The first guy to put his bike on the rack that is. After that it was all downhill! Well actually it was rather flat and felt like uphill but regardless I sure didn't finish first.
I had to wait for a couple of days to blog about it as I was quite a bit discouraged by about 2:15 on Sunday afternoon. Actually I was already a bit discouraged by about 12:15 when I headed out on my run.
Up til then things had gone reasonably well considering the very difficult conditions. My swim was as predictable as normal finishing at 40 minutes for the 2 kms. My bike was indeed a bit slow considering a very flat course, but I put it down to the 30 deg temps, and the 30 km winds.
Immediately heading into the run I knew I was gonna struggle. I decided right then to engage a run/walk strategy and that's how I plugged through the entire 21.1 kms. I walked for one minute at every km marker, and it turned into a very long, painful 2 hours and a bit. Last year I did the same run in 1:37!!!
In the end this years half Ironman was the slowest I ever did in an time of 5:44. I was 139th overall and 6th out of 20 in my age group. Last year I was 5:08 which put me 115th overall, and 4th out of 19.
After a couple of days of pondering I'm feeling a little better. I was initially quite frustrated because I simply could not understand what went so wrong. I know last year I had the race of a lifetime, but to be 36 minutes slower felt like a disaster. I have since crunched the numbers and discovered that the overall average time of all participants was over 20 minutes slower than last year, no doubt due to the weather. If I factor that in I can accept that it was simply a bad day, rather than a disaster.
I have managed to put away most of my fears which included things like not working hard enough, or working too hard, or not eating properly, etc etc. I considered many changes for the next 8 weeks and then discarded every one of them.
It helped a bit that despite being very tired yesterday I had no aches and pains, and today I felt right back to normal. I rode an easy 60 kms and then felt great on my 5K run. Game on!!
Love
Peter
I had to wait for a couple of days to blog about it as I was quite a bit discouraged by about 2:15 on Sunday afternoon. Actually I was already a bit discouraged by about 12:15 when I headed out on my run.
Up til then things had gone reasonably well considering the very difficult conditions. My swim was as predictable as normal finishing at 40 minutes for the 2 kms. My bike was indeed a bit slow considering a very flat course, but I put it down to the 30 deg temps, and the 30 km winds.
Immediately heading into the run I knew I was gonna struggle. I decided right then to engage a run/walk strategy and that's how I plugged through the entire 21.1 kms. I walked for one minute at every km marker, and it turned into a very long, painful 2 hours and a bit. Last year I did the same run in 1:37!!!
In the end this years half Ironman was the slowest I ever did in an time of 5:44. I was 139th overall and 6th out of 20 in my age group. Last year I was 5:08 which put me 115th overall, and 4th out of 19.
After a couple of days of pondering I'm feeling a little better. I was initially quite frustrated because I simply could not understand what went so wrong. I know last year I had the race of a lifetime, but to be 36 minutes slower felt like a disaster. I have since crunched the numbers and discovered that the overall average time of all participants was over 20 minutes slower than last year, no doubt due to the weather. If I factor that in I can accept that it was simply a bad day, rather than a disaster.
I have managed to put away most of my fears which included things like not working hard enough, or working too hard, or not eating properly, etc etc. I considered many changes for the next 8 weeks and then discarded every one of them.
It helped a bit that despite being very tired yesterday I had no aches and pains, and today I felt right back to normal. I rode an easy 60 kms and then felt great on my 5K run. Game on!!
Love
Peter
I'm going to repeat what I told you the other day. The more I hear you talk about it, the more I am convinced the only issues you might have are psycological! Btw, I got that right without spell check today. I am curious, do you spend any time training your mind for the big day?
ReplyDeleteLove old john
Sorry John, check again! Everything else he has right though, 6th out of 20...please!
ReplyDeleteLove you both!
Of course you are correct Elly. That was my second try at it, and Peter told me I had it right;). Actually, I was really just testing you and any other readers to see if you were paying attention. At the same time , I gave Peter a good chuckle, so it was worth screwing it up.
ReplyDeleteLove old john