HyVee Triathlon

For those of you who don’t know, this past weekend I participated in the HyVee Triathlon, here in Des Moines. I just put together a brief race summary for Hope and Jeff Austin-Phillips, and thought I would post it here for the world to consume:

Hey Guys –

As my unofficial coaches, I thought I would give you a run-down of how things went. I also think it will be good for me to put things in writing.

On paper I finished right where I thought I would. The actual race itself went pretty poorly for me.

I couldn’t fall asleep the night before and ended up finally sleeping at 12:30. I was up at 4 and felt like crap. When I don’t get enough sleep it leaves me feeling nauseous. I was hoping it would pass once I got moving. Murph dropped me off a little after 5 and by the time I got to the transition area, at about 5:25 they announced they were switching to a Sprint distance because of the weather. I was disappointed, but had also had my eye on the radar, so I understood. They cut it to a 400m swim, with a time-trial start, to get everyone out of the water, a 20k bike, and a 5k run.

As soon as I hit the water I knew I was in trouble. The first 100m of the swim were rough, and I thought I was going to throw up. I think that the nerves and nausea from lack of sleep were winning the battle. Eventually I settled in and finished OK. I was definitely on the slower end, so I will work on that. I wasn’t sure what to expect.

The bike went well. I felt great as soon as I got on the bike. People were definitely passing me a lot more than I was passing people, but people also were obviously some pretty serious bikers. I actually had the worst bike of everyone I saw. I am not too worried about that. 12 miles was certainly a lot easier and faster than 24.

The transition to the run was rough, but I was ready for that. The run was going OK until about a mile into it, when I started to feel nauseous again. I walked for about 100 feet, threw up a little but, and then got moving again. That also could have gone better.

Eventually I finished, Susan and Andrew greeted me at the finish line. I grabbed a drink and banana before waiting under a tent for 45 minutes for the thunderstorms to pass. Eventually I biked a mile or so to a spot where Susan could pick me up. I got home, got out of my wet clothes and crawled into bed for the couple of hours.

Physically I felt great, but my stomach was still a little wacky. I learned a lot and am ready to start training for my next race – http://www.bigcreektri.com/eventDetails.html . I think it is a little less intense than Hy-Vee, and starts a little later, which means I won’t have to get up at the butt crack, but also I really need to have a good hydration plan worked out.