Florida 70.3

Viva Las Vegas


I actually qualified for the 70.3 World Championship in Las Vegas last year by winning my age group in New Orleans, but I ended up skipping 70.3 worlds to race Best of the US. That worked out alright, so no real regrets, but I was still somewhat bummed at missing out on Vegas.

So this year as soon as I found out the BOUS race was moving to spring of 2013, I immediately started looking for a 70.3 race to qualify at. I pretty quickly settled on the Florida 70.3 for the simple reason that it was the only race that fit into my schedule. Tiffany also decided that she and Michael would make the trip as well and we'd spend a few days after the race bumming around Florida family vacation style.

The Pre-Race Jams


It turns out sharing a hotel room with a 10 month old baby is not a solid strategy for a good nights sleep, so when my alarm went off at 4AM on race morning I felt like absolute crap. I knew I had to bring out the big guns to turn this situation around, so I cranked up Imperium by Machine Head and stuck that shit on repeat for the half-hour ride from the hotel to the race site.

This song is like an owner's manual for life. It makes me feel like I can wake up, eat a bowl of broken glass and nails for breakfast, run on over to NASA and punt a rocket into orbit. Going hard for 4+ hours in the Florida heat and humidity is nothing...


On to the race...


Swim 

Unfortunately I was in the 15th of 18 waves, which meant I had a solid hour and a half to kill between transition closing and my actual start. I spent most of that time pacing up and down the shoreline watching the 1500 or so people who got to start ahead of me go through the swim. At a boat launch ramp about 20 yards from where we entered the water I saw this lovely sign: 

One silver lining for getting stuck in a late wave... by the time I get in the alligators should already be full. The water was in the mid-80's and super gross. My non-scientific guess is that it was about 50% water, 30% mud and 20% alligator poop. Finally my wave was up, they lined us up in knee deep "water", fired an air horn and we were off. I took a front and center spot on the line and jumped out to a pretty decent start. After the initial washing machine cleared a couple hundred meters out it looked like there was one guy from my wave well off the front already, then a small pack of a half-dozen or so being led by me. I just kept going rather than falling back into the pack to draft since we were already getting mixed up with stragglers from earlier waves so I figured holding a draft would be next to impossible in all that traffic anyway. 

The rest of the swim was spent weaving around traffic and absorbing occasional frog kicks to the kidneys from random breaststrokers. I never saw another cap from my wave after the first turn buoy. My watch showed 29:30 at the swim exit. I was pretty disappointed with that time, but looking at the results I was 3rd in my AG and either 1st or 2nd in my wave (there were 2 waves of M35-39, I was in the 2nd) depending on what happened to the guy who jumped out to the lead at the start so it couldn't have been as lousy as the time would seem to indicate. I'll have to wait until I do a swim where I'm not changing course and/or running into somebody every other stroke to get an honest assessment of my 2012 open water swimming ability. At least I wasn't eaten by a gator.

T1

T1 was my 2nd worst transition ever (my #1 worst transition ever is the 2009 Liberty half, where I had to sit down and bandage a bunch of blisters on my feet before setting off on the bike). I kicked it off by running right past my rack and getting lost, then temporarily forgetting my race number while I scanned up and down the rows looking for my bike. Once I finally found my bike I threw my helmet on, grabbed the bike off the rack and ran a few steps before realizing I forgot to put my race belt on. For some reason WTC requires that a number be worn on the bike, so not wanting to risk a silly penalty I laid the bike down on the ground and did an about face to return to my rack to retrieve my race belt. I'm sure all of this only cost me 30 seconds or so, but it felt like an eternity. It's always demoralizing to piss away time like that so early into what I know is going to be a tough race.

Bike 

I started out the bike in full hammer mode since I figured I was off pace from a slower than expected swim and an epic fail transition. There was a pretty good tailwind the first half and I was holding in the 28mph range while yelling my throat raw at people to move to the right. The roads were pretty narrow with no shoulders for the most part so there was very little room to navigate around slower riders. And of course pretty much nobody was riding to the right like they're supposed to. There aren't enough motorcycles in Sturgis to properly enforce the position rules in the AG waves at a WTC race. 

There was also quite a bit of auto traffic as the roads were open. I lost maybe a minute or two having to wait behind cars as they waited for a safe spot to pass the line of bikes in front of them. Somewhere around mile 30 the terrain started to undulate a bit and we lost our tailwind so the bike started to get much more difficult. Luckily I had already moved up through most of the field at that point so my lungs and throat got a break from the yelling at least. I ended up jumping off the bike with a 2:12:08 split, which was pretty much in the center of the 2:10 - 2:15 I was expecting. I had no idea where I was relative to the rest of my AG or the amateur race as a whole, but I figured I couldn't be in too bad of shape since I wasn't passed the entire ride. I also felt like I did a decent job pacing myself and setting myself up for a good run.  

T2 

T2 was brisk, except for the few seconds I always give away putting on socks. New goal for this season: HTFU and complete a half-iron race without socks... skin of my feet be damned. 

Run 

The run course was extremely challenging. It was 3 loops through the residential streets around the lake with two sizeable hills in the first mile and a half. I was hoping to run right on 6:00/mi pace and nailed it the first loop and was actually feeling pretty decent. The wheels started coming off about midway through the second loop. At around mile 6 I noticed that I had stopped sweating and was starting to shiver a bit, which generally means I'm getting to the point of being dangerously dehydrated. Not wanting to risk a trip to the med tent I decided to do something I haven't done in a race since 2007... walk. From mile 7 onward I briefly walked at every aid station while I guzzled down whatever liquid I could get my hands on. The walk breaks were only about 10-20 seconds each and I was keeping ~6:30 pace between aid stations, so I wasn't losing a ton of time, but it was still pretty demoralizing. I thought for sure I was throwing away the AG win and possibly even a Vegas qualifier.

Because of the chaotic nature of a late wave start and the 3 loop run course I never really had a good idea where I was relative to the rest of the field. I didn't see a single soul from my AG during the 1st lap, which I now know was because I was already at the front, but at the time I thought there had to be at least a couple guys from the previous wave out there in front of me. I passed a handful of 35-39 guys during the 2nd lap, but they were clearly running much slower and I was pretty sure they were a lap behind.  At around mile 8 a 30-34 guy went past me running very strong. He started either 5 or 10 minutes behind me depending on which wave he was in, so crunching some numbers in my head I quickly came to the conclusion that if he was also on lap 2 he was on sub-4 pace and it was basically hopeless for me and if he was still on lap 1 then he was on 4:20-ish pace and as long as I kept putting one foot in front of the other I had nothing to worry about. Either way it made no sense risking a complete blowup trying to go with him so I let him go.

About halfway through the third lap I spotted a couple 35-39 guys up ahead of me who looked strong enough to conceivably be on the 3rd lap as well. I put on as much of a surge as I could to pass them. I wanted to get well ahead by the next aid station because I was still planning on walking through it in order to get more fluids in. It worked as their footsteps faded into the distance and I never saw them again. Looking at the results I'm pretty sure they were on lap 2 anyway.


At about mile 12 I saw the 30-34 guy who passed me back on lap 2 and he became my new target as I tried to lift my pace again. I was still aware that because of the wave start I was either 10 minutes up or down on him, but at that point I no longer cared. It was a point of pride. This guy passed me like I wasn't even moving earlier and now it looks like he's struggling and I need to return the favor. I caught up to about 20 yards back of him when he reached the turnoff for the finish chute... and kept going for another lap. I guess I was 10 minutes up on him after all. I gave myself a mental fist bump, turned into the finish chute and high fived a few kids as I jogged it in for a 4:11:51.


Immediately after my chip was removed I went straight to a nearby picnic table and bent over it dry heaving. Three different EMT's approached me and asked if I needed to go to the med tent but I managed to convince them all that this was standard behavior for me after a half-iron race and avoided the IV needle. It was however a little disconcerting that nothing at all was coming up given that I had managed to take in two full cups of water and/or sports drink at the previous five aid stations. After the dry heaves stopped I went straight to the post-race food tent and guzzled four cans of Coke and two of Sprite and started to feel somewhat normal again.

I wandered around the finish line for area for a while looking to see if results were posted anywhere, but they were nowhere to be found so I resigned myself to sitting on the ground in the food tent until transition finally reopened and I could get to my phone to check the results online. I ran into Jeff Fleig from LaCrosse, who I had previously met last summer at TriStar Minnesota and we sat there comparing notes from our races for a bit. It's always nice to run into a familiar face when you're 1,000 miles from home.

Once they finally reopened transition and I was able to get the results I was blown away that my 4:11:51 was good enough for 11th overall and first amateur. I was pretty confident that I had my Vegas spot sewn up, but I figured that with all the walking I did that someone out there had to have managed better. Some days it really is all about the bike I guess.

After heading out for some nutritious recovery chow at a nearby McDonalds, I reported to the Vegas signup table credit card in hand and claimed my spot, fully intent on actually attending this year. Mission accomplished.

World Turtle Day


Did you know that May 23rd was World Turtle Day? No?!?!? Get with the program.

Most people finding themselves with a few spare days in central Florida with a small child would choose to go to Disney and proceed to drain their wallet for the privilege of spending hours and hours standing in line. Well, most people are chumps. We chose to go the full-on nerd route, first taking little Mikey over to the Kennedy Space Center and then down to the Keys where we were visited the Turtle Hospital, a facility that rescues and rehabs sick or injured sea turtles for eventual release. Yep, that picture below is me wearing a turtle shirt, holding my kid who is also wearing a turtle shirt, standing in front of a building filled with sea turtles (bonus nerdery... the picture was taken by my wife who was also wearing a turtle shirt). Keepin' it awesome in 2012.