MHR

This race was HOT...92-degrees, very humid and was my 9th 1/2 IM Triathlon lifetime. Triathlons in general are my passion from the 1980's and with a continued focus I hope to be back to a competitive level (Top 10 - 25 or so in my age group), right now for this event I'm just racing from experience.

Training
Running: I ran the Disney Marathon in January and missed Boston Marathon due to a foot injury. Every time I would run my left foot would swell, making it difficult to walk afterward. Through some tests (X-ray and MRI) I learned that I have some tendon damage, which unfortunately takes some time to heal. My normal running week of 55-65 miles was at times only 30 and with no track work I had no leg speed either as I cannot really push off with my left foot. Although my foot is getting better at almost 90%, I lack the general week to week conditioning.
Cycling: My focus if I had one, was on the bike. Where over the last 7-weeks I have been racing a TT series on Wednesday nights (10.5 miles, with about 450 riders). I also have been doing to do my M-F mini bricks of Run 9.0 followed by riding about 20-miles mostly on my lifecycle. Although as I noted my run miles were not really there.
Swimming: Pretty much a big ZERO for the last 4 months, with only 3-days in the pool prior to the race. I did start a new job at the end of March and has taken much of my available free time. My overall lack of training has me about 9lbs heavier and something that is really makes me mad. But no worries - as soon as I wip this chest cold, and my training kicks in to high gear - the extra weight will be history.

I went into this race with no real expectations. Although I did have a target in my mind of 5:45. I just wanted to put in a measured energy output and finish happy and I did just that, finishing in 6 hours 1 min and 30 seconds. I finished right mid-pack at like 900 out of nearly 1,800 who raced overall, and just above mid pack for my 45 - 49 year old age group. I was happy with that considering the minimal level of training. Also, there was a little over 200 who DNS for the event and only a handful of DNF's maybe 20.

1.2 mile Swim
Wow the lack of swimming really showed. The swim was in a warm 82-degree lake in back of the Wilderness lodge at Walt Disney World in Orlando Florida. Not much bump and grind and my performance was very slow but steady. My PR for the 1.2 is 32 min, on this day it took me almost 45, my slowest 1.2 in 9-1/2 IM’s.

T1
This was the longest T1 I ever saw in a race. You enter the transition area out of the lake, go over a timing mat and I went down to row #32 out of like 70+. At the end of the transition there was a 1/4-mile of black mesh laid out on the grass to follow that lead you into Disney's Wilderness campgrounds. It is here where I mounted my bike with the shoes already attached to the pedals to save time.

56 mile Bike
I choose to bring my Trek-TT (rather than my Cannondale IM 5000) bike this year, as I have been racing on it in my Wednesday night TT-series. I have it tweeked now and it is a very fast bike and I feel very comfortable on it. The course had many turns and a few climbs (hard to believe Florida would have any hills, but there were a few as well as a few 180's). This was the fun part or me, where I must have passed 300+ riders which was a real ego boost. My bike time was like 2:46 with an average speed of 20.2mph, which placed me at the bottom of the top 1/3 or or so for all cyclists. My fueling was right on, and seemed to have endless energy. I had so much fun on the bike climbing many of the hills while still down on the bars passing others who were struggling riding out of the saddle. Just rocking along on my Tri-bike is so much fun I had a smile pasted across my face the whole time. My PR in a 1/2 IM is 2:31 at 22 mph avg. speed, but on this hot day I was really happy with this effort.

T2
Off the bike, and again the looooong 1/4 mile run to enter the transition area. Reaching my row and racking my bike took almost 2-min right there. Changing into my run gear I headed out into the sunny hot 92-degree heat for the 1/2 marathon.

13.1 mile Run
Although, running is my strength, with my foot now just coming around I took it pretty easy here.
Out of T2 I got a great cheer from my wife. I tossed her my cycle gloves as I totally forgot to take them off. The format was 2-loops through the campgrounds. After 1-mile I felt ok, jogging easy but the sun, heat and humidity were just brutal. I just jogged at an easy pace and walked a few of the water stops taking time to dump water over my head. The air was thick with the humidity near 90%. I finished my run in like 2:17...pretty slow for me but I really wanted to finish feeling great and not sick. In the second loop my wife yelled at me “Come-on Pick it up Mikey”, hearing her - she sounded a little frustrated with my pace, but imagine how I felt - it was hot out here and I know I should be running faster. I really wanted to run a 1:40 or so but I just didn’t have it in me due to the lack of general conditioning.
(my 1/2 marathon PR in a run only event is near 1:30). At the finish after I crossed the line I knew I had missed my target time, but that's not why I came. Dreams of getting back to near what was my 1/2 IM PR was (5:05) are still there. I have 2 more of these 1/2 IM events this year. Triathlons are so much fun and I love the distance of the 1/2 IM. When you are in shape you can just go all out in these and I really think of them as a sprint event although they are far from that - but that's is just my ego talking.
After a shower, we spent the rest of the day in the Disney parks, hopping from Park to Park catching all of the fun stuff.

Dreaming: All in all if I take away almost 15 min in the swim (if I had really trained for the swim), run in my range of say an easy 1:40 for the 1/2 marathon after a swim and bike, I would be right at the 5-hour mark, and in the top 10 for my age group once again. It's nice to dream of what could be - but this is in my grasp easy and I know that.

This event was special in many ways. Having my wife and her mom (who is near 80 years old) supporting me, and cheering for me was just awesome and something I am very grateful for. I know it's not easy for my mother-in-law to travel - and as a spectator I know it was hot too. I understand it was pretty hard on my mother-in-law to deal with the heat, but I was so glad she was there. Also, she was a real trooper because she walked 1.5 miles at 6:00 AM from the Wilderness Lodge Hotel to the Pioneer Hall area near the campground because buses were not running yet - and she wanted to see me at my swim start. I will be back next year for sure – As you would guess as an offical M-Dot event (offical Hawaii quailfier) it was very well organized and just a ton of fun.

Since returning from the race, I have had a bad chest cold with a temp of 101 or so the last 3 days have sucked big time. I did a bad thing in that I left the air blasting at me on the plane ride home and went to sleep for 2-hrs. When I woke up I didn't feel right - Damn plane. Waking up the next AM on Tuesday I had a heavy chest and a bad cough. It's now Saturday and taking some meds, starting to feel a little better. Hope to be better over this long weekend.

skydive69

Where are the results published? I have some friends that competed in it.

tri-berkeley

Awesome! Maybe some day I'll do a half-ironman, but for now I'm just sweating over running 10k in an olympic...

RoadToad

Nice report, MHR. Well done, I would say, for the training that you got in before the race. Glad you had fun. Hope that cold gets better fast. Take care.

RT

ZackJones

"Mikey" - you gotta love the support crew! Congrats on the race!

TriBob

Good job running your race.