My next race was the very popular and fun Ukrop's Monument Avenue 10K here in RVA.
When race day came, I went in not expecting much. Before the race started, I decided that if I could negative split, that would be a win. My pacing for these types of events still has a lot to be desired. I usually go out too fast on the first mile and fade from there. It was a overcast day with some drizzle but it was not cold and quite humid. Without going into too much detail, I managed to eek out a 43:51 10K which was good enough for 21st place out of 707 in the men 50-54 age group. And probably for the first time ever, I negative split which means I ran the second half ever so slightly faster than the first half. You would think after 13 years of doing this race, I would have the pacing figured out. But I guess some people take longer to learn than others.
Maybe someday I will get back to running under 42 minutes for this race. But the last two years, I have been unable to push the pace hard. I am getting older and most likely my PR has come and gone for this race. I will probably keep doing it though as it is fun and the biggest local race in RVA.
Next up was the Ironman 70.3 Virginia on May 5th which was 3 weeks later. I did not really have time to do another build phase for this race. Ideally, I would have been putting in some longer, more epic workouts before a short taper. But since I had gotten sick and was still not 100 percent, I had to be content to maintain my fitness in the weeks leading up to the race.
Race day was humid. It had rained hard overnight and the field where transition was setup was steamy. I knew by the time we got to the run, the weather would be a big factor. I don't want to get bogged down in too many details so I will try to summarize as much as possible.
For me, a half Ironman takes between 5:15 and 6 hours depending on the courses. This course is fairly fast so I was hoping to go under 5:30 for sure. As we got ready to swim, I got very nervous as I often do before these events. The swim is always a bit stressful for me since I am a very mediocre swimmer and sometimes the swim is crowded and there can be a fair amount of contact between participants. For this race, I was more nervous than I have been in a long time. Luckily I was able to meet up with some friends before the swim start which was a bit comforting. I waited in the swim line with Busher and we chatted about all kinds of things. He seemed pretty relaxed which helped with my mood. Also, Jill was there to help me with my last minute wetsuit adjustments which also helped calm me down a bit.
The swim ended up being OK. I did not have any major collisions and there were not too many bottlenecks on the course. The current assisted swim was fast for the fist two thirds of the race. For the last part, the current did not seem to help as much and I had to really push to keep moving at a good pace. In the end, Ironman clocked my swim at 37 minutes. However, my Garmin puts me a few minutes faster. I did have a cramp at the end and had to deal with that on the dock before running out to get my wetsuit stripped off by the wetsuit peelers. It seems like the run from the water to T1 was quite long. Then again, these things usually are quite long.
I was 72 out of 146 in my AG in the swim.
The bike course was quite nice and I gotta hand it to Ironman. They made a special effort to have people, cones, and signage out on the course to identify areas where the road was narrow and bumpy. There were a few "no passing" zones which helped keep people safe on parts of the course that could have otherwise been a bit sketchy. The first three fifths of the course was quite fast and I averaged about 20 mph for these first few sections. The second to last section did get a bit windy with pavement that was not as fast. The course plus some fatigue did slow me down a bit. But I rallied at the end and had a decent bike split.
With a time of 02:46:54, I was 61 out of 146 in my AG on the bike. Much better than the swim.
Onto the run. I have done this run many times and each time, I start out well and then the heat catches up with me and I start to falter. Same thing happened this time around. I did well for about 5 miles and then I just had take some walk breaks as I could feel my body heating up. Unfortunately, I had made a stupid mistake and left my hat and sunglasses in transition because it looked cloudy when I was in T2 and there was a forecast for more rain. Of course the sun was out after about 5 minutes of running and it was got quite steamy. I managed to keep on trucking and despite the walk breaks, managed a 2 hour half marathon.
I ended up 48 out of 146 in my AG for the run which also happened to put me at 48 overall in my AG. My overall place was 472 out of 1539. Ironman races are definitely more competitive than other brands of races. This performance would have put me in the top 20 in my AG if it was still a REV 3 race I think.
That wraps up the first part of my season. Next up was an Olympic distance triathlon in PA and then a Run/Swim/Run event in July in VA Beach. Rain or shine, toe the line!
