One Clydesdale’s Journey

And one step closer to the Ironman.

But for now at least, I can add Olympic distance to my list of accomplishments.

Did things go as planned; heck no! But then when do they?

Though one thing is for certain, as far as I’m concerned anyway, I can still call it a success since I crossed the finish line.

But getting to that finish line was a bit tricky;
During the pre-race course talk they gave us more info about the run. Prior to this all I knew was that it was a 1 mile loop that I was going to have to do 6 times and that it included some cross-country terrain.

But then a lot of races say that since you end up running on grass for at least a small part of the course.

They really meant it for this race! We were one step away from being in a steeple chase when it came to this course.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let me get back to the start of the race…

The Olympic distance males where the first wave out, I made my way to the far side of the pack from where we were headed and started to work my way out to the far buoy. It still took me a little while to make it into some clear water on the way so that I wasn’t swimming over the top of any one or into there feet. But eventually I found a good opening and worked my way out to the half mile mark.

The trip out wasn’t all that bad since we were between the buoys and the shoreline. And since the shore was on the side that I breathe, I was able to use the shore to keep my sighting for the most part.

The return trip now had us further out into the water since we were now on the far side of the buoys. It also had us swimming into the wind which meant that we were swimming into some pretty good waves. And just make things more interesting, we had a few people in ski boats that were making even more waves for us.

Needless to say, I got a few mouthfuls of water on that second half mile. But I was able to work out the rhythm of the waves and managed to match my stroke to it which ended up helping a lot. I did have to drastically turn my head a lot more out of the water though so that I could clear the waves which ended up giving me a nice rub mark on my neck from the wetsuit.

Surprisingly, I was out of the water in less than 37 minutes which had me right on time with my pool 1 mile time. I was quite surprised when I saw the time on my watch as I ran out of the water.

My T-1 time wasn’t all that bad either considering I haven’t had any practice at getting out of the wetsuit in a hurry.

The bike was a bit rough; given the direction of the wind, the majority of the course had either a head wind or a cross wind. It was kicking me around at times like I was nothing and a few of them women that I talked to said they almost got knocked off their bikes.

And on the bike course I actually got fished by some guys that I would have never thought I was able to swim faster than.

All in all though, I made up for it by finishing the bike in 1:33. Just 3 minutes over what I was hoping for. But all that extra effort on the bike cost me dearly on the run.

A yeah, back to the run that I alluded to earlier.

At one point the grass turned into a bit of a bog like area (soft, squishy and a bit wet), from there it wasn’t too bad going until we got to about the half way point and had to cross over into what can only be described as a farm field for about 20 yards. We also had to run on the side of a hill where the tall grass had recently been mowed.

And we had to do that 6 times!

In all, I would say that half the course was off road and some of that was very rough terrain. Especially for someone who only trains on paved surfaces. I knew I wasn’t the only one who didn’t like that area when I saw some of the elite’s walking through there as well.

Between putting to much out on the bike course and the rough terrain of the course, I ended up finishing the run in 1:12. That was 12 minutes more than I hoped for, but once I saw what I had to run through, I wasn’t that upset with it. I just wanted to finish.

My final time; 3:30:16

Just 10 minutes off of what I was hoping for. And more importantly, I actually feel pretty good today!

Now it’s time to taper back up and get ready for the next race.

Later,
John W.
A Clydesdale in training