Ironman Racine 70.3: Pre-Race

Brr!! The water was cold and for some reason I started to freak out.  I had done a wave swim before with a large group, but there just wasn’t any open water, everyone was swimming on top of each other.  In retrospect (and I did think about this right before the gun went off), I picked a pretty stupid place in the wave to start- in the middle and about four people back.  Right in the middle of the chaos.  Eventually things did start to thin out and I was able to have a little bit of room to start attempting to actually swim.  I tried to breathe to my right every four strokes, but I just couldn’t sight well, so I kept pulling my head up to breathe instead.  As soon as I made the first right turn I could already feel my neck burning from my wetsuit rubbing, a combination of pulling my head up and probably the velcro being closed too high so the rough side was touching my neck.  Well, that’s going to hurt later!

I finally was able to get into somewhat of a rhythm but every few breaths I still pulled up my head.  It was also so weird to be able to see through the water and see everyone’s arms and legs, and it definitely helped with avoiding getting kicked in the face!  The rest of the siwm was pretty uneventful…just lots of pulling up my head rather than breathing to the right as well as several gulps of lake water (yuck).

Eventually I made the last right turn to head to the finish…which seemed to take forever.  Soon I was nearing the shore and was able to stand up and waddled my way out of the water.  I looked down at my watch and saw I swam 37:xx…hooray!  A PR!  I unzipped my wetsuit as I ran through the looong chute to transition (JMR had heard it was close to half a mile…I’m not sure if it was that long, but it was quite the hike).

Once I found my bike (I got turned around and got lost), I sat down, put on my socks, shoes, sunglasses and helmet.  I also grabbed my bottle of spray sunscreen and sprayed my neck and back the best I could and then was finally headed out.  Time to bike!

Trying to hussle out of T1!

Swim: 37:44

T1: 5:52

Racine 70.3: The Bike