I haven’t blogged in two weeks, I’m going to try to catch up.
The Pigman went great. Translated that means I finished, and my time was in my goal range.
There were some challenges. For example, as I said before, any successful 70.3 mile triathlon must include a well-engineered eating plan. The cornerstone for mine was eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich right after I got out of the water. I had put the sandwich in a baggie and taped it to the crossbar of my bike. So, as soon as I got out of the transition area and started riding I grabbed my sandwich, and then dropped it. I spent the next 100 yards trying to decide what to do. Visions of me limping through the coming 2 hour run motivated me to pull over and run back to my sandwich.
You can imagine the looks from the crowd and the racers as I ran back up the road. I spotted the PBJ on the road and as I reached down to pick it up I saw it had been run over by a bike: twice.
As I ran back to my bike, carrying the flattened hunk of essential nutrition, I came to the conclusion that I had no choice.
As the race continued I was flying along on my bike, feeling like a million bucks (the swim leg went better than I could have imagined) for a total of 4 minutes and 45 seconds, at which time I had a flat tire. I can usually change a tire in 3 or 4 minutes, but my racing heart and fumbling fingers took over, and it took me almost 15 minutes to change the tire. Meanwhile dozens and dozens of racers zoomed merrily by.
The rest of the bike was great. I was immersed in poetic thought as I rode the rolling, lush hills of the Cedar River valley. Eventually I caught up with some other racers and felt like I was part of the race again. I started to get cramps in my legs at the very end of the ride, but managed to hold things together during the run until the long hill at mile 11. Then I had to walk for a while. From there on in my run/walk was uuuugggglllly (I’m not sure which was worse, the pain or the thought of my legs totally cramping up and having to crawl over the finish line) but I did finish, and with a decent time considering my short training time.
Then final leg of the day was driving home. I left the race at about 3:00, and pulled into the garage about 4:00. That gave me about 2 hours sleep before I got up for the first day of district inservice meetings.
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