STEVE’S FIRST IRONMAN 70.3

5:37:22!! First race success. The 1.9km swim was in a straight line. It felt like i was in the water forever. I lost track of the marker buoys to tell me how far along i was. Towards the end of the swim my arms felt like lead, and i thought i had been swimming for about an hour. When i finally exited the water, my watch said 27mins…. Boooyeh!! There was a 300m run up the sand and into transition.
I left transition at 0:30:00. The 90km bike course was broken up into 5 laps. Heading south, we were going straight into the wind, i held between 29-31km/hr, however heading north was with the wind which saw speeds up to 40km/hr. I was on the 5th lap and i had my sights on a respectable time, when all of a sudden.. CRAMP!! in my left hamstring. I had to actually dismount to get this one out. After about 30 seconds i thought it was gone, as I went to get back on my bike again the cramp came on. At that moment fear set in, had I gone out to hard and screwed my legs?? Again i stretched it out, and finally jumped back on the bike after a couple of minutes of nil forward motion. I eased back the pace for the rest of the bike leg. In fact, i decided that’s how i would complete the race. I came off the bike in the time 3:02:33.
When I started the run I still had that nasty little feeling in my hamstring that a cramp could happen at any time. There was no fancy pose running, instead a two-foot shuffle. As the run went on my legs started to feel better, by 12km that little twinge in my hamstring was gone, and I actually felt good both mentally & physically. I resisted the temptation to increase the pace with my main goal for the day to just finish. I finished the run in 2:01:43.
My race nutrition wasn’t really thought out at all. I drank water and an electrolyte mix as I felt necessary and ate some dates and three Gu’s throughout the race.
My legs felt pretty good after the race. A day later I had generalized soreness and stiffness. Two days later and I feel like my body has almost completely recovered, and should have resumed normal training in another day or so! Except… I have some nasty blisters on both feet. I felt the blisters start to form within the first 1k of the run, then they just got worse and worse.
I am really pleased with how I performed and recovered. Huge improvements still to be made though, im really looking forward to the next few months of training.
The next race is the Port Macquarie 70.3 in November…..