Eagleman Half Ironman 2009

 I didn’t expect much from myself in this year’s Eagleman.  I had practically no training except for a decent running base and only a handful of bike rides.  I hadn’t swum since a 2000 yard session back in December 2008 and was worried about even being able to complete the 1.2 mile Half Iron swim distance.In fact, I wasn’t even planning on doing this year’s race.  I told my friends Todd and Rob who I made plans to do that race with this year that I was out was out about two months ago when I was out of work.  I was fat, out of shape and didn’t want to spend the money on the trip.  However, Rob and Todd told me to come down anyway and that they would cover expenses.  I couldn’t say no and set about trying to get at least some training in.

My training consisted of 9 biking sessions over a 2 month period totaling 268 miles with the longest ride being 43 miles.  My running was ok at a total of 250 miles for the same period with the longest run being 17 miles.  As I mentioned, I did absolutely no swimming and refused to even take a stroke until the gun went off to start the race; there was no point in over training at this point.

I took it really easy on the swim and just concentrated on keeping my stroke steady.  As slow as I was I still felt like I got bumped around a lot and was surprised at how many other swimmers were around me.  Either I was swimming a lot better than I thought I would or there are a lot of slow swimmers.  I would stop on occasion to take a brief rest and to site.  I was in no rush.  Putting that fact aside, I still came out of the water in 43 minutes which is only about 7 minutes slower than my fastest time.  It just goes to show that swimming is overrated in a triathlon.  I think back to all the time I spent swim training in previous years and all it amounted to was a 7 minute difference.

I got out of the water in good shape and took my time through T1.  I wasn’t going fast, but I wasn’t going slow either.  I got on the bike without any problems and headed out for the ride.  Pleasantly, there was a tail wind for the first half of the bike.  This turned into a headwind during the second half and became quite demoralizing at times.  I think I was crawling at around 13 mph at one point.  For some reason while riding I was overcome with the urge to pee several times.  Usually during a race I would just piss down my leg, but as I was in no hurry I stopped on the side of the road at least 3 times to take a piss.  I felt like I had the world’s smallest bladder.  The stops to pee and the lack of bike training had a more noticeable time on my bike split.  I came into T2 after riding for 3 hours.  This was about 30 minutes slower than I usually do at this race.

I took my time again in T2.  I debated grabbing my cell phone to tweet along the way, but I decided against it.  It was a good decision to leave it behind.  I had a very good run and I wouldn’t have stopped to type in some less than witty comment for the twitterverse.  I ran negative splits for the entire half marathon.  At about the 8 mile mark I caught up to the 2^nd place male Clydesdale.  We started to talk and kick it in together.  A couple of miles out from the finish there were some college kids out on a front lawn drinking beer and encouraging athletes to jump into their Slip and Slide.  The guy I was running with said we should do it and after some coaxing we both dove head first into some cool and refreshing water.  It felt good, but I tweaked my shoulder a bit when I came down too hard on my arm.  I’ll have to practice my head first slides again.

Soon after the Slip and Slid I realized that I was very close to breaking 6 hours.  I started to increase my pace and decided to give it my all to break that mark.  It was too little too late though as I couldn’t make up for the lost time peeing and I came in at 6:02:45.  I was pleased with my time though and very happy that I finished the race.  It was the first “big” triathlon that I’ve done since my DNF at IMLP 2 years earlier.  It felt good to know that I still had a big race effort in me.

All in all I had a really good trip.  I was very glad I went and had a real good time with my friends Todd and Rob.  It was good to get away with just a couple of guys after all the drama for the past few months in my life.  I was reminded what it felt like to be a Triathlete again and the feeling of accomplishment after completing a big race.