Great Floridian Triathlon Race Report

A little background

The past year has been one of huge change for me. I quit my job of 14 years, worked freelance for awhile, moved to San Francisco and now, completed my first full ironman.

This race started for me exactly one year ago. I did the intermediate distance Great Floridan in 2011 and it was fantastic. The weather was perfect, I felt amazing, and had a great race. In typical post-race athletes high, I signed up for the full distance the next day. What did I get myself into?

I was training for the Breast Cancer Marathon at the time and pretty much just after it was over, in mid February, I started training for this race. I started off with a 36 week training program from TriFuel.com and was on quite a roll. Because I quit my job in January, I had a lot of time to train for this and was very rigorous about my training. 

Then the move to San Francisco happened and that pretty much halted almost all training (and life in general) for June and July. This freaked me out quite a bit because I had fallen so far behind and I almost considered not doing it at all. Fortunately, Kitzzy told me to man up and helped me come up with a training program that would get my mileage up in time for the race.

The Trifuel program was very structured and I had started doing heart rate training, bike trainer, and track work. I noticed a huge improvement, but I really didn't like riding on the bike trainer and the weather in San Francisco is so nice that I had no desire to ride inside.

The new training program, while not as rigorous as the original one, was much more enjoyable. I would typically do 2 brick workouts on the weekend, usually one of the days being a bike/run and the other was usually swim and something.

I went to the YMCA masters class twice a week and did two days of shorter bike/run bricks, typically 20 mile bike followed by a 5k run. I worked in a lot of good hill workouts in the Presidio and did some bike speed work at the Polo Field in Golden Gate Park. The Polo Field is a 3/4 mile paved loop that you can seriously just open it up on. It's so much fun to ride!

I always took Friday off from training and sometimes Monday depending on how sore I was from Sunday. I usually still biked to work those days.

Race Preparations

My race preparations started about 3 weeks ahead of race day. I shipped my bike back to Florida with bikeflights.com so I had to get a shipping box and disassemble my bike and box it up. I got a cardboard box from a bike shop and did all the disassembly and boxing myself. It was incredibly frustrating the first time I did it and I had to re-box it to make it fit better. Kitzzy kept a cool head when I was getting angry at the box. Oh, that box! Fortunately the second time went much smoother, but I'm going to try to get a bigger box next time. I may also just let a bike shop ship it for me.

Once we got to Orlando, I put the bike back together and spent awhile in the Florida heat tuning it in. Also frustrating. I ended up taking it to The Cycling Hub's shop at packet pickup to let them do a professional job on it. It was working much better after he tuned it, but pointed out that my bike needs some things replaced: cables, bar wrap, front derailleur is bent, chain, and cassette. The bike is almost 4 years old so it's about that time for some love.

We went to packet pickup on Friday to get our packets (Kitzzy was doing the 15k), hear the final details for the race, and check the bike in. After, we went home and tried to get an early sleep.

Race Day

We were up at 4am and on the road at 5. We got to waterfront park a little before 6 so we found a good spot to park and sat around waiting for the race.

Around 6:30, the good news came in that the race was going to be wetsuit legal! The lake had been in the low 80s all week and somehow we lucked out with a bit of a cold front and pretty stiff winds that cooled it down to 76 degrees. And we all rejoiced. Yay!

The Swim

Suited up and ready to go, the Star Spangled Banner was sung and at 7:30am, we were off. The swim was easily the highlight of the race for me. I felt really strong, had no shoulder pain, and ended up coming out of the water in 1:09:19, 11th overall.

The only things that sucked about the swim was my wetsuit zipper started rubbing my neck and chafed me and I kicked the same rock twice as I was exiting the water so my toes were kind of torn up.

I had a pretty quick T1 and took a breather after such an intense swim. It was a fast enough swim that I almost felt like throwing up after and once on my bike I realized I may have dumped too much into it. I probably should have saved some more energy for the rest of the race.

The Bike

I was kind of sore even from the first lap of the bike so that immediately worried me how the rest of the race was going to go. I pushed through the first lap at a pretty fast pace and pushed hard up Sugarloaf. There was a competition of who could summit Sugarloaf the fastest. I paid for that in the second and third laps.

Several miles into the second lap, my inner left thigh muscle rebelled. Going up one of the hills, it just completely seized up and I had to get off and massage it. As the race went on, the cramping kept getting worse and I had to stop several more times to let it rest. Still, I pushed on. The third lap was just hell.

I was originally eating a Shot Blok every 5 miles, 3 Endurolytes every 20 miles, and granola bars at the loop start. This was definitely not enough to keep up with my energy exertion. I started eating at least one banana per aid station and drinking a lot more water. Unfortunately there was no coming back from such a deficit.

I finally finished with the bike in 6:54:13 and took a breather in the changing tent. I never wanted to be near another bicycle at that point and just as I got in there, the song "Bicycle Race" by Queen came on the PA system and I wanted to hurt the DJ. :)

I didn't have it so bad, though. Another guy came into the changing tent at the same time and he had wiped out just before Sugarloaf and rode some 90 miles with some serious road rash. That was hard core!

The Run

After so much pain from the bike, the run started off surprisingly well. Running uses different muscles so my inner thighs got a chance to rest and my calves took over. I ran using the Galloway method and started off with 3-minute running, 1 minute walking.

I had a great run until about 3 miles in when we started getting in to the hills. I started reducing my intervals down to 2 and 1s, then 1 and 1s, then 1 and 2s. My calves started to seize up every time I tried running up or down a hill so I resigned to walking the hills and running when it was flat. That was about 50/50 for this course.

The aid stations on the run were great and the volunteers did such a good job! They were all balls of energy when I really needed it and I thanked them everytime I saw them. Oh and pretzels with peanut butter is so good!

I walked a lot of the run so I was texting back and forth with Kitzzy and she knew what kind of pain I was in and rallied the Facebook troops to post funny and inspirational things to keep me going. That was awesome, she is so good! I got so many messages and it really helped keep my mind off the pain.

At one point I started running with this guy named Bob who was on his 35th ironman and had done several doubles, triples, and even a deca-triathlon. That's 10x the distance I did on Saturday! It took him over 11 days to finish! Running with him really helped me not focus on my legs and he gave me some good advice on nutrition and the pain I was in. You know, if I ever decide to do another one. :p

I finished the run in 5:50:28.

After the Race

Finally around 9:45pm I made that last turn and ran to the finish line. I was cramping up again but wanted to cross the finish line running so I ran through the pain. After getting my picture taken and my finishers shirt, I went and laid on the ground.

Upon getting up from the ground, I gave Kitzzy my hand as though I wanted her to help me up, but only got up on one knee. I had been thinking about this for some time and had a long time to think about it during the race. I proposed to her. I don't remember exactly what I said, but it was something along the lines of "You're an amazing girl. I wouldn't be doing this race today if it wasn't for you. You've had such a positive influence on my life. I love you. Will you marry me?" Fortunately she said yes so getting into the one-knee position was not all for naught. :)

I guess 2012 held at least one more life achievement in it :)

Wrap-up

I finished in 14:10:40. It's still boggling to thing I worked out for over 14 hours straight!

This was easily the most difficult thing I've ever done, on two accounts. I dedicated nearly 8 months of my life to training for this race, giving up almost every weekend to some athletic endeavor and typically 4 of 5 weekdays. 

Physically I was ready and really, my legs felt okay two days later. I underestimated the heat and needed to do a better job at nutrition. I feel like I can do another one, but I just have to weigh the time commitment to it. Training for one long distance sport is hard. Training for three at the same time is brutal.

Was it worth it? Hell yes.