Libertyman 70.3

Today I completed the first of three planned half iron training races. Dr. Nitrous volunteered his community pool for the base which is in Liberty Park, thus the Libertyman name. So, the idea was to treat this as any other race with a continuously running clock, transitions, and such. My purpose was use race this at my planned Ironman pace. I wanted to see how it felt and if I could do it.

If I could do it was the big question. As I mentioned before, my planned IM pace is 53 seconds per 50, 19.5 mph avg on the bike, and a 9:00 mile pace for the run. With typical transition times, this would put me finishing Libertyman in 5:30 which equals my best Half IM time (of the 2 I've done). Now, back to "If I could do it." My swim times are notoriously slow. I both races, my official times were around 43 minutes. My bike times were in the 20-20.5 range, and my runs were all death marches at 2:18 for the first and 1:58 for the second. Neither were at or below a 9:00 pace so I didn't know if I could keep that pace after the first two sports, but today I was going to give it a shot.

The forecast could not have been better. Low humidity and high of 85. Our race started at 6:00 so we'd finish early enough to beat the heat and keep the wives happy. So here goes:

1.2 Mile swim - The community pool did have black lines on the bottom to follow, but lacked ropes between the lanes. I discovered today that those ropes have two functions. The first is obvious, but the second is to keep the waves down. With three of us in the pool, it felt like an open water swim with all of the waves. As for the actual swim, no problems here. My weekly hour endurance swims paid off. I knocked out the swim in 35:07 with plenty of arm strength to spare. Not a bad start.

T1 - Admittedly I took my time here. 3:30. Not ideal, but I wasn't trying to be fast.

56 Mile Ride - The course was an out and back along a rolling course. I wore my intended race outfit and aero helmet for the ride. Both felt great. No issues with keeping myself in aero. Overall it felt great, but I was a bit bored honestly. I found myself, just wanting to get the ride over with. I didn't have a problem keeping pace and my nutrition was spot on. One half cliff bar ever 30 minutes. I rolled into transition in 2:46, an avg pace of 20.2.

T2 - A little faster here. I did take full advantage of no USAT rules for this race and grabbed my ipod. I had some Ironman Talk podcasts to work through.

13.1 mile - Legs felt great coming out of T2. I couldn't seem to run slower than a 7:30 pace for the first two miles without it feeling like I was crawling. I slowed my pace down because I knew there was no way I could maintain it and would only end up blowing up. The miles started knocking off pretty easily. Legs felt good, energy level was good, and stomach felt fine. Around mile 11 the miles started taking effect. I started noticing that my hip flexors were weakening and any size hill was starting to prove difficult to get over. The last mile was torture. I was ready to be finished, but physically I found it hard to lay the hammer down and finish strong. I crossed the line in 1:50.

So the total time for the 1st Annual Libertyman 70.3 was 5 hours and 16 minutes. A PR by 14 minutes. I'm pretty stoked about that. It's a real confidence booster that my training is going well. All those long slow endurance exercises are paying off. Now that I know my weaknesses, I can tweak my workouts to address them and hopefully make them stronger. Off to recover and gear up for next time.
Tail winds....