Headed up on Friday but had to take a detour to Oxford, Ohio in order to see the final game at Sarah's hockey camp. Ken drove over from Muncie to watch as well and then we were going to head back over to the event. But as we sat down to watch some hockey, our phones began to go crazy. At the first race briefing (there were several choices) the race director tells us that due to extreme heat, the event will now be a 1 mile swim; 30 mile bike; and a 10K run for a total of 37.2 miles instead of 70.3. Temperatures were expected to be the hottest in the history of the city with a heat index of up to 114F/46C.
At first, I was a little upset, but as I thought about it more, the key was going to be the volunteers and the ability to safely get athletes in distress the medical care they needed. Expecting a volunteer, especially those who are younger or older to hang out in those temperatures for eight hours seems unreasonable. And if enough athletes had problems, would there be enough medical personnel and/or EMS vehicles available? So in the end, I'm comfortable with the decision.
However, the attitude of the organizers in the face of the decision was terrible. They offered us a $125 discount off four 70.3 events later this year. But all of them are hundreds of miles away so the discount is basically a bill for more money. Why not simply offer us that discount off Muncie 2013? When a person asked this at the briefing I attended, the speaker actually laughed and said something like, "ask Ironman." Not the kind of customer service we expect for the money we pay for official IM events.
On to the event itself. The water temp was 89 or so from reports I read. This made for a hot, slow swim. I also had an issue with my tri top. Since I've lost some weight, my top seemed to be acting a bit like a parachute. I could feel it taking on water so I'm certain this had something to do with my absolutely pitiful swim time. The worst I expected for a 1 mile swim was about 40 minutes but officially it was 49:24. That's at about 1 minute slower per 100 meters than my normal. Just a bad day? The heat? The water temp? Who knows.
The run to transition was very long, much longer than I expected so much of my T1 time was getting from the beach to my bike. Total: 5:09.
My goal for the bike was to average 20 mph. This would give me my best bike split ever, pace wise, in an event. The course was mostly flat but with some rolling hills at times. We also had some wind in places. I personally felt the heat of the day start to come on about halfway through the bike. Bike split: 1:28:33 or 20.33 mph. Very pleased.
My bike was rather far away from the T2 entrance so a 2:34. Part of that was stopping for a bit of sunscreen off my bike. Worth it to spend a few seconds being safe.
I knew the run was going to be rough. The best I could do was slow down, try to stay cool and hydrated. So I did some walking at times, used a lot of sponges in my tri top, etc. They had aid stations every 1/2 mile so we had plenty of aid. One aid station did run out of ice and some of the volunteers (and athletes) were looking pretty rough so I think the short race call was right in the end. One funny moment toward the end of the run was the "squishing" sound as all of us had soaked shoes from all the ice in our kits, water over our heads and so on. Run total: 1:13:11 or 11:48/mile.
Grand total: 3:38:51.
For a normal Olympic, the bike would have been about 5 miles shorter and the swim 100 meters shorter. At 20 mph, the extra 5 miles of biking would have been 15 minutes. The extra 100 meters of swimming would have been 3 minutes. That would have given me 3:20. Well off my Olympic PR but respectable in the heat. I survived and was certainly a good hard day as I point toward my next Ironman on September 9.
We did get medals too:
Yeah, it says 70.3 but I'll take it :)
