time: bring the extra batteries on race day. 

The mile walk to the swim start wasn't bad, just had to follow the giant masses of people. Once we got there however, we saw the longest line I have ever seen for a pot-o-potty.

Swim:



When I still had 30 minutes to go.

I just barely made it in the water on time! A very long wait (40 minutes) for the bathroom left me with 4 minutes to get to where I needed to be. I was hauling myself across the parking lot, Meg pulling my wetsuit all the way on while running and pushing through the crowd. I got to exactly where I wanted to start and the gun goes off!

So I started far off to the right, about three rows back and just sighted off the farthest buoy I could see. As a whole the swim went quite well and I finished up with a 1:16 which is twenty minutes faster than last year. I will concede that the wetsuit helps quite a bit.

Bike:

As soon as I pulled my helmet out of the bag the visor popped right off (Hint: this is not supposed to happen). Took a minute or two trying to pop that back in before I got started and about four miles down the road it pops out on one side so I just tucked it into the ear flap and rode like that. Overall not a major issue, just irritating.

Power wise I held a normalized power of 161 watts and an average speed of 21mph. The way out had a slight tail wind and some strong headwinds made the return difficult. Course was wonderfully supported with water stops every 10-15 miles and great volunteers directing turns.

On the bike I ate three Bonk Breaker bars and 8 scoops of Perpetuem drink mix along with 4-5 bottles of Perform and a bottle of water. Luckily I had Ruby’s Lube keeping me comfy in the saddle.

Run:

I spent the last ten miles of the ride thinking about how I could minimize the time spent on getting the one working battery I had from my power meter into my heart rate strap for the run. Again, big thanks to the volunteers that helped with this! Unfortunately once I got on the run I had a sneaking suspicion my heart rate strap was not reading correctly.

As I am pretty sure I'd be dead.

So I ran the marathon just by feel, walking the water stops and finishing with a 4:15 marathon. I drank 1-2 cups of water at each stop and ate 5 Roctanes in total along with a few orange slices. The cooler weather and carpeting in transition made for a much more pleasant run than last year.

I thought I had no possibility of making my eleven hour time goal, but I came around the corner and saw I had 20 seconds to get up that last hill. I was pushing so hard I thought I might cry and everything just hurt but I crossed that line, meeting my time goal by the skin of my teeth with a 10:59:50 total time.

The fourth leg:

I drank a pint of beer at the finish, for a variety of reasons I strongly (STRONGLY) discourage all you future Ironmen from doing the same.

Lessons for Kona:

1. Bring the extra batteries the morning of the race.
2. Get to the port-o-potty with at least an hour until race start.
3. Don't ever panic. The race will happen one way or the other just roll with it.

Check out who shows up at minute 7:30!