My training for Ironmnan Florida had been pretty non-existant, but I couldn’t get it out of my head that I was going to race a fast half ironman. So on the trip to Arkansas with Nate Smith, I talked about my goal of doing a 4:30 half and finishing in the top 25 of the race, which also happened to be USAT Long Course Nationals.
After meeting up with Nate Smith in Springfield, MO, we had loaded up his stuff in my Saab and headed down the road. Less than 10 minutes out, my car overheated and the temperature wasn’t dropping. So, we turned around, went back to Springfield, and switched over to the “Eco Lips Mobile”. Exceptionally fuel efficient and underpowered, the ELM did provide us with plenty of attention out on the road…
We arrived in Arkadelphia in the afternoon, picked up our packets, and had dinner at Pizza Hut. We then headed out and drove the first half of the bike course and the full run course. To save some money, we had decided we would camp, we should have spent the money… at midnight the temperature was still a humid 90 degrees as Nate and I struggled to sleep.
Race morning we got up around 4am, packed up the tent and hit the road to the “Waffle House”. After a great breakfast of waffles, we arrived at race site by 4:30 and scored prime transition locations. For the next several hours we relaxed and waited for the start.
Since I’m writing this two months after the fact, I don’t remember much about the swim, I try and forget all my swims as quick as possible. I do remember that the water was nice and clear, but was unfortunately too warm for a wetsuit swim. My swim time was 37:40.
Once out on the bike I started passing people who were faster swimmers, and since a lot of people are there were a lot of people to pass. Since the course was strictly out and back on the bike, I knew I would be able to figure out my overall position at the half. I thought I would be in the top 20 or so, but as it turned out I was 56th and about 8 to 10 minutes down on the leader. So for a while I increased my speed and worked up to 46th overall, but by mile 40 my lack of training was catching up to me, as were several of the people I had recently passed…
The last 16 miles were torturous and by the time I arrived at T2, I had slipped back to around 50th place and my average had fallen to 20.7mph. Also, my time coming into T2 was already at 3:30, I had thought I would get off the bike at around 3 hours. Not only was I not going to place high I told myself, but there was no chance of setting a PR either, I had been thinking this for the last 10 miles and was considering quitting for the day. I had two justifications, Nate Smith had been in 6th place at the turn-around and was obviously having a great race so if I quit I could watch him and take pictures. My other justification was that Nate and I were doing a sprint race the next day, if I didn’t do the run I would do a lot better in that (as well as Houston Nationals the following weekend. So I did what I had never done before, quit the race.
Nate halfway through the run…
Nate winning the race…
I’ll never know since I didn’t do it, but as it turned out the times were slow that day and had I done the run I probably could have still made the top 25…