Duke Liver 1/2 Iron 2007 – Full Race Report

Post race recap talks about mental demons I dealt with after crossing the finish.

I saw someone post their Duke 1/2 report this way on a forum, and thought it was funny:

Scoreboard
Duke 1/2: 2
Carol: 0

In case you don’t know my history, I’ve done the Duke 1/2 course twice, and feel like it beat me both times. It’s a tough course! The first time I did it, I was not properly trained and not properly rested. I assumed that it would be much easier the second time around being properly trained and properly rested. I was WRONG. The run was still really, really hard. Doing a 1/2 marathon after a tough swim and tough bike, is just plain tough! My goal for this race was to do it in 6 hours, which turned out to be out of reach for me this time around.

My splits:
Swim 1.2 miles: 41:22
T1: 2:16
Bike 56 miles: 3:08:41
T2: 4:07 (again this year, includes a potty break)
Run 13.1 miles: 2:28:06
Overall Time: 6:24:30
Age Group Place: 4 out of 7

Pre-Race:

I arrived at the race site around 5:45am. Volunteers directed me to a parking spot under a bright light right near the packet pickup, and about 20 feet from the transition area. That was convenient! It was chilly, so I was wearing sweat pants and a long sleeved shirt. It seemed to get chillier as the morning wore on, despite daylight breaking. There was a brisk wind in the air as well. They announced that the water temp was 78 degrees, wetsuit legal – woohoo!

Since I was so close to the transition, I made several trips back and forth to my car, while setting up my gear. That wasted alot of time…better to pack up everything just as if I were parked far away. During one of my back and forth trips, I saw my swim buddy Norman…he was just coming back from a warm up run. We chatted for a minute and wished each other well.

When I put my pb & cheese crackers in my bike pouch, they took up all the room. What to do with my 6 gel packs? I decided to take the small sunscreen bottle off my stem (where it was taped) and put that in my helmet. I’d have to stick that down my trisuit bra during T1. (there’s one advantage to being female, but it sure doesn’t outweigh the potty advantage you males have!) Then I taped the 6 gels to the stem. I taped them one by one, stacking them on top of each other, using the Nexcare medical tape. The entire stack was pretty tall, and I thought “That’s not very aerodynamic, hope it doesn’t impact my speed too much”. No time to figure out a better idea. And, No time for my planned warmup. Where did all the time go?

I checked to make sure everything was done, then grabbed my wetsuit, goggles, cap, and Pam spray and headed over to the porta potty line. It was a bit past 7am, and the elites were just getting in the water. Luckily, late in the game, there’s not much line there, so my stop was quick. I saw Norman again, and he zipped up my wetsuit. I sprayed the Pam on the legs and arms of my wetsuit, then went to wait for my wave to start. I only had a few minutes to spare.

The Swim:

Here’s a tip I figured out at an earlier race: When they announce 15 seconds until your wave starts – count to 10 and then hit the start button on your stopwatch. Why waste a second AFTER the horn blows fiddling with your stopwatch.

The swim was an out and back course. And, Wow – what a swim! It was incredibly choppy. I was so glad to be wearing a wetsuit in those conditions! It was like swimming in the ocean against a strong current. The entire way out to the triangular turnaround point was a challenge. The strange thing is I was enjoying the challenge. It was fun to fight those waves. Usually the swim for me is just an annoyance getting in the way of the real fun (the bike).

The closer I got to the turnaround, the choppier and more difficult the swimming became. I saw several people raise their hand in need of help. I felt bad for them.

It was very difficult to sight the buoys. And the treeline beyond the buoys was uniform – nothing stood out to sight against there either. I had to take lots of breast stroke breaks to gain my bearings. I was about 20 yards to the right of the main pack of swimmers, but was still heading straight toward the turnaround buoy.

About half way out, I noticed volunteers in a boat waving at me. I thought “How nice, they are cheering me on. I’d wave back if I wasn’t so busy swimming!”. A few minutes later, I took a breast stroke break, and the people in the boat were right near me and yelled at me to head back the other way, as I’d swum too far off coarse. I thought “Oh Crap. That’s going to kill my time.” I swam diagonally back toward the pack in order to keep making forward progress.

Finally, I got to the turnaround point, and oh what a joy it was swimming back. I felt like a dolphin riding the waves, each stroke taking me much farther than my own power ever could. That elation lasted a few minutes, and then I realized the natural pull of the waves was angling me toward the shoreline, not toward the Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Man that marked the end of the swim. It was a challenge from then on to keep myself from veering toward the shore on my right.

I veer toward the right naturally anyway. All of a sudden, I had a “Duh” moment. My strategy in the past was to re-point my body to correct my direction and start swimming again. I was experimenting with using my stronger right arm as a rudder on a boat, and aiming it toward the left instead of straight in, to direct me more to the left. That didn’t seem to work too well. The idea of a boat made me think paddling a canoe, and how when you pull harder with the paddle on the right side, you’ll veer to the right. If you pull harder on the left, you’ll veer left. So, I started pulling harder with my left arm and “Voila”, it worked! Why didn’t I ever think of that before?

I got out of the water, and my time was 41 minutes. Wow – after fighting those waves and veering off course, I was pleased with that time and felt I was on track with my goal.

The Bike

T1 went smoothly and I was off on my bike. I decided to skip the jacket I had laid out. It was a bit chilly, but I knew I’d want to peel it off later. I ate a Gel and started the 30 minute repeat timer on my watch.

Once I got settled in, I looked down at my bike computer, and it showed my average speed was 4. That didn’t sound right. So, I switched the display to current speed. That said 4 also. Even on the worst hills, I go faster than 4 mph! I passed a guy and asked him what speed we were going. He said 15mph. Rats…something was wrong with my computer…I’d have to ride by feel.
The first 40 minutes of the ride I rode at a good pace…but I was trying to hold back and not push myself too hard and just thought of it as a warm up. I saw one guy stop to pee against a tree. I wasn’t jealous of him (yet).

It was a bit windy. At one point, I looked down to check my cadence and noticed my pile of Gels was hanging off the side of my stem, ready to fall to the ground at any moment. I guess it couldn’t stand up to the wind. Lucky I saw it. I grabbed the bundle and held it for a moment trying to figure out what to do with it. I stuffed it down my tri suit bra. Nothing else came to mind.

I put on my sunscreen and ate a Gu. I munched down a pb cheese cracker. It turned to crumbs and choked me as I breathed, so I drank some water to wash it down. Why didn’t that happen in training!? I ate a few more crackers over the course of that first 40 minutes, and got pretty good at washing them down with water. But, after about 3 crackers, my stomach cramped up. It stayed in a knot like that for the rest of the day. I just can’t eat solid food while racing. Maybe I’ll try Boost next time around.

About an hour into the ride, I had to pee really bad. I considered stopping to pee somewhere. I even looked around for a nice woodsy area, but in the end, decided it would hurt my time to much and I’d have to just grin and bear it.? It’s extremely uncomfortable for me to be down in my aerobars with a full bladder! And a stomach cramp too.
At about the 1/2 way point, I picked up my speed a bit to negative split the ride. Despite my discomfort, I was in a really good “groove”, was focused, and felt powerful. I was chanting Groove Hip in my head. Groove meaning “get into the groove”, and hip for “hip power”, which is something I’ve been working on lately: I used to spin with mostly my quads, with my hips just going along for the ride. I find it’s easier to keep up a good pace for longer if I use my hips for power, especially up hills.

I saw the 50 mile marker at about 2:40. 7 miles to go (this coarse is 1 mile long). It bothered me that I wasn’t going to make a 3:00 split, and I considered hammering. But, decided to stick with my plan to ease off in the last bit to rest up for the run. After crossing Highway 1, I knew it was close to the end, so I eased up my pace, loosened my shoe straps, and put on more sunscreen. And, I was really looking forward to that porta-potty!

The Run

After racking my bike, changing shoes, grabbing my palm holder water bottle, cap and race belt, I was off…not for the run…but to the portapotty! Luckily, there’s one right next to the transition area, and no line. If there had been a line, I would have peed my pants. I think it took me a full two minutes to empty my bladder!

I think my watch said about 4:00 when I started running. I was sticking with my plan to run as fast as I could while still controlled breathing. I felt pretty good. I got to the first mile marker at 4:11. Crap. Why was I running so slow? That’s my long slow pace, not my race pace. I tried to pick up my pace over the rest of lap1, without much success. I drank alot of water. I wasted alot of time at the aide stations.

I finished lap 1 in 1:07. Even though I had trained multiple lap runs, it was still REALLY hard going out for lap 2. You see the finish line, and hear the announcer calling names of people who were crossing. But I still had another 6.5 miles to go! And, even though I had trained on similar hills, those hills were still hard! Not so much steep, but long gradual inclines. I much prefer a short steep grade over a long gradual one any day.
The second lap went worse, because I was upset at my slowness. At one point I stopped and thought what’s the point I’ll just walk the rest of it. Then I realized I had to at the very least beat my time from last year, so I started running again. It also occurred to me that there might be other women in my age group coming up from behind, and I didn’t want them to pass me (and I didn’t want to come in last)!

When I finally crossed the finish line I cried tears of frustration. I had put so much hard work and training into this race – and my time was so far off my goal and I felt really down. I walked to the lake and sat on the dock for a long time. Then I went home.

I don’t know what went wrong in the running. I think I trained extremely well for it. Did I swim too hard, bike too hard? I don’t think so. Was it bad nutrition or the cramps? Maybe. One thing comes to mind: Whatever “race pace” you achieve in your run training, is not the same pace you can get in the run leg of a 1/2 iron race. You must have to add 1 or 2 minutes per mile.

I’ll end this blog with a quote from my friend Norman (who waited around an extra hour beyond his own finish time to cheer me on – thanks so much for that).

“…I have to remember triathlons are a means to an end, not an end in themselves.”