So fresh off my 7th place finish a week ago at a local sprint, my taper week started for the Rev3 half iron race on 9/11/11.. I really had not given much of a thought to the actuall significance of that date until just a few days befor the race. What a truely emotional day for multiple reasons.
I really did not have much in the way of expectations after my last, somewhat sad long distance race. So far 1 IronMan (barely finished) and 1 Half Iron (not much better). So as I looked back at the past four weeks of training, I wasn't really sure that this race would be much different.
Four weeks prior to the race, I had a good training week. But then we took a vacation to Alaska where I took a total of 8 days in a row with the only exercise being me catching a lot of salmon, and large trout with my fly rod. I gained a total of 4.5 lbs that week due to a really vacation oriented diet, and an absolute abscense any kind of physical exercise. Talk about feeling like a dough boy, wow.
Once you are two weeks out from your big race, it is kinda hard to try to loose that extra weight. Workouts went from 8 days off, right into a taper. I told everyone I felt good, but I was lying to them as well as myself. It is by far the most unprepared I have felt for any race so far to date. So with very little workouts in the past 3 weeks we headed over to Sandusky on Saturday morning. Ready or not, race day was only a day away.
After athlete check in, we got the bikes all put together. I took Misery (yes, that is my bike's name) out for about a 7 mile ride up the road and back (had not even touched her since the race the prior week, again making me realize how completely unprepaired I felt). At around mile 4, Joe asked me if I wanted to open her up a little... So we aired it out for a 1/2 mile or so, at about 26 mph. That kind of settled the butterflies a little. Once we rolled back into the parking lot, we started making our prep to set the bikes up in the transition.
As we were standing around the the truck, Chris McDonald (Pro winner of IMKY two week earlier) came walking by. As he started giving Joe's Trek a close once over it got pretty interesting. Joe made it a point to tell "Big Sexy" (ya that really is his nickname on the pro circuit) "Hey, remember tomorrow when you see me... NO Drafting!" He kind of laughed a little, and Joe said "I mean it, Bro. You gotta stay back off me when we are racing" so of course he walked back over to talk to us, and take some photos. Pretty nice guy (and freakin fast with a winning time at IMKY of 8:27:36)
After that we racked the bikes and headed out to dinner with some friends from the Sandusky area. With a total of 13 of us at dinner (6 athletes plus families) it was one of the coolest parts of the entire weekend. A must at future events. Joe took a minute to encourage everyone by reading a small outtake from Macca's book encouraging us to "Embrace the Suck" the next day during the race.
On Saturday night before the race, Maria and I, along with our friends and teammates, Troy, John, Joe, and Rick stayed at Breakers Hotel (inside Cedar Point Amusement Park, and right on the beach next to the swim start) Just as the sun was going down, we walked out to the swim start on the beach where Rev3 had placed 2977 American flags in the sand.... What a class act that organization turned out to be. And what an emotional sunset as the four us reflected on the significants of the date, and what it meant to each of us. There are not very many events in a person's life where you will forever remember "The Exact Moment" you heard..
Although I did not personally know anyone who lost their life at the World Trade Center, I do have a number of loved ones who serve this country every day. I decided to dedicate my race the next day on 9/11 to my only brother, Navy Chief Jeremiah J. Kugler. I publically posted it on FaceBook and secretly hoped that I would not embarass myself the next morning. He is one of the guys who never wants to be recognized, but quietly does his job out of his patriotic love for the greatest nation in the world, The United States of America. I an unmeasurable love and respect for him, and I hope he knows it.
Sunday morning 5:30 am - the alarm goes off. I am in my pre-race zone. As I ate my cottage cheese, ham and cheese roll ups, and crushed pineapples, no longer was I thinking about the date, I was only focused on my race plan, and how I was going to execute it. Once I got everything set up in the transition area, I headed back down to the room, and got changed into my suit, and headed for the swim start.
We all found each other pretty quickly and did a little warm up swim. Maria snapped a couple of photos to commemorate the moment, we had a team prayer (which is now an every race tradition) I am not the kind of guy who needs a lot of encouragement or pep talk, I just need to focus, so I did.
Once they gave us the 2 minute warning, I kissed my wife and headed to the water. The calm before the storm...
My plan was to swim at about 1:40 / 100 yd pace. I must have been pretty close to right on, because I came out of the water with in 35:30. I know I can swim much faster (have done the same swim in practice in 32:30 only a week earlier, but I had a plan and that was it.
I spent a little more time in transition than I really wanted to, but those dumb arm sleves don't like to go over wet hands very easily. T1 took me 5:04 which really was not all that bad considering the sleeves and the 300 yd beach run up to the corral.
Once at the mounting line with Misery (yes that is my bike's name) I got going pretty quickly. Within a hundred yards or so I was up to speed, running it just a little over 20mph. My race plan was to drink when ever I could remember, eat 4 Eduralites every 20 miles and suck down a Cliff Shot (stoked up with a double shot of caffeine) every 45-60 minutes on the bike. I wanted to keep an average of 19.2 mph in order to hit my goal of a sub 6 hour race.
Well the stars must have all been aligned, because I caught fire on the bike just up the road, and was able to push my average speed up to 20.16 for the next 56 miles.
Once I hit the transition again it all went pretty quick. I spent a total of 2:14 in T2 and that included racking Misery, changing shoes, grabbing my fuel belt, ditching my helmet and glasses, grabbing a honey wafer, and taking the fastest pee break in the history of time as I passed the row of outhouses on my out.
The run: Felt good right away. I never got that "I just rode 56 miles" feeling that I often have at the beginning of my run during a race. I just felt fine right from the start. My plan was to walk through every water station just long enough to feel good and hydrate. I took two Enduralites every hour, two Advil at mile 7, and a Cliff Shot every 4 miles or so. They start getting pretty hard for me to choke down by about half way through the run. The consitancy gets me right in the gag reflex every time... lol. Almost yakked up a couple of them on that run.
I though I would need to do 11:00 mile pace to be under 6 hours, but once I saw that I was running out of the transition right at 3:30:00 I knew my computer like brain with not even have to work to do the calculation on pace for the entire run. So as the miles clicked by and I was hitting on all 8 cyclinders, I started to realize that with appx a 10:00 minute pace, if was able to keep it up, I may just make it in under 5:45
As I rounded the corner and headed towards the cause way into the park, I did a couple of quick calculations so I would know how hard I was going to have to go to make my new goal. With an average pace of 10:13 per mile it was not my fastest run ever, but I was happy that it was a very even pace for the entire 13.1 miles, and I never had to walk (except when drinking for 20 feet at the water stations)
As I came into the finishing shoots (and they are very long - adding to the excitement) my wife was waiting to hand me a T-shirt that I threw on over my tri suit. The shirt was all black with big white letters on it that said "9/11/01 Never Forgotten!" and was able to grab a big American flag to carry accross the finish line. Wow, was that a great feeling!
So my total time was 5:43:31 chopping a staggering 40 minutes off my 1/2 Iron time only two months earlier, and making my originally stated January 2011 goal of a sub 5:45 1/2 Ironman.
What a day, what a race, what a feeling to reach goals that not long ago seemed completely impossible. How does it feel to achieve the impossible? Pretty good :) Next stop IMKY 2012 (who knows maybe it will be sub 12 hours)
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