Rock and Roll

4 down, 0 to go for my May races (good thing, since May's over). Finally, they're all complete and I can take a little time to rest.

Prerace: Damie and I went down to Macon on Friday morning for her very first half-Ironman, the Rock and Roll Man. We spent the entire day driving, stopped in traffic, or waiting in registration lines. After our delicious Subway dinner we went to bed pretty early. I had to get my rest before my alarm went off at 3:50 a.m. central time!! Ok, so we were on eastern time, but that's really early to my sleep-loving body. We got to the race site in plenty of time to get everything ready, finish eating breakfast, take a nap in the car, stand in porta potty line, and even get in a swim warm up.

Swim: The water temperature was off by one and a half degrees. It was 77.5, and I needed it to be 79. In the days leading up to the race, even race morning, I was hoping for a wetsuit-legal swim. I got my wish, but changed my mind about it around 400 yards into the swim. Who would have guessed that swimming in a full body, black neoprene suit and a black cap in the Georgia morning sun would get me overheated? Not I. Every 10th stroke or so during the "one loop affair" (as was stated on the website), I had to maneuver my arm to the neck of my suit to open it up to let in some refreshing cool water. I blame this for my swim time: 36:30. They actually added part of transition into the swim times, like I need it to look any slower than it was. Transition started with a 400m jog up a very large steep hill, after you got out of the ankle deep sand on the beach. A good little anaerobic effort to warm me up for the bike!

Bike: I thought this was a great course with rolling hills and smoothly paved roads. None of the hills were as bad as I expected, although they were constant for the most part. I kept holding back in anticipation of larger hills to come, but they never appeared. I only saw one guy drafting the whole time, and I actually kept my mouth shut this time. At the end of the ride, I felt like I could've pushed it a little harder and gone a few minutes fast than my 2:45.

Run: There was no shade except for the small patches of tree shadows dotting the other side of the road, but I felt great during at least the first 3 miles of the run anyway. At about 5 miles, just as I was feeling a meltdown coming on, I saw a small blue suited runner coming the other direction. Just the one I'd been looking for-- Damie! She was looking really strong and gave me a good yell. I think I gave her a pathetic "good job" or something, all I could muster at that point. There were 3 turnarounds on the run course. The first one was long enough that I could see who was in front of me. By that point, there were only 2 women, way ahead. I had recently passed a couple others, one in my age group, and one younger, and they were hanging on strong behind me. By the short turnarounds at miles 8 and 9, I was feeling good enough to have some competitiveness. Doing timechecks in my head (I'm so bad at math when running), I calculated that I may be able to hold off Kelly, a really fast runner coming up behind me, but there was some new girl blazing through the miles and getting awfully close. The finish line came just in time, and I held my place. Actually one of the girls in front of me, an injured pro, DNFed and I moved up to second! Kirsten, the winner, had no need to worry about me, since I was 18 minutes behind her. Run 1:44, total 5:10.

I think I have these 5:05-5:15 half IM times nailed down. Now I'd like to see some consistency in the sub-5 range!

Damie did awesome, finishing up very strong with a 7 minute last mile! She broke her goal time by 20 minutes, got 3rd in her age group, and was barely even sore Sunday. She's destined for a great full Ironman this fall, I'm sure of it.

I'm stealing Damie's picture for my post too! :)