Catching up

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.