Ironman 70.3 cont'd

It was a deep water start, and Jessi and I were in the 4th wave, we lined up to the left closest to the buoys and in front. As we were treading water waiting for the gun I was feeling excited and ready to face the challenge, my HR was 119, which proved that I really wasn’t freaking (if you remember from the Valley Girl Tri where it was 133 at the beginning of the swim). The first 200 yards of the swim was pretty crazy (hitting, kicking, pushing, everyone trying to jostle for elbow room), I was very grateful that Jessi had put me through her “swim boot camp” the day before! I had some person hitting my back every stroke for at least 200 yards (I kept thinking, can you not feel that you are hitting me?). Once we had all found our rhythm and claimed our little piece of the water, my swim went very well. On the way out, my head was overwhelmed with how far out we had to swim to the turn around, however my body seemed to be doing just fine. I just kept swimming and I finished the swim in 40 minutes and 47 seconds, 278th overall and 8th in my age group.

The bike course was 2 laps of a 28 mile loop, it was very hilly, seemed like there was less than 2 miles of flat on the entire course. We were either going up hill or down hill which required a lot of shifting! My first loop felt pretty good, I felt strong and was having fun with the race at this point. I had a little crash coming down too fast on a steep hill that had a sharp right hand turn at the bottom, skidded my back tire sideways 3 times, recovered it twice and on the 3rd time ended up coming to a stop into a guard rail! Got my heart rate up, bumped my left leg a bit, but I was back on the course quickly. My second loop I decided to experience another crash, this time I slid on gravel and got road rash on my left hip and shoulder, this one earned me my race nickname “Crash” by my fellow competitors! I messed up my derailer on this one so I had only about ½ as many gears to finish the 2nd lap, which made for some pretty frustrating, shifting! Oh I also had my chain fall off going up a steep hill and was successful at replacing that by myself, Yeah for me!! I managed to follow my nutrition and hydration plan fairly well and I finished the bike leg in 3 hours, 30 minutes and 22 seconds. I finished the bike 329th overall and 10th in my age group, so I got passed by a few people on the bike.