It’s been several months since I posted so here’s what I’ve
been up to….
Ironman Texas
Since it’s been so long, I won’t bother with a full race
report, and I don’t really have that much to say about the race actually.
This was my first time doing a rolling swim start and I was really
surprised how little contact I had in the water. Practically none.
It was a non-wetsuit swim and my time was slower than I anticipated despite
feeling like I swam well, although looking at my HR after the race I think I
may have been a bit too conservative. I did get a few small cramps about
halfway through, which was a sign of things to come….unfortunately.
The bike was going well until about ¾ of the way through
when I started getting some hamstring cramps, which is something I’ve never
gotten on the bike. My power faded which led to a slower than expected
time as well. Coming into T2, my hamstring cramped up putting on my shoes.
I worked it out quickly and got on the run, where things went downhill
fast. I was struggling in the heat and fading and fighting off threats of
more cramps. About halfway the skies turned black and the rain started.
At first I was happy because I needed to cool down, but things flooded
quickly and the winds picked up and they actually stopped the race for a
while. They told us we could keep going, which I did, and ran through the
worst thunderstorm I’ve ever run through. The aid stations were abandoned
so we had to dig through the coolers if we wanted something. My legs
ached and cramped and I’ve never worked so hard to run so slow. As I
crossed the line alone in the pouring rain, Mike Riley said, “Tough day, huh,
Mike?” Yep.
After Texas I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do with the
rest of my season so I did a few random triathlons here and there, my first
short course triathlons since before my back injury in 2014. It was
really fun to go back to local races for a while, but my experience at Texas
was eating away at me. I couldn’t let it go, and I found myself
constantly checking the Wisconsin and Louisville pages to see if registration
was still open. Wisconsin had foundation slots, but Louisville had
general entry open still. I talked it over with Courtney and we
ultimately decided I should do Louisville. Wisconsin is much easier
logistically, and it’s great having so much local support, but I’ve never done
Louisville and I’ve wanted to for years.
So I’ve been putting in a lot of hours training for
Louisville, more or less repeating the plan I came up with for Ironman
Wisconsin 2010 which is probably my best executed Ironman to date. More details on that in my next post.
