Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Rob's B2B HIM Race Report 2013

Beach 2 Battleship Half Ironman
10/26/2013
Wilmington, NC

Rob Riek - 5:14, 11th Men 45-50


I’m finally getting to a race report.  It has been a busy year and with everything going on my race season certainly lacked direction.  I had done a couple of long brick sessions with Larry and Shawn in late July and made the decision to commit to B2B while on vacation on early August.  I knew I would have many challenges with work, family and becoming a Grandpa in the lead up to this race.  Training went well except for the last month leading up to the race with a trip to NY to visit my new Granddaughter, Marianna, and bad weather every weekend after that.  Larry, Shawn and I did have a couple of our “epic” training sessions in the build up for the race and unfortunately Larry put in a few too many miles and was not able to join us at B2B.  In the spirit of Shawn’s top 10 list, I’ll try to create some type of list around the race;

Travel.  Definitely challenging with a 3 and 1 year old but we were able to make it to Wilmington in time for the 2 PM pre-race meeting and check-in.

Logistics.  It took from about 1 until 5 to get everything sorted out with check-in, pre-race meeting, special needs bag checks and getting the bike set in the transition area.  Made for a long day.

Sleep.  Kids were wound up so getting a good night’s sleep was not happening.

Mishaps.  (It’s costing me a kitchen pass to share this with you).  Amy double checked the back-up camera to make sure she wasn’t running over any gear and backed the van into a parked car on race morning when leaving to drop me off.  We also forgot our pillows after checking out from the hotel and had to have them shipped to the house. 

Temperature.  39 degrees when I arrived.  We were bussed to the swim start and had to sit around in the cold for over an hour.  Very happy to get in the 71 degree water.

Transitions.  Definitely decreased my chances of going sub-5.  I gave away 8 minutes in T1 but felt it was better to take the time to change into dry and warm gear for the bike.  Even with toe warmers over my bike shoes, I did not feel my toes until mile 4 of the run. 

Swim.  Felt like I was swimming pretty effortlessly and thought we had a current. A look at my time and the rest of the field revealed we did not have much of a current.  34 minutes still not bad.  I actually felt hungry during the swim which is something I have never experienced.  Must have been the extra energy spent shivering prior to the start.

Bike.  Seemed to have more headwind than tailwind but I kept a steady pace and was able to average 21.5 on the new Shiv and the legs felt decent coming off the bike.

Run.  Well, I cut 14 minutes off my Patriot half run but I was still a good 6 minutes over my goal of getting under 1:45.  Somewhere around mile 8 I just kept getting slower.  Felt like I was running 7:45 pace but my Garmin was telling my otherwise! Frustrating.  I think a good part of it was mental once I realized there was no way I was hitting the goal of sub-5 with the long transitions and battling the wind.

Family.  The best part of the race and what I looked forward to the most over the last couple of miles was seeing Amy and the kids at the finish. It was great to be done and celebrate with the family.

Lessons learned.  Never sacrifice toddler nap times – it will haunt you the entire weekend.  It was more challenging than we anticipated with 2 young kiddos.  I was planning to return to doing an IM next year but now it’s looking like we are going focus on a couple of half IM’s next year instead. 

Oh yeah, my final finish time was 5:14, 11th AG

No comments:

Post a Comment