the official race report. No chance of me being succinct, so put into multiple posts...
My hope for the race was to negative split each section (swim-bike-run) of the course since they were all 2 loop courses, so that meant going out easy and building up to a sustainable pace. Also, I really wanted to be able to run the entire marathon; I've walked most of a marathon before and that is no fun. It's painful, disheartening and plain LONG.
I woke up a bit after 4am and tried to get my mind & body moving along. My neck/back still hurt so I worked on that w/ the massage ball while my mom cooked up breakfast (eggs w/ green peppers & bacon and some fresh fruit). Since I had to drop off everything for the bike and run the day before, all I had to do before the race was pump up my bike tires and get my wetsuit on. I knew the race area would be nuts, so I really wasn't in a hurry to get there. The more serious racer would want to get there early, check all equipment 5 times and then stand in the bathroom line for 45 minutes before/after a thorough warmup. I am not that guy. I rolled in about an hour before the race start, pumped up the tires, got body marked (w/ my race #), waited in bathroom line for 15 minutes, then had about 10 minutes to get my suit on and walk down to the water. No time for a warmup, but then I hadn't done a warmup for any other race I've done this year, so that's nothing new.
As I approached the water they sang the national anthem and I got a bit emotional (not common for me) which surprised me a bit but was cool too, as I was truly soaking in the moment. Expecting to swim slower than most, my goal was to try to stay out of the way and simply swim a steady pace the whole way. The swim was a deep water start meaning all 2,400 racers would be in the water at once, rather than jumping in every few seconds. The result is cool to see from outside the water, but in the water it feels like complete chaos. After the disaster at my 1/2 IM, I wanted to have some time to get comfortable in the water before having to deal with other crazies trying to claw their way past. I couldn't have asked for a better start; I was way in the back on the outside and as the gun sounded, I just swam down the long stretch towards the first turn and really didn't have anyone else around me. I got boxed in a bit on the backstretch and had to go much wider to avoid constantly bumping into people. I started my 2nd lap right on pace and except for a lot of swerving I didn't have any problems. I was swimming well within my ability and thinking about all kinds of random things (who I forgot to call, what it must look like from the shore, if there was any way my support team would be able to find me - they did). The only bad part was that in the rush to get my suit on I kind've got my boys squeezed the wrong way and after 90 minutes they were screaming to get out of that suit...
I got out of the water and could finally hear the thousands of people cheering along the ramp up to T1, which was very cool. I was met by the "strippers" (volunteers who help strip the wetsuit off you) and I thought they would help me get unzipped and give me a shoulder to lean on while I took the suit off. Instead, they asked me to lay down on the ground and a person took each side and stripped the suit off in a few seconds. I had forgotten to tighten my swim shorts/jammers, not being prepared for this and so was glad that they didn't come off as well. Then I ran up the ramp to the parking garage and there saw my crew - tony and chris had climbed a tree (hilarious) and I saw the relief on whit's face that I hadn't drowned. so far so good...
swim time: 1:34 rank: 2067/2397
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