timberman half-ironman race report
3194 days agotimberman half-ironman race report
a fine season-ending race for those of us whose racing seasons must, by necessity, end before august 18. now my season is ended and i am off to spend some time putting training aside. just to spoil the ending, i will in fact have to race again before 2003 is out.
but the race had its good points and its bad points: i was able to stay with the wilsons, friends from star island, before the race which was great fun and extremely generous and accomodating of them. i probably annoyed them to death with my nitpicky pre-race habits but they were extremely understanding and teased me only a little when i set four alarm clocks to get me out of bed in time.
the race started at seven but i had to get up at four fifteen to be at the race site at five to organize and warm up. it was the first time i’ve ever warmed up for a race this long, since typically my rationale is that the race is so long that the fatigue cost of warming up is greater than the value of starting the race warmed up – that is, my main problem is not that i can’t go fast enough, but that i can’t keep running long enough to get to the finish. but this time, after taking stock of preparations that had included no fewer than eleven six-plus hour training days, i figured i had the fitness to tilt the scales in the opposite direction. so fifteen minutes of running and ten of swimming and i figured i was just about ready. the professionals started three minutes ahead of the 29 and under men (my wave) who were in turn three minutes ahead of the 30-39 men (one of whom would come back to haunt me near the end).
the swim was good: i was out of the water with the front group from my wave after starting out slow and bridging up from the second chase pack. i had 29 minutes flat (ok, not a good time but the strategy was there) 29:19 to the timing mats and got out on my bike inside of 31 minutes. then, feeling relatively comfortable, i proceeded to have one of the worst bike rides i have ever had in a triathlon. felt ok the whole time, but inexplicably went about seven minutes slower than i would normally expect to go. i have no excuse for this: i go as fast as i can, and sometimes that’s pretty good and sometimes it sucks. this time it sucked, and i changed my shoes and crossed my fingers for a good run, which wasn’t looking likely at that point.
struck out running what felt like a pretty steady pace, was passed by two people in the first mile and picked off two or three. then over the next seven miles i passed one of those two people back, and picked off several more. halfway through the run and with more than a little trepidation, i caught and passed lori bowden. who are you, i thought, to pass her? then: who are you not to? so i did. tried to say “good job” as i went by but i think all i managed was “gluhah” as i was seriously descending into the hurt locker right around then. the last ten kilometers were a battle as i tried to keep track of who i was chasing and who i was lapping, and how many miles i had left to run. over the last five kilometers i gradually clawed back someone who had blown by me earlier and although i was convinced he wouldn’t come all the way back to me i found myself stride for stride with him 200 meters from the finish line.
it was exciting: i told him as politely as i could that we should sprint for it (“heyamsprifffft”) and kicked with everything i had. one hundred meters out i had half a stride on him and no awareness of anything other than that i had to beat him across the line. the announcer said something about a medic but i didn’t hear him or anything else, didn’t feel anything and didn’t know anything but moving faster. a high-knees drill flitted through my mind and both my egs buckled, fifty meters from the finish line and one stride ahead of this man and it scared me to death but i didn’t fall down. then in a surge of adrenalin and fear i saw the green mat past the finish line and ran out everything i had eft in the ugliest finishing kick i have ever been associated with. to illustrate this point, here’s a picture of my finish: i never saw that finish line tape as i fell flat on my face. 
beat him across the line by three seconds, fell into the arms of several medics, and burst into tears. how embarrassing. then to add insult to injury, my part-time nemesis turned out to have started in a later wave. i didn’t actualy beat him by three seconds, he beat me by two minutes and fifty-seven seconds.
but i finished ninth in 4:28:31, a twenty-second pr and my first ever decent half-ironman run of 1:24. took my age group by fourteen minutes and my time would have put me in the top half of the mens pro field. but a horrible bike split ruined my chances of finishing close enough to the winner to get my pro upgrade this time. but it was of course a huge thrill to race against (or anyway, at the same time as) peter reid.
so that put the wrap on my 2003 racing season: never perfect but virtually always really good.
