After watching John’s first ironman I got the bug and decided to sign up for my first half ironman last December. I won’t bore everyone with the 4 months of long, hard tireless training along with a different saddles because of saddle sores and raw spots and 3 different pairs of running shoes because of burning pain with the balls of my feet…Finally, I’ve worked out all my issues and I’m ready for this race!
John and I drive down the day before and it pretty much is a crazy hectic day in itself. The drive was great but when we get to the convention center to sign in the line was out the door. An hour later I was registered. Realizing how bad traffic was we made sure all my stuff was in my run bag and left it there. We headed for a bite to eat and then checked in our hotel. I laid everything out on the bed and went over in my mind again what had to go in each bag…bike bag, morning bag, stickers on bike,helmet, etc. Thankfully, going through this with John two times made it a little easier. We then went to drop off my bike and headed for a great dinner with several of our teammates. We had walked at least 4-5 miles that day already! Went to bed around 8:30 but of course slept a good 2-3 hours and woke up…mind spinning. Finally get back to sleep and the phone rings. Wake up call? No, a stupid wrong number. Get back to sleep, with my ear plugs in, and John is snoring so loud I make him rollover! The alarm goes off at 5. Everything goes smoothly with breakfast, roll out my lower body and do my Precision exercises and hit the road. John drops me off at 6:15 and I head to my bike to put my water in my speedfil and make sure my tires aren’t flat and chain is on! John had thought to put plastic over the bike the night before and thankfully did because it poured rain! I then headed to the bus to go to the swim. Of all things it’s extremely windy and maybe 58 degrees and it’s an open air trolley that takes us over! I’m normally never cold….BURRRR! I immediately see my teammate Anna and enjoyed talking with her while we WAIT!! That for me is the hardest part because I didn’t go out until 8:58 and boy was I nervous and cold! Almost 3 hours of waiting. It was so nice to talk with other triathletes to take my mind off things though…Matt, Annabelle, George, Erik, Alice, Nichole and Julie.
They finally called my big group and we head slowly towards the water. The water actually felt warmer than it did outside! I remember John telling me to get the water in my face because it’s saltwater so I put my goggles on and went under. My right goggle was leaking…I had less than two minutes to fix this or I was going to have a miserable swim. I realized my cap was too low and finally with 30 seconds to go was good. The horn went off and I took off. I would say for the first 2 minutes there were so many people kicking and stopping in front of me I wasn’t able to even get my head inthe water to get a good rhythm. Finally, I got into a good swim rhythm but about every minute a huge white cap of water would slap me in the face. Thankfully, I didn’t swallow too much and tried to push through it. I honestly have never been in water that rough before in my life. I kept remembering everyone telling me how much I would love the swim because it was so fast. Well, that was not the case! I just kept telling myself, “you can do this, you are fine!” After 38 minutes I was finally at the dock! This is always my weakest area…I’m always usually the slowest swimmer but had put in a lot of swim time and it helped. Yeah, get me on that bike!
It was quite a long run barefoot to the bike area. I quickly ran through the water tent to rinse off the salt and over to find my bike bag in numerical order. Then I headed right into the first white tent. All I could think about was getting out of that wetsuit! I had put two Gus in my tri suit pockets and evidently they came out when I took my wet suit off. I sat down stripped it off, took my towel to wipe my feet off, put my bike shoes on and helmet and stuffed my goggles, cap and wetsuit in the bag. I headed out and handed the bag to the nice volunteer. He said, “Ma’am, just so you know this is the men’s changing tent!” Oops, I was so focused I never even paid attention to my surroundings…probably a really good thing!!
Thankfully my bike was all in one piece so I pushed it through the grass to the start. The first 40 miles of the bike was extremely windy! MOSTLY A HEAD WIND! A couple times it was a cross wind and with the combination of cars on the interstate passing at 70 mph it felt like a whirlwind! I was able to keep a steady momentum passing several cyclists. I don’t remember a single girl passing me which felt really good! I had downed one of the two water bottles with my nutrition in it and had squeezed my other bottle into my speedfil bottle on my handlebars. I had had about three big gulps of it when I went over some really rough railroad tracks. There were tons of trash that had dropped off people’s bikes so I tried my best to stay straight over the tracks and dodge all the bottles and trash. Don’t wreck, don’t wreck…then before I could do anything my speedfil bottle tumbled right off my handlebars. I thought to myself…do I stop and turn around, it takes a while to get it latched back on.Nope, I would stop at an aid station and get more water along with something else since my 2 Gus were also gone. Of course in the back of my mind I was thinking….John’s gonna kill me that wasn’t cheap! The aid station wasn’t too far away so I stopped refilled my other bottle with water and picked up some strawberry chomps. We went over one really high bridge over the interstate and I thought my bike was going to blow right off the side! I couldn’t believe the wind and the line of traffic they had backed up for this event. I’m sure there were some pissed off motorists! Finally, we did a turn around and it was a tailwind! Yahoo, I tried to take advantage of that but keeping in mind it was the last of the 56 miles and I still had to run 13. I crossed the final bridge and was feeling great! The dismount was on a downhill which was a little tricky. The guy right in front of me decided to slam on his breaks way before the line. I locked up my breaks and about did an endo right over the handlebars. Thankfully I was able to unclip and get control of my bike without going down. I started to roll my bike and realized the back breaks were locked up on the wheel and it wouldn’t roll. I had to push it a long way to get to transition. I asked the volunteer if he could take it and he said no I had to push it to the end. I picked up my seat and rolled it on its front wheel. That being very cumbersome, I then squeezed the back break multiple times and thankfully it came undone. I rolled it on and handed it to a volunteer. I found my run bag and headed into the WOMEN’S tent this time!
I put my socks on, my Hokas, my run belt and fuel belt with nutrition in it just like I had trained. There were so many nice volunteers asking if we needed anything…water, chomps, sunscreen. I took some sunscreen for my face, rubbed it in and I was off.It was so nice seeing all the cheering people down by the water and on Front Street. John’s voice was in the back of my head telling me to walk that little steep hill in the very beginning, so I made myself walk almost to the top and took off again. I got behind three girls with 40 on their calves that seemed to be doing a pretty good pace. I stuck with them for a least 6 miles. One of the girls was talking the entire time…I was amazed because all I could do was BREATHE HARD! I tried to let that take my mind off the fact that I was only half way done. I unfortunately didn’t have my garmin set to do each sport individually. I was just paying attention to the time. When I got off my bike and started running my garmin said 3:40. I rounded the halfway point, 6.5 miles, yahoo! I was feeling good and looked down at my garmin and it wasn’t even 4:40 yet. I was doing less than 9 minute miles. Somewhere between mile 9 and 10 I saw Kathy Goody on a bike asking how are you doing? I’m sure I looked a little ragged and thought to myself, “Can I do this….am I going to finish?” As some of you might not know I’ve only done two half marathons in the past. One at Hilton head (flat) in 1:57 and the other was a DNF!! The mistletoe half in Winston Salem. I pushed an 8:15 pace on an extremely hilly course and at mile 11 was delirious. I was knocking into people and had to sit down. Ended up getting fluids, didn’t know quite what was going on and had the most painful total body spasms for 30 minutes in the ambulance. In my training for this HIM, I really watched my pace and had great long runs with the longest at 11 miles. Anyway, after seeing Kathy at mile ten, I was having flash backs of the mistletoe!!
I then staggered into someone and into the other side of the street. My mind was going crazy. I swear I heard a buzzer go off and someone yelled, “penalty”. I thought for sure they were penalizing me for going out of bounds or something! If anything it should have been a penalty forgoing in the men’s tent! The last 2 miles were of course a little hilly and hardly any shade. It had gotten much hotter than I liked also. I told myself to walk up the hills and in the sun and run in the shady areas. Every time I started to run I could feel my heart rate shoot up and I knew I would not finish this if I pushed myself. I tried to run at least 4 times during that 2 miles and every time by body said WALK!! Tons of people were yelling my name down Front St (it was on my race belt)…you can do this, don’t give up Jen.
Part of me was humiliated because I was walking instead of running because I was SO CLOSE! Oh how I wanted at least to do under 6 hours! The other part of me said who cares you just need to get to that finish line! About a quarter mile to the finish line my teammate and friend Erik Greenfield caught up with me. Wow, what a blessing he was. He asked if I was OK and I said I definitely couldn’t run…I had to walk or I wasn’t going to make it. He said I’ll walk it with you. I pleaded for him to go on…unselfishly he stayed with me! On the last little stretch I mustered up the courage to run to cross the finish line right alongside Erik! I was done and an ironman (half that is)!She put the medal around my neck and had to catch me. My blood pressure dropped and I almost past out. The medic pleaded to take me to get looked at and I refused. I’m normally bright red and I was completely pale. I got some chocolate milk in me and after about 30 minutes started feeling a little better.I have the ultimate respect for people who do these events along with full ironmans! I secretly wanted to beat John’s time of 5:33…but in 2014 it was only 4 mph winds! I also definitely underestimated how hard it would be! Six hours and fifteen minutes. I’m so glad I got to experience this long journey and I’m so happy for all the people I’ve met along the way and how much I have learned about myself.