Man, I thought I was going to die on the run…
Well, that’s a slight exaggeration, but I did feel really tired, got the chills (again), and was having a hard time keeping my legs moving. Time slowed and I felt like each mile took an age. But in actual fact they were only taking about 7 minutes 12 seconds (average… which is a pretty fast time for me). The bike went as hoped, where I averaged 20.25 mph. For the swim, I was just hoping to match my Wildflower time, but managed to knock off 4-minutes.
Swim – 0.93 miles in 26:40
T1 – 2:01
Bike – 24.9 miles in 1:13:46
T2 – 1:09
Run – 6.2 miles in 44:34
Which gives me a finishing time of 2:28:11. Over 10 minutes faster than my time on the–admittedly much hillier–Wildflower course.
The only slight hiccups were the elbow I took to the jaw during the swim and the subsequent mouthful of lake water I swallowed, and then on the bike the aid station was unmanned so I ran out of water at about the 20-mile marker.
Overall, I’m pretty happy with the result. I don’t think I could have done much better. Position wise, I came 15th in my age-group of 64, and 106th of the 429 finishing men. But as I said in my other post, at my level that’s not a very meaningful metric.
So now the question for next year is: do I try for a half-Ironman or do I stick at the Olympic distance and try to improve my times? Or maybe both…