The half Ironman at Galveston was my second race at this distance. I went into the race with two goals: learn how to ride and pace on the bike with a power meter, and complete the swim. The latter was really the the one thing I was sort of worried about. While I had a great swim at the ITU triathlon in Abu Dhabi, I had never completed an entire 1.2-mile half-iron swim. The one at Rocketman doesn't really count because the course ended up being short after the buoys drifted out of position. I'm a fairly strong swimmer, though not terribly efficient since my stroke is stuck in the 80s, but I had this mental block over getting through the entire open water swim without completely exhausting myself.
The swim start is in the water off one of the piers at Moddy Gardens. You hop into the water, but unlike Abu Dhabi where you hold onto the dock before starting, you swim out a bit and tread water between two buoys until the horn sounds. I'm not a fan of the pushing, kicking, and elbowing that happens right after the start so I chose to move towards the right end of the line and let the chaos move along without me. I found it fairly easy going to swim towards the first turning buoy from an outside position. There weren't very many people around me so I had clear water and could focus on my stroke and my breathing. Shortly after making the first turn, I passed someone from the wave in front of me. To catch someone who had a 4-5 minute head start in such a short distance meant that either I was swimming really well or they were quite slow. I assumed I was doing well, and that gave me a boost of confidence and energy as I made my way down the long leg of the course.
I managed to have a clean line for most of the second leg, although there were a few spots where someone who couldn't swim in a straight line kept cutting across my line from right to left and then from left to right a few minutes later. A few sharp elbows into his thighs kept him from doing this more than once. Once I made the second turn onto the final short leg to the finish, things got a little more crowded. I was right in the middle of the slow people from the two waves in front of me, the decent people from my wave, and the really fast people from the two waves behind me. I tried to draft off one of the women going past me, but that was a futile effort. I lost her wake after 20 or 30 seconds, though any little bit helps, right?
I made my way out of the water and went straight for the wet suit strippers. There were people half out of their suits that kept running into transition, which made no sense to me. Why go right to your bike and have to step and stomp your way out of your suit when there are numerous strong young volunteers ready and willing to peel your suit off for you? A quick lie down on your back, a few pulls from the helpers, and you're out of your suit and on your way in 5-10 seconds.
My time in T1 was slightly better than my time at Rocketman. Officially, I was 3 seconds faster, but since Galveston had a much longer run to get to my bike, I think I managed to be quite a bit quicker in getting changed and on my way.
The bike course began with a few zigs and zags through the neighborhood near Moody Gardens before we made the right turn onto the road running along the beach and took off to the west. My primary goal for the bike course was to learn to ride a long distance with my power meter and keep in the 150-160 watt band that Mary set out for me. I also aimed to keep my heart rate in zone 3, preferably on the low end of the zone, because I've yet to learn how to prevent my HR from skyrocketing at the beginning of the run coming off the bike. I'm sure I'll figure it out someday, but for now, I'm using every race as practice and training for Florida.
The wind on the bike course wasn't nearly as bad as predicted. With a forecast of 20-30 knots from the south-southeast, I was expecting to struggle and slog through a headwind or crosswind most of the time, and thankfully the conditions were much more moderate. Heading west towards the turnaround point (the course is one long out-and-back loop), the wind was somewhere between a cross and a headwind with much less force, maybe 15-20 knots. A few strong gusts knocked me around a bit, but I held on and stayed upright, which is more than I can say for one of the guys in front of me. He swerved to avoid an orange safety cone marking a pot hole and went head over heels into the grass shoulder. Fortunately for him, he was unscathed, popped right back to his feet, and passed me again 10-15 minutes later.
Immediately after making the U-turn to start the second half of the course, I saw a woman laid out flat on her back on the ground, thankfully with a few volunteers from the nearby aid station warning the approaching riders so she didn't get run over. I couldn't figure out exactly what happened to her, but I'm pretty sure there's no way she finished the race.
To this point, my ride was tracking pretty much on plan, with my average power sitting around 145 and my HR in low to mid zone 3. Of course, that's when disaster struck. I felt my rear tire turning a little soft and squishy as I motored along in the tailwind. A few glances down and back at the wheel confirmed my worst fear: a flat. Now you must understand that I'm not really afraid of a flat. I simply happen to be absolutely terrible at changing them, a fact proven again during this race. I struggled to get the tire off the rim, struggled to get it back on once the new tube was in, and even struggled to get all my tools back into the bag under my saddle, though that's mainly because I was furious at that point. My HR track bears this out. I dropped down from ~145 bpm to 120 bpm during the first 10 minutes I was on the side of the road working on the tire, and then it gradually rose in direct correlation to my level of frustration. By the time I was up and going again, my heart was beating at 152 bpm, faster than it had been while I was riding. [on a positive note, all this unanticipated practice came in handy when I returned to Erbil and my pump ripped the valve off my training tire. I had that sucker back on and rolling again in under five minutes.]
Needless to say, my mental frame of mind deteriorated significantly during this period. I argued with myself for the next 25 miles about whether it was even worth it to attempt the run or call it a day and have a beer with Jackie and her friends. I also stopped paying such close attention to my heart rate and my average power. There's more enjoyment from mashing the pedals when you're mad than there is in calming down and sticking with your race plan. In the end, my bike leg turned out pretty well, not counting the flat debacle. Remove that lost time from my official record and I finished in 3:03, just a few minutes over the three hours I was shooting for. I am confident I would've been under three hours if I had kept riding and concentrating for the entire race and hadn't had to stop along the way. That, at least, gives me some hope I'll be able to handle the IMFL bike leg.
T2 was far from speedy. I had no real sense of urgency because my personal goal of 6:15 or less was long gone. All I wanted at this point in time was to be done, making the 13.1 miles left to go that much less appealing. I've never quit a race, though, so as much as I felt like it, tossing in the towel wasn't really an option, especially since Mary was at the race too and I knew I'd hear it from her at the bar afterwards if I did. To be fair, going balls out to run as fast as I could wasn't really an option either. I chose a happy medium and ran when I could and walked when I felt like it.
As hot as the run course was, I did have a pretty good time. I ran into some friends along the run route who were kind enough to let me have a few sips of their beer to keep my carb level up. I tried chatted up people who seemed to be taking it easy like I was, but didn't have much luck. A few people talked to me about meeting up for IPAs and chip & salsa once we finished, but for the most part, triathletes aren't the conversational bunch that marathoners are. Sad. I'll have to do something about that at IMFL this fall.
While I didn't enjoy this race as much as I did Rocketman, I'm still glad I did it. I learned how to ride effectively with a power meter, realized my open water swimming is better than I thought, and reinforced to myself that it's better to keep going to the finish even when your flat tire and chain problems make you want to quit.
