Ralph's Half IM Race Report
i survived!
For the past week, I've been dreading this race, not because I was afraid I was undertrained (well maybe a little), but mostly because the weather reports all pointed to rain on race day. So as the whole week went by I was hoping and praying for the system to either bring the rain in early or to push it back, something as long as it didn't rain while I was on the bike. I had anxiety over the bike course because you're not allowed to drive the course ahead of time. The bike course takes you through Camp Pendelton, a military base, and for security reasons, they don't allow you to drive through it. I think for any other course, I would have been okay with not driving the course, but for this race I wasn't. This course has 3 "major" hills, that amount to (including the other smaller ascents) 1800' of climbing. No big deal for me here because we've climbed above and beyond that in training before (Burlingame-Old La Honda loop is about 3400'). My major concern was of the descents. There is one stretch where there is a "No Passing Zone" and a speed limit of 25 mph. Given me, my luck, and my descending skills, this was not a good thing.
We arrive in Oceanside early Friday afternoon. We checked into our hotel and then made our way over to the race to pick up our packets. There was a loooooooooooong time of people waiting. Registration started at noon and we got there about 12:30. There must have been some super early birds waiting in line ahead of time. We get our packets and numbers as well as a wristband that says "ironman" on it. The first thing I notice on our numbers is that we have two, and our names our on it. I then realize that that this is an "ironman" race, albiet half (this race used to be a full ironman, don't ask me why it was changed to half). So we head out to the expo just to check it out. Roch barely had anything to eat so we were just going to breeze through the expo, and then grab lunch and go to the outlets in Carlsbad. We were probably there for a while, ran into a bunch of people as well as m2 and his family. HIS KIDS ARE SOOO CUTE (Picture to come once I get them from my friend)! I bought a TP Massage ball set. SO EXCITED for this. It cost me $120 which is the cost of about 1-2 massages. I got the massage ball, foot baller, quad baller, baller block and the instructional DVD. We head on out of the expo finally and opted to eat at the harbor because Roch was REALLY hungry at this point. We ended up getting pizza slices of some super cheesy and also greasy pizza. Thank god for napkins!
We arrive at the outlets and the one place we all really wanted to hit up was the Pearl Izumi outlet. Yes, we are dorks. But if you knew how expensive training clothes are, you'd be all over that, too! So anyways, we just decided to go to the stores as they came. We already knew the ones we wanted to go to, Banana, Puma, Kenneth Cole and Coach. Hit up Coach and I finally got myself a wristlet. I really wanted the green suede one, but the strap was patent leather and looked plastic. So I got a white leather one with brown/red stitching. Roch got a "workout" bag from Puma. Mar got a new wallet at Kenneth Cole. And I ended up getting a cute yellow clutch, four pairs of socks and four pairs of boxes (for ben.e) at Banana. And guess what? There's no more Pearl Izumi at Carlsbad. It wasn't on their directory and I guess the website hasn't been updated and our hotel had an old brochure. I was kind of disappointed in the outlet trip. None of the stores had anything good and they didn't have Pearl Izumi. The whole time we've been in Oceanside, it's been overcast with a little Sun. But it was bright and the clouds weren't very ominous. So we were pretty optimistic about the weather. About halfway through our outlet excursion, it started raining! We all kind of looked at each other with the same expression of anxiety on our faces.
As we left the outlets, we decided to skip our tri-club dinner and just eat on our own. It was already about 5 and the tri-dinner didn't start until 6. So we called to "unrsvp" and then went to pick up Mar's husband. We ate at Joe's Crab Shack. They only offered two pasta dishes, both with alfredo, YUCK! But fortunately they were able to do it with marinara. Not the best pasta I've ever had, but I wouldn't recommend that restaurant to anyone else. the place was rather gimmicky decorated with fish nets and other nautical items, as well as a weird selection of toys, yes, TOYS, all over the place. It was really weird, I tell you. Over dinner, we call up one of our friends to get the scoop on the descents. So what did we find out? A guy died on the course which is why they implemented the no passing zone and 25 mph limit. GREAT.
We head back to the hotel drop of Mar's husband and make our way to the grocery store to pick up some last minute supplies, namely allergy medicine, garbage bags and water. Make it back to the hotel and start packing our race bags, slapping numbers on our bikes, preparing nutrition and figuring out our transition set up and our rain outfits. We got garbage bags to keep our stuff dry in case it got rained on. Roch went to sleep first and I stayed up a bit to play with my new toys! No, I didn't play fashion show. I used the quad baller to loosen up my legs more. Finally made it to bed about 9:30. But that didn't mean I knocked out immediately. I had the hardest time falling asleep and staying asleep because I kept hearing people in the hallway, chopping it up and laughing. Sounded like college kids getting ready to go out. Then later I heard people out in the parking lot. UGH. I apparently wasn't the only one who was kept awake by it. Roch said she heard it all too.
It's 4:15 and we're up and awake. Got dressed and ate. Finished packing up. Headed out to pack up the car and we're at the race about 5:40. So far, it's not raining, but the ground is wet and it's cold, not super cold, but enough to notice. We set up our transition areas, got bodymarked, stood in line for the portapotties, then proceeded to figure out where all the entrances and exits are. And they weren't clearly marked. We had to ask a volunteer. We then saw our friends from the club, chatted, and talked to m2 before he went off to start his race. At this point, the annoucers told us we had 5 minutes to get our stuff together before they close of the transition area. So we scrambled to get in our wetsuits and in the midst of it all, we forgot to put on sunscreen. I realized this after i got mine on, and then figured, if it's raining, there will be no sun anyways.
After we're in our wetsuits, we make our way to the swim start area. I don't know what was up with the black top we were walking on, but it was painful as hell. Either that or they didn't take care to sweep it before the race, but everyone was gingerly walking towards the swim start. All of us were hoping that on the way back, our feet would be so numb, that we wouldn't feel it. And apparently so, because Roch cut the bottom of three of her toes and we all think it was from the blacktop. Waves went off three minutes apart, so we were in the water right after the group before us. The water temperature was nice. Not too warm and not too cold. We barely had time to get any warm up strokes in aside from swimming out to the start line. By that time, the lifeguards gave us a run down of the buoys (Keep them on your left at all times. Yellow ones on the way out and orange ones on the way in. The two big orange ones mark the turn around), and then the horn blew and we were off. 2/3s of the swim was in the harbor which was calm and then it took a soft left out into the ocean where the turn around was. Surprisingly I didn't start out in such a fast panic that my heartrate skyrocketed. I did get hit a kicked a few times, but was able to manage to get out of the way pretty fast. The swim start was nice and wide which made it easy. I took it relatively easy most of the way. I tried to stay relaxed and thought of reaching out with every stroke. You could tell once the course left the harbor as the waves and chop started taking over. It wasn't that bad. LA was much worse. At this point, I already started coming up to the wave ahead of me. I kept on going and it was getting hard at times trying to identify where the buoys were so I just tried following the pack. Surprisingly I wasn't in no man's land like I was for LA and Barb's Race. So I kept plugging on through the water and before I knew it, I was back in the harbor, and then I was approaching the boat ramp. Next thing you know, I'm out, wetsuit top off, and running back to transition. As I'm running through the chute I hear my friends start yelling and then I see them flanked at the side of the chute! It was really great motivation! I knew they were going to be there but I didn't see them at the start or know where they were going to be. As I finally make it into transition, I see another friend standing at the end of transition cheering! Gave her a wave and went off to find my bike. Of course, I went into the wrong row, but I was just one off. I knew my row number but for some reason, I kept going to row 40 instead of 39.
It wasn't raining when I got out of the water and I was feeling warm from the swim, so I decided to just go out in what I had planned sans rain which was just my sleeveless jersey. I hope out on my bike and I'm off. The first part of the course was pretty slow as you make your way out of the harbor and towards the base. But once you were on the base you could kick into gear. At this point I since I wasn't sure what to expect, I was going on a reserved pace, but it definitely wasn't a lazy sunday afternoon ride. I kept reminding myself to be in an optimal gear and to be efficient. So far so good. I was passing some, but trying to make sure I wasn't hammering it and wasting energy just to get around people who would eventually just pass me within a few minutes of me passing them. There was a short out and back on the first section of the course where I saw Jill and that was the only one of my friends I saw on the bike course. Somewhere between mile 20 and 30 the sun actually broke through the clouds! At that point I was thinking that things were looking better and that the sky could be clearing. For some reason I thought all the hills started at mile 40 and would be one after the other, but they actually started at mile 30. And this hill was the one with the bad descent. When I approached it, it really wasn't bad. Nothing that I hadn't done before, and definitely not as long as some of the hills I've been training on. Once I hit the descent, you saw the signs for the no passing zone and the 25mph speed limit. I was scared that I'd be holding people back because I'd have my brakes down, but I was actually in 5th or 6th a line of people. AND, the descent wasn't nearly as bad as I thought. The website said they would have this no passing zone lined with officials, but as I went down the hill, there were, at least what it looked like to me, high school kids in referee shirts, shouting reminders to people. Even as we made our way through this part of the descent, 2 riders zoomed right passed us! Didn't look like any of them made any particular attention to take their race numbers down at all. It looked like they were there just to scare people. So the next two hills, not bad at all. I just kept thinking in my head "The hills at home, are much tougher. This is cake." I guess it was a good thing that were were really concerned about the hills. We ended up psyching ourselves out. After I hit the last hill at about mile 40, I felt like I had the go ahead to try to hammer it (again, relatively speaking) the rest of the way home. Then before I knew it, it started pouring rain, not sprinkling, but rain. I had to wipe my glasses off every few minutes and my socks were soaked! After a little while the rain finally stopped. And before I knew it, I was at mile 50! AND THEN, it started raining, AGAIN, but harder. So hard that I could feel each individual drop hit my skin. At that point I was praying for it not to start hailing! Fortunately it didn't last long, but that last six miles seemed like it took forever! But I was finally back in transition, racked my bike, put on fresh DRY socks and my shoes, grabbed my hat and ran to the portapottie.
I didn't pee the whole time I was out on my bike so I decided that I'd rather pee in transition then have it be part of my run time. So when I pulled down my shorts the first thing I saw was very DISTINCT tan line on my thighs! I'm talking day and night here. The first thing I thought to myself was, please don't get skin cancer! I knew that UV rays could penetrate clouds, but not rain. Now I know. So a reminder for all the kiddies and parents, always put on sunscreen! So I hop out of the portapotty and make way on the run. My legs were actually feeling really good. I was feeling really good, no jello legs at all. The run was two laps and my initial plan was to use the first half of the first lap as my "warm up" and then try to pick up the pace for the remainder of the run. The run went along the Strand and then a block east onto a residential street. I was feeling good until my shins started tightening up. I just kept running through it and hoped that they would resolve itself, which it did by the time I made it to the turnaround. The run was great and I kept seeing and cheering on all my friends and fellow GGTC members. It was also great to see my non-racing friends yell and cheer as I made it across the Strand. I never really ended up picking up my pace at all, maybe slightly at certain points, but I was never able to keep it up. The second lap felt slower to me than the first lap and it started to feel agonizing to me. I just wanted to finish already. I just keep looking forward to seeing my friends along the way and then kept reminding myself to keep my legs moving. I finally made it to the finish line and I was really glad to have stopped!
My race time and splits
Total time - 06:31:31
Swim - 36:41
T1 - 6:56
Bike - 3:21:47
T2 - 4:34
Run - 2:21:34
My run pace was 10:49 per mile. Definitely felt slow to me. I'm definitely going to have to put in some more running time. I'm happy with my bike split and happy with my swim split. This time was almost 10 minutes faster than Barb's race. Not bad considering that I thought the Ralph's bike course was harder and I had to deal with some waves during the swim! Now I gotta figure out if I'm ready for that Ironman next year!
For the past week, I've been dreading this race, not because I was afraid I was undertrained (well maybe a little), but mostly because the weather reports all pointed to rain on race day. So as the whole week went by I was hoping and praying for the system to either bring the rain in early or to push it back, something as long as it didn't rain while I was on the bike. I had anxiety over the bike course because you're not allowed to drive the course ahead of time. The bike course takes you through Camp Pendelton, a military base, and for security reasons, they don't allow you to drive through it. I think for any other course, I would have been okay with not driving the course, but for this race I wasn't. This course has 3 "major" hills, that amount to (including the other smaller ascents) 1800' of climbing. No big deal for me here because we've climbed above and beyond that in training before (Burlingame-Old La Honda loop is about 3400'). My major concern was of the descents. There is one stretch where there is a "No Passing Zone" and a speed limit of 25 mph. Given me, my luck, and my descending skills, this was not a good thing.
We arrive in Oceanside early Friday afternoon. We checked into our hotel and then made our way over to the race to pick up our packets. There was a loooooooooooong time of people waiting. Registration started at noon and we got there about 12:30. There must have been some super early birds waiting in line ahead of time. We get our packets and numbers as well as a wristband that says "ironman" on it. The first thing I notice on our numbers is that we have two, and our names our on it. I then realize that that this is an "ironman" race, albiet half (this race used to be a full ironman, don't ask me why it was changed to half). So we head out to the expo just to check it out. Roch barely had anything to eat so we were just going to breeze through the expo, and then grab lunch and go to the outlets in Carlsbad. We were probably there for a while, ran into a bunch of people as well as m2 and his family. HIS KIDS ARE SOOO CUTE (Picture to come once I get them from my friend)! I bought a TP Massage ball set. SO EXCITED for this. It cost me $120 which is the cost of about 1-2 massages. I got the massage ball, foot baller, quad baller, baller block and the instructional DVD. We head on out of the expo finally and opted to eat at the harbor because Roch was REALLY hungry at this point. We ended up getting pizza slices of some super cheesy and also greasy pizza. Thank god for napkins!
We arrive at the outlets and the one place we all really wanted to hit up was the Pearl Izumi outlet. Yes, we are dorks. But if you knew how expensive training clothes are, you'd be all over that, too! So anyways, we just decided to go to the stores as they came. We already knew the ones we wanted to go to, Banana, Puma, Kenneth Cole and Coach. Hit up Coach and I finally got myself a wristlet. I really wanted the green suede one, but the strap was patent leather and looked plastic. So I got a white leather one with brown/red stitching. Roch got a "workout" bag from Puma. Mar got a new wallet at Kenneth Cole. And I ended up getting a cute yellow clutch, four pairs of socks and four pairs of boxes (for ben.e) at Banana. And guess what? There's no more Pearl Izumi at Carlsbad. It wasn't on their directory and I guess the website hasn't been updated and our hotel had an old brochure. I was kind of disappointed in the outlet trip. None of the stores had anything good and they didn't have Pearl Izumi. The whole time we've been in Oceanside, it's been overcast with a little Sun. But it was bright and the clouds weren't very ominous. So we were pretty optimistic about the weather. About halfway through our outlet excursion, it started raining! We all kind of looked at each other with the same expression of anxiety on our faces.
As we left the outlets, we decided to skip our tri-club dinner and just eat on our own. It was already about 5 and the tri-dinner didn't start until 6. So we called to "unrsvp" and then went to pick up Mar's husband. We ate at Joe's Crab Shack. They only offered two pasta dishes, both with alfredo, YUCK! But fortunately they were able to do it with marinara. Not the best pasta I've ever had, but I wouldn't recommend that restaurant to anyone else. the place was rather gimmicky decorated with fish nets and other nautical items, as well as a weird selection of toys, yes, TOYS, all over the place. It was really weird, I tell you. Over dinner, we call up one of our friends to get the scoop on the descents. So what did we find out? A guy died on the course which is why they implemented the no passing zone and 25 mph limit. GREAT.
We head back to the hotel drop of Mar's husband and make our way to the grocery store to pick up some last minute supplies, namely allergy medicine, garbage bags and water. Make it back to the hotel and start packing our race bags, slapping numbers on our bikes, preparing nutrition and figuring out our transition set up and our rain outfits. We got garbage bags to keep our stuff dry in case it got rained on. Roch went to sleep first and I stayed up a bit to play with my new toys! No, I didn't play fashion show. I used the quad baller to loosen up my legs more. Finally made it to bed about 9:30. But that didn't mean I knocked out immediately. I had the hardest time falling asleep and staying asleep because I kept hearing people in the hallway, chopping it up and laughing. Sounded like college kids getting ready to go out. Then later I heard people out in the parking lot. UGH. I apparently wasn't the only one who was kept awake by it. Roch said she heard it all too.
It's 4:15 and we're up and awake. Got dressed and ate. Finished packing up. Headed out to pack up the car and we're at the race about 5:40. So far, it's not raining, but the ground is wet and it's cold, not super cold, but enough to notice. We set up our transition areas, got bodymarked, stood in line for the portapotties, then proceeded to figure out where all the entrances and exits are. And they weren't clearly marked. We had to ask a volunteer. We then saw our friends from the club, chatted, and talked to m2 before he went off to start his race. At this point, the annoucers told us we had 5 minutes to get our stuff together before they close of the transition area. So we scrambled to get in our wetsuits and in the midst of it all, we forgot to put on sunscreen. I realized this after i got mine on, and then figured, if it's raining, there will be no sun anyways.
After we're in our wetsuits, we make our way to the swim start area. I don't know what was up with the black top we were walking on, but it was painful as hell. Either that or they didn't take care to sweep it before the race, but everyone was gingerly walking towards the swim start. All of us were hoping that on the way back, our feet would be so numb, that we wouldn't feel it. And apparently so, because Roch cut the bottom of three of her toes and we all think it was from the blacktop. Waves went off three minutes apart, so we were in the water right after the group before us. The water temperature was nice. Not too warm and not too cold. We barely had time to get any warm up strokes in aside from swimming out to the start line. By that time, the lifeguards gave us a run down of the buoys (Keep them on your left at all times. Yellow ones on the way out and orange ones on the way in. The two big orange ones mark the turn around), and then the horn blew and we were off. 2/3s of the swim was in the harbor which was calm and then it took a soft left out into the ocean where the turn around was. Surprisingly I didn't start out in such a fast panic that my heartrate skyrocketed. I did get hit a kicked a few times, but was able to manage to get out of the way pretty fast. The swim start was nice and wide which made it easy. I took it relatively easy most of the way. I tried to stay relaxed and thought of reaching out with every stroke. You could tell once the course left the harbor as the waves and chop started taking over. It wasn't that bad. LA was much worse. At this point, I already started coming up to the wave ahead of me. I kept on going and it was getting hard at times trying to identify where the buoys were so I just tried following the pack. Surprisingly I wasn't in no man's land like I was for LA and Barb's Race. So I kept plugging on through the water and before I knew it, I was back in the harbor, and then I was approaching the boat ramp. Next thing you know, I'm out, wetsuit top off, and running back to transition. As I'm running through the chute I hear my friends start yelling and then I see them flanked at the side of the chute! It was really great motivation! I knew they were going to be there but I didn't see them at the start or know where they were going to be. As I finally make it into transition, I see another friend standing at the end of transition cheering! Gave her a wave and went off to find my bike. Of course, I went into the wrong row, but I was just one off. I knew my row number but for some reason, I kept going to row 40 instead of 39.
It wasn't raining when I got out of the water and I was feeling warm from the swim, so I decided to just go out in what I had planned sans rain which was just my sleeveless jersey. I hope out on my bike and I'm off. The first part of the course was pretty slow as you make your way out of the harbor and towards the base. But once you were on the base you could kick into gear. At this point I since I wasn't sure what to expect, I was going on a reserved pace, but it definitely wasn't a lazy sunday afternoon ride. I kept reminding myself to be in an optimal gear and to be efficient. So far so good. I was passing some, but trying to make sure I wasn't hammering it and wasting energy just to get around people who would eventually just pass me within a few minutes of me passing them. There was a short out and back on the first section of the course where I saw Jill and that was the only one of my friends I saw on the bike course. Somewhere between mile 20 and 30 the sun actually broke through the clouds! At that point I was thinking that things were looking better and that the sky could be clearing. For some reason I thought all the hills started at mile 40 and would be one after the other, but they actually started at mile 30. And this hill was the one with the bad descent. When I approached it, it really wasn't bad. Nothing that I hadn't done before, and definitely not as long as some of the hills I've been training on. Once I hit the descent, you saw the signs for the no passing zone and the 25mph speed limit. I was scared that I'd be holding people back because I'd have my brakes down, but I was actually in 5th or 6th a line of people. AND, the descent wasn't nearly as bad as I thought. The website said they would have this no passing zone lined with officials, but as I went down the hill, there were, at least what it looked like to me, high school kids in referee shirts, shouting reminders to people. Even as we made our way through this part of the descent, 2 riders zoomed right passed us! Didn't look like any of them made any particular attention to take their race numbers down at all. It looked like they were there just to scare people. So the next two hills, not bad at all. I just kept thinking in my head "The hills at home, are much tougher. This is cake." I guess it was a good thing that were were really concerned about the hills. We ended up psyching ourselves out. After I hit the last hill at about mile 40, I felt like I had the go ahead to try to hammer it (again, relatively speaking) the rest of the way home. Then before I knew it, it started pouring rain, not sprinkling, but rain. I had to wipe my glasses off every few minutes and my socks were soaked! After a little while the rain finally stopped. And before I knew it, I was at mile 50! AND THEN, it started raining, AGAIN, but harder. So hard that I could feel each individual drop hit my skin. At that point I was praying for it not to start hailing! Fortunately it didn't last long, but that last six miles seemed like it took forever! But I was finally back in transition, racked my bike, put on fresh DRY socks and my shoes, grabbed my hat and ran to the portapottie.
I didn't pee the whole time I was out on my bike so I decided that I'd rather pee in transition then have it be part of my run time. So when I pulled down my shorts the first thing I saw was very DISTINCT tan line on my thighs! I'm talking day and night here. The first thing I thought to myself was, please don't get skin cancer! I knew that UV rays could penetrate clouds, but not rain. Now I know. So a reminder for all the kiddies and parents, always put on sunscreen! So I hop out of the portapotty and make way on the run. My legs were actually feeling really good. I was feeling really good, no jello legs at all. The run was two laps and my initial plan was to use the first half of the first lap as my "warm up" and then try to pick up the pace for the remainder of the run. The run went along the Strand and then a block east onto a residential street. I was feeling good until my shins started tightening up. I just kept running through it and hoped that they would resolve itself, which it did by the time I made it to the turnaround. The run was great and I kept seeing and cheering on all my friends and fellow GGTC members. It was also great to see my non-racing friends yell and cheer as I made it across the Strand. I never really ended up picking up my pace at all, maybe slightly at certain points, but I was never able to keep it up. The second lap felt slower to me than the first lap and it started to feel agonizing to me. I just wanted to finish already. I just keep looking forward to seeing my friends along the way and then kept reminding myself to keep my legs moving. I finally made it to the finish line and I was really glad to have stopped!
My race time and splits
Total time - 06:31:31
Swim - 36:41
T1 - 6:56
Bike - 3:21:47
T2 - 4:34
Run - 2:21:34
My run pace was 10:49 per mile. Definitely felt slow to me. I'm definitely going to have to put in some more running time. I'm happy with my bike split and happy with my swim split. This time was almost 10 minutes faster than Barb's race. Not bad considering that I thought the Ralph's bike course was harder and I had to deal with some waves during the swim! Now I gotta figure out if I'm ready for that Ironman next year!