* 5am race morning *

I slept reasonably well last night…no worse than a typical night before an important race.  I was awake several times and up to the bathroom twice but always seemed to slip back to sleep fairly quickly.  My throat isn’t sore right now and my headache is mostly gone but my nose still has a bit of run.  I’ll probably be shooting snot rockets all day on the bike.  I got up at 4am and had my breakfast and coffee then took a nice hot shower.  I just went out for a short walk on the beach to think about the day ahead of me a little.  It’s definitely cool and dry today with a light wind blowing offshore.  I expect we’ll have that water slapping us in the face on the swim into shore but it’s nothing compared to Chesapeakemen last month. 

Time to head for the transition and take care of business then go have some fun.  This is what I’ve spent the last 4 months focusing on and I feel ready…no doubts.  It’s just a matter of sticking with my game plan and not letting everyone around me get in my head…no problem.  LET’S ROCK!

I is an IRONMAN :)

What a day.  I’ll get my thoughts together this week and get a race report up next weekend but here are my initial impressions. 

-First off, I thoroughly enjoyed 8+ hours and suffered for about an hour.  Somewhere in the mile 16-18 point on the run things started to go downhill and from there on it was tough…one aid station at a time.  Even so I’m completely satisfied with my race and I couldn’t have expected better.  I was totally blown away with my swim, rode exactly what I wanted on the bike despite some technical difficulties (see below), and had a respectable run even though my pace took a hit in the last 8 miles.  I probably could have executed the run better but I can’t really complain for my first attempt at the IM.

-I’m completely disappointed at the blatant intentional drafting.  I come out of the water in 1:03 and get out on the bike only to have a pack of 50-75 swallow me up from behind.  I made one attempt to ride off the front and when they eventually pulled me back in I sat up and dropped out the back while they rode off into the distance 5 wide and wheel to wheel.  A course marshal pulled up on them eventually and there were a grand total of 2 dudes at the next penalty tent when I passed it.  No doubt in my mind that I lost several if not many places in my AG to people I should have beat. 

-While I wouldn’t call IMFL a hilly course the bike isn’t completely flat.  There are quite a few rollers that probably climb 50+ feet over 400-800m.  And while I’m in the topic of the bike course, I’m definitely not impressed in general.  This makes the ride to Creeds Market interesting by comparison.  I’ll probably never do IMFL again.  I think something like Arizona would be a much more fun experience.

-Gadgets and go-fats toys are great but if you don’t do a good job of preparing and planning you could be in trouble.  For whatever reason my Ergomo offset was all screwy this morning and ended up giving me totally inaccurate power data for all but the first ~5 miles of the ride.  As a result it became a $1500 speedometer and I rode the entire bike by feel based on experience and ended up riding within 1-2min of my target.

Okay, gotta head back to the finish line to watch the last people become Ironmen.  I already went back down around 9:30 for a while but I really want to be there at midnight.

I’ve been in denial since Wednesday but last night I finally came to grips with the truth. I’ve got a full-blown head cold. When I woke up Wed morning I had a slight sore throat but that isn’t really unusual when I spend the night away from home. I figured it was just dry air or something. As the day went on I started to get a just a touch of runny nose but again mostly ignored it. Wed night I was at WalMart getting some supplies for the week and decided to grab some Airborne and Cold-Eeze just for good measure…can’t hurt. Through the day yesterday my nose was runny and stuffy on and off and my throat was still sore but I convinced myself that it was just from the salt water on the morning swim. Things accelerated last night around dinner time and culminated with a relatively crappy night of sleep. I got to bed by around 10pm and was asleep by 10:30 but woke up at 3am with a terrible headache and blocked up nose. I tossed and turned for the next 3 hours getting 15-20min of marginal sleep at a time. At 6am I got up to go to the bathroom and then laid in bed watching the clock for the next hour. My headache was actually mostly gone and my nose turned runny, I was just wide awake. So much for my plan to sleep in a little today. So I decided to get up around 6:50 and embrace the day. Maybe I’ll get a nap in the early afternoon after I get all of my packing and preparation done. Hopefully I’m pulling out of this damn cold too. I’ll keep hitting the Cold-Eeze all day and see where I’m at in 24hrs. Regardless I’ve got a big day tomorrow and I’ll just have to deal with the cards I’m dealt.

Right now the sun is coming up and it looks like another really nice day. It’s supposed to be on the warm side again but they say a cold front is coming through tonight and we should see a high in the mid-70s tomorrow with considerably lower humidity. After I finish my coffee I’ll head down for a short swim and then plan out the rest of the day. I need to get a short shake-down ride in on my bike to make sure the race rig is good to go, pack my transition bags, check in my bike and bags, do a little shopping at the expo (gotta buy some overpriced IMFL stuff), scope out the transition area and get the ins and outs straight, prep my other gear for the morning, and then relax. Sushi for dinner of course! Sounds like I’ve already got the day planned.

* Later *

Okay, done with my swim and short ride. Got showered and shaved and headed back to Joeys with Katie for a smoothie and some free internet. I've been a snot factory all morning but at least I'm getting it out. I'm feeling a bit tired so hopefully I can fit in a nap before dinner. After we're done here I'll go grab my bike and get it checked in then do a little shopping at the expo and check out the transition area to get the lay of the land.

* Later *

I gave my bike one last check and packed my transition bags then we headed over to rack my bike and drop off my gear bags.  I’ve got a decent spot on the rack.  Based on where they had the exit from the changing tent I’m a straight shot across the transition directly to my rack.  I’ll double check tomorrow just to be sure it didn’t change but it looks like I’ll have a relatively easy time navigating T1.  I’m a little concerned about the transition bags.  At Clearwater they had big racks with pegs that were numbered and you hung both bags together.  Here they just have signs with ranges of numbers and all the transition bags are lined up on the ground.  It seems like it will be much less efficient to find my stuff but we’ll see how it goes.  After doing a bit of recon in transition we hit the expo to buy some overpriced stuff.  I ended up getting a cotton T-shirt and a sleeveless cycling jersey and Katie got a cool long sleeve T-shirt…grand total = $165.  We mad a stop for lunch on the way back to the condo and then I organized some of my stuff for the morning and eventually got a 30min nap.

I’ve been feeling so exhausted all day.  My cold isn’t getting much better either.  I’ve had a mild headache all day and my nose flips between stuffy and runny.  I’m not expecting much sleep tonight and I’ll probably be exhausted again tomorrow morning but I hope the excitement and adrenaline (and a bit of caffeine) will keep me cranking long enough to hit the finish line.  After that I don’t really care how sick I am.

We just got back from yet another sushi meal…I think that’s 5 since Tuesday night for me J  Good stuff and finished off with a small scoop of vanilla ice cream.  I just got done laying out my stuff for the morning and mixing up my nutrition bottles.  Nothing to do now but relax and try to get some rest.  I’ll be starting my day around 4am so I better get to bed.

Another beautiful day in PCB. I got up at 6am and had a leisurely breakfast while I waited for the sun to come up. Around 7:30 I grabbed my wetsuit and headed down the beach to meet Rhino and Nicole for a swim. Now I'm sitting at Joeys Java Juice taking advantage of some free Wi-Fi. Probably go drive some of the bike course when I'm done here. Katie and my dad get into town this afternoon so we'll head to the expo for a while. They have an Endless pool set up where you can swim and they'll video your stroke...definitely gonna do that today.

* Later *

After spending some time online at Joeys Java Juice Ryan and I hit the road for some bike course recon.  There’s 2hrs of my life I wish I could have back.  There just really wasn’t anything worth seeing on the bike course.  It’s basically a few 20-30 mile sections of open road connected by a few turns.  I generally knew that already but I still felt compelled to go have a look.  Bottom line is that we didn’t get much out of our time.  I guess that’s better than skipping it and wishing we had driven it later.

 
After the tour of BF Florida I hit the Publix for some sushi (I’m on a big sushi kick this week) and headed back to the condo to relax and do a little bike prep.  I even got a nice 45min nap in the afternoon.  Around 4pm I headed over to the expo to pick up my disc with replacement tire glued on.  Looks like they did a good job and didn’t rape me too badly for the labor.  At least I have a good tire to race on…although it’s not the tire I would prefer.  I didn’t get a chance to swim in the Endless pool today but it’s on my list for tomorrow.  I spent the next hour or so trying to vector my dad and Katie into town.  They were coming from Pensacola and apparently the directions I gave them (based on how I got here) don’t really work the same coming from the west J  So they got their own scenic tour of BF Florida and finally got here around 5pm.  Katie and I took a walk on the beach and watched the sun set then we all got ready for dinner and headed out to Bonefish Grill.  I departed from my sushi diet but kept it in the seafood group…coconut shrimp, crab and corn chowder, Gulf Grouper with veggies.  Of course we finished it off with a macadamia nut brownie with raspberry sauce and vanilla ice cream.  Excellent dinner all around.  Looks like I’ll easily be in bed by 10pm and plan to sleep in a little…maybe 8-9am.

I was out the door 6:45 and now I'm sitting at Panera having my usual and taking advantage of some free Wi-Fi. I've got another 5hrs on the road today and then I'll be able to settle in and start focusing on the task at hand. Weather still looks good for Saturday.

XXXXXXXXXX - Later that day

I got into town around 2pm and got checked into my condo then headed for registration. The condo is very basic but has what I need . My door is literally 50m from the sand, just past the pool. The Gulf is beautiful...totally flat with just a little ripple on the surface and bright blue. Definitely wetsuit legal. I didn't spend too much time at the expo, just registered, took a quick walk through and took off. My dad and Katie are coming on tomorrow afternoon and I figured they'd want to go check it all out so I'll wait for them.

Later on I was checking out my race wheels and found my brand new rear tire was shredded...$130 down the tubes after only 120 miles. I must have locked up the rear wheel at some point during Chesapeakeman. The tread is actually pulled away from the casing and the casing has some shallow cuts so it's toast. The don't carry the specific tire I use here so I have to use one of my spares instead. So much for low rolling resistance.