Spirit of Racine 2006

Pre-Race:
I was extremely nervous going into this race. I was haunted by my experience at Racine last year, where even though I finished, I quit. I was also quite nervous about this race in terms of performance, not in terms of meeting a goal time, but in terms of the fear that my Half at Appleton was a one hit wonder race.

For me my race started Saturday, I slept in fairly late. When I woke bummed about abit, helped clean up the house a little, and then washed my bike. Mary and I headed down to registration, to pick up our packets (it was her first half). After that we went for a swim/bike/run – about 20 minutes of each – a little heavy on the bike as we biked the run course.

Finished up Saturday eating at Salute in Racine.

Race Day:
I started the day bright and early at 3:45 – fortunately I packed all of Mary’s and my stuff in the car on Saturday night, so it was only make coffee, check the weather, and down some yogurt smoothies.

The 45 minute drive to Racine went quick, and I got my stuff set up, and helped Mary with hers, then we went and rode the run course again. It was finally time to suit up and make the walk up the beach.

Swim:
27:05
20th OA/1st AG

The swim was pretty uneventful – I had a pretty hard time spotting the markers once we turned on to the straight stretch, so I remembered from yesterday that the lighthouse was just left of the buoy line, so I just sighted off of that making sure every once and a while I was inline with the buoys. I have taken the last couple of HIM swims (well both of them this year) on the easy side, because I think that last year I got in the bad habit of swimming to get the fastest swim split in the Race, and it cost me finish time for that little #1.

T1:
Uggh That beach run freaking sucks, but it’s not as bad as the helix.

Bike:
2:31:49
167th OA/13th AG

The day was perfect for fast biking, Dave Thompsons 26.X mph is proof of that. I again had some nutrition worries on the bike – except this time it was because I dropped one of my cliff bars, and one of my gels. Fortunately I picked up 2 extra on the course, but of course I ended up losing one of those. I was a little nervous though – I didn’t feel that the Infinit I picked up was very strong combined with losing half of the bottle while transferring it to the aero bottle means I maybe only got 2 bottles worth of the stuff. The one thing I did right was Salt Tabs – I took 5 salt tabs 20 minutes in and then 2 or 3 every 20 minutes after.

For those that weren’t there, the Racine course was a flat, fast meat grinder, way worse then Appleton as far as grinding your legs down. Almost no downhills for coasting, just pedal pedal pedal.

T2:
Quick, fast, painless.

Run:
1:26:51
31st OA/3rd AG

ummm wow. That’s all I can really say about it. During the run I felt I was moving pretty good, and my spilts were agreeing with it, but I wasn’t ready to see a number like that.

The run was great, I spent most of it in thought about what a beautiful day we had for this, ran with Terry Labinski for a bit (dude is fast). The best part of the run for me was the two times I got to see Mary – once when I had about 1 mile left on my first lap, and then when I caught up to her to go with about 2 miles left (I gave her a nice pat on the butt when I went by!!!!)

For nutrition on the run, I pretty much grabbed every glass of fluid I could at each transition and downed as much of each glass as I could while running. I also ate 2 gels for every 3 aid stations (grab 2, eat, eat, grab 2). I only had a few salt tabs on the run, probably like 8 for the whole leg.

I was really happy to see all the people on the run course having a better day then last year, it was like a battlefield then, but not on Sunday.

Overall:
4:28:12
33rd OA/4th AG

Looks like Appleton wasn’t a one hit wonder. Hopefully, I can keep the training up and stay injury free and see what happens at IMWI. To be honest though I am more scared for IMWI ’06 then I was for ’05 simply because I know what to expect, and that run really terrifies me.