The highlight of my day was being in the shoots, just past the finishing line getting ready to take a photo as my wonderfully supportive wife, Maria, completed the entire 70.3 mile journey when a volunteer asked if I would like to give her the finishing metal. I was crying before she ever got there (of course I blame it on the sweat in my eyes, it was hot that day).
I don't remember her total time, and I don't really think any of us even care. A finish was a win for her at that race, and I could not be more proud of her hard work and determination to never give up. She did it, and no one can ever take it away from her.
I would rather live a day as a lion, than a lifetime as a lamb... and apparently so would she.
As for my race that day....
An average swim, followed by a fairly ok bike, with a really pathetic run taking up the rear, truley resulted in nothing much more than a simple finish for me. With the mercury blowing right past 100 degrees before I ever crossed the finish line, it was by far the hottest race in my, so far, short career.
I have to say I really was happy to be done with that. I don't do well in the heat, and my finish time of 6:23:06 was good evidence to support that.
My splits looked a little like this:
Swim - 00:36:57
Bike - 03:04:47
Run - 2:31:53
A long ways from my orignally stated goal in January of doing a 5:45 or less.... In lue of that pathetic race I dedided to pass on the Benton Harbor Steelhead 70.3 that was only 4 weeks away. I got hit with a slap of reality right square between the eyes that day. Is there any scenario where I can even break 6 hours? I decided not to spend another $250 to find out the answer this year would likely be no.
Fastforward 5 weeks to the Niles, MI Triathlon.
I had been training much harder, with more intervalls, and just overall faster, harder workouts. Just to see what could happen, at the very last minute I decided to enter this local super sprint wth Maria, and one of my close training buddies, Joe Hysong.
The long and the short of it looked like this:
swim pace was 1:30 / 100yds
bike pace was 20.7 mph
run pace was 7:20 per mile
Those speeds were good enough to give me a blue ribbon in my age group, but more more important to me personally, was the 7th place overall out of 188 entries. This was a big boost to my confidence, and was the seal on the decision to race the 1/2 Iron at Rev3 Cedar Point on 9/11... see my next post for that race report.
| 00:36:57 | 03:04:47 | 02:31:53 | 06:23:06 |
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