The day hadn't turned out the way I had hoped. My finishing time was 6:56:39. When I knew there was only 10 minutes to go until the seven hour mark, I had to dig deep.
The half marathon was a beautiful course along the canal and on a combination of dirt and paved paths. The weather was just spitting a bit and was windy, but it was the perfect temperature. The first lap of the run was great; I felt strong and my turnover was quick. I was actually thinking I may be able to do this in a sub-six hour time. Well, then came the second lap. About three km in, my stomach started flip flopping and I couldn't run. My stomach hurt with every step. "Maybe it'll go away", I thought. I forced myself to run, but just couldn't do it. 'This is a very familiar feeling', I remembered thinking. 'This is the same feeling I had when I did my first long distance race and then again the same year at Ironman'. It had to be my nutrition on the bike, but then again, maybe not.
The bike went OK. The course was absolutely beautiful. It's the most picturesque bike course I had ever done, including Ironman Canada. The ride was through tons of vineyards and orchards. No fruit was on the trees yet, which may be a good thing because I might have got off my bike to grab an apple. Just kidding. My maximum speed at one point was 65 kph. It is such a rush going down a long hill in the aerobars, no brakes, rounding bends in the road at that speed. I can't allow myself to think about crashing, but I tell you, I am very focused when traveling at that speed. There were times when I was passing younger men on the course and that made me feel pretty darn good. I can tell they were younger because of the race number on their legs.
My shoulder didn't bother me at all in the swim and I was very happy about that. Sighting on a regular basis, I didn't go off course at all for the first leg of the swim. I went off course a couple of times in the second leg because my left shoulder was getting fatigued so I veered to the right without knowing. All of a sudden I would put my head up and a lady in a kayak was telling me "No, you don't want to come over here. Go over there". D'oh, there's two minutes gone. The third leg was uneventful, but I was glad to get the swim over with.
Transition was long. It must have been a three minute run to the bike. Maan! My heart rate was elevated before I even started the bike. At that point, I decided to walk, like a lot of other people. Better to have a low heart rate to start the bike leg.
My coach has totally reassured me after my complaining about my performance. There are so many things to consider - from nutrition at breakfast to how hard I may have ran in the first half of the run, or even that I didn't drink enough on the run. He also checked out everybody's results and was surprised at how slow the overall times were (except for Paul Tichelaar, our local Olympian, who by the way finished the race in 3:58 and change). I guess the moral of the story is to not be so hard on myself. Oliver was a lead-up to Ironman, because Ironman is my "A" race. A bad race gives me a chance to tweak what may have went wrong so Ironman will be a good experience.
Check out my results here.
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