Oh where to begin, I guess I will just start with race morning. Race morning goes pretty much as planned, Sarah and I get to the race site and are only 15 mins. behind schedule which isn’t too bad. I get to where my bike was supposed to be, and see someone has moved my bike. At first I think I will just make a side comment to the person who is now in my place, but then I decided against that and just moved his bike and put mine where it was supposed to be. I mean hello! My bike was the ONLY one on the rack when I left it. I am pretty sure it didn’t get up and walk off on its own, but oh well. Evidently Forrest was going through the same thing, I guess some people just don’t know better.
The rest of the prerace rituals were drama free until with 3 minutes to go Regina decides she needs to use the bathroom. Just as a side note I only said she had enough time b/c I forgot she had a long sleeved wetsuit on. Literally 30 seconds left before Jeremey is to send us off she comes running down the shore with the wetsuit half way up. I am sure everyone was wondering if she was a pro or something b/c me, Susan, and Sarah bum rush her trying to get her wetsuit all the way on and zipped before the horn blows. That will get your heart rate up.
The swim was ok the first half, but I started to not feel so much in my groove and by the time I am at the last turn buoy my arms are just plain tired. I have NEVER had that happen in a race, but I guess there’s a first for everything. My goal for my swim was 38 and change, I was nowhere near it. I didn’t hit the timing mat until 40 mins. which is a record high for me on a swim. Too bad you don’t get awards for having your personal slowest swim:) I run through transition and immediately look for Sarah and see her still trying to get her socks on. Atleast she didn’t beat me by too much is all I could muster at that point.
I start the bike happy to be done with the swim and ready to try and make up some of that time. The first 20 miles I am feeling okay and averaging where I need to. I am drinking and geling like usual and wondering if 4 salt tabs will be enough, overanalyzing everything as usual. I notice about half way through the bike that my average has gone from 19.9 to 18.7, which is still not too bad. It wasn’t so low that I couldn’t bring it back up over 19 mph, or so I thought. I started to question what made me always love the hills in this race before b/c I was beginning to despise them. The average just kept going down and at that point I readjusted my goal to just keep under 3 hours. Well just as I hit the blinking light of the entrance to the park my timer goes off which means I am now at 3 hours and NOT done yet. I promise you I don’t know where it came from “son of a …..” was all I could say. All I could hope for was one heck of a run.
I start out the run with some crazy woman (thank you Julie from PTC) with a bullhorn yelling for me and getting the crowd going. It really helped put things in perspective. My garmin decided to not locate satellites for atleast first 10 mins., so I made a judgement call and decided to not look at anything until mile 11. I have done macon 4 different years now, and I can feel good and bonk at mile 10. I can feel bad at mile 4. The one thing I have figured out there is that no matter how good you feel on the run it really doesn’t matter until atleast mile 11 for me. So my thoughts were to go on how I feel and not get bogged down in the time. I was afraid if I fell behind schedule again I would push harder and blow up due to the heat. I saw everyone on the course except for Regina. Kat looked good, Troy said I was catching him at the same point I did last year, Forrest was cramping, Sarah said she had no energy, and Susan was actually smiling! I felt good the entire run, I didn’t push too much but didn’t fart around either. Mile 11 I looked at my watch (5:20) and did the math realizing I wasn’t going to break 5:30, so at that point I decide to sprint to the finish. I couldn’t believe I was sprinting the last two miles of a half, much less the Macon half but I did. I guess it’s better to have some left to sprint than to blow up and be walking. I finished the run in 1:52 which for me at Macon is great for the run. I didn’t have the day I wanted, but ended on a good note and feeling good about my run so what more can you ask for:) A new guitar award, that’s what! Yes, I got 2nd in my age group (5:36)which means my guitar award from 2 years ago won’t be lonely anymore and will have a sibling.
The SC crew rocked it out at Macon. Kat Welling, Cheryl Quinn, Forrest Fowler, Rose Wilson, Sarah Parker, and many more I am sure, all placed. Macon is not an easy half iron, you have to deal with heat, no shade on the run, hills and its all worth it if you get one of those guitars. Thanks to all my sponsors who help me out, and thanks to Forrest for giving me a whole week off to regroup and refocus for Ironman training. Lets see if I can actually get back into the groove of those things called workouts.
