The Three Coconuts

We got home on Sunday from a great weekend with Alan and Family at IM Florida in PCB, 48 hours later we were packing back up to leave out for Clearwater. This time yours truly was racing. We decided to cancel Tuesday night's reservation and leave out early on Wednesday morning because everyone was exhausted after 2 days of working late, school, training, repacking, and Biggest Loser comes on Tuesday night. Plus it works out pretty good that way because I function better in the morning and "the Diesel" and "the Genius" can sleep while I drive.

We got to Clearwater about mid morning, made a quick stop at Einstein Bros. Bagels for Bfast, and went on to the Hilton where they were extremely nice and let us check in early. It is always funny to watch the bellman's reaction to ALL the gear we unload on to the cart. Such things as luggage, computer, wetsuits, bike gear bags, lots of grocery bags(we have graduated from plastic Piggly Wiggly bags to the "green friendy" woven bags, a little higher class), cooler, bike, and the all important........drum roll please.....................rice cooker. I discovered that I could cook oatmeal in the room with a rice cooker. It does a very good job and is very fast. You just have to us a little more water or milk than you normally would. This is important because at 4 am on race morning I will be eating oatmeal with raisins and banana. Anyway the bellman got us to our room, I gave him a donation towards his hernia surgery, and we were settled in.

Athlete check in and the expo opened on Wednesday so we walked over and got my race packet and did a little shopping. The weather was horrible. A tropical storm had blown up thru the Gulf and a continuation of high winds, cool temps, rough surf, and rain showers were still with us and would be all the way thru Friday. This did not however deter the athletes from getting out and doing their workouts. It would however be interesting to see what is going to happen with the swim for Saturday morning. After all this a World Championship, so rough water or not, will it happen?

Thursday was pretty low key. I went to The Long Center for my swim workout, what a beautiful facility. We hit some of our favorite eating establishments in the area and the girls went shopping for Tyler's Christmas formal dress. Julie logged some run miles as she is already starting to build some base for next year...WHAT??!! I'm not done with this year yet! She and Tyler did spend a great deal of time in the Hot Tub. Hmmm....I think this had more to do with the buff men in lycra than the warm water. I just tried to stay off my feet as much as possible and nap when I could. I also spent alot of time planning and visualizing my race day.

That night we drove down to the athletes meeting to hear all the stuff we here at all the other races. When leaving the meeting, 3 athletes asked for a ride back to their hotel located just before getting to the Hilton. Turns out they were from Italy, spoke little English, and the one doing all the talking was a pro named Daniel Fontana.....2 days later he was Reserve World Champion.

Friday morning, I got up early and went out for a run and then we had invitations to a "Coffee with Crowie" sponsored by Newton Running. Crowie is Craig Alexander, 2X IM World Champion, and a former IM World Champion 70.3. It was a very nice informal gathering in one of the meeting rooms at the Hilton. Crowie talked for a bit, answered some questions, and then stuck around for some autographs and pictures. What a super guy. Afterwards, I slipped out for a 30 min. bike to loosen the legs and double check my bike's racing condition, then to the Long Center for an EZ swim.

I got back to the Hilton and we ran into another former IM World Champion (of the KONA, HAWAII variety) Greg Welch in the hallway of the hotel and he told us they had just made the decision to move the swim into the harbor....I was disappointed.....rough water swim in the Gulf would definitely be an advantage for the strong swimmers. He filled me in on all the logistics and said it would be a Time Trial start however each AG would start at their original starting time....another super nice guy. I confirmed this with another member of the IM staff when I checked my bike and gearbags in about 2:00. I also confirmed that it was ok to have my shoes clipped to my bike and set my bike up the next morning with helmet, glasses, etc. So that left me with an empty bike bag for my wetsuit, cap, and goggles, and my run gearbag.....good to go....just what I wanted. We did our usually prerace Carrabbas meal about 4:30 and slept good Friday night. I got up at 4 am, busted out the rice cooker, fixed enought oatmeal for me and Alan, who after traveling half the night showed up at the room at 4:30. I did all my normal prerace morning stuff and went down to transition about 5:30. I got everything set up and went back to the room to relax before heading down to the swim start. My start time was at 7:55 so I left the hotel about 7 for the 15 min. walk down. They had already blocked the street off because the pros had begun exiting the water, so me and one other guy had to jump the fence with an official's approval to get through. I got to the swim start, finished putting on my wetsuit and another official started yelling for me to get in the corral because they were running 25 minutes ahead of schedule and my wave was fixing to start. I excused myself thru the last wave of guys already gathering and had to settle for being one of the last to enter the water in my wave....not what I wanted.

The swim was crowded and just average. 1 second send offs is BS and accomplished nothing other than to have everyone piled up on one another. I was able to bridge myself back to the front of the guys in my wave but when we got to the exit there was a huge bottleneck of people just treading water waiting to walk up the narrow dock. The officials could only allow 1 out at a time due to how narrow it was and very slick, so 30-45 seconds were wasted here just waiting to exit. I blew thru T1 and was anxious to see how I would feel on the bike. My heart rate was already in zone 4-5 and so I knew it would be well after the bridge before I might have a chance to recover. The 1st 10 miles were surprisingly quiet. I was averaging about 220 watts with what seemed like not much effort. A couple guys blew past but no big groups. Then suddenly a group with about 40 came by...2-3 wide and at least 100 yards long. I just stayed to the right till they all went past and then stayed my 7 meters behind. For 2 miles everything was fine till we hit an aid station and then there was a big crash in the middle of that pack. It broke everyone up for a while. I carried all my fluids with me so I was able to steer clear of all aid stations. After this debacle, I found myself with a couple guys that were riding clean and at my pace. Just after the turn around they both began to fall off the pace and I checked out. The next 20 miles, there were a couple more big packs and as before I just surfed behind until the intensity got too high then I just let them go, but for the most part it was a solo effort all the way back to T2 and I was more than ready to get off the bike. I was concerned because I felt my intensity was even higher than the race in Austin so I knew the run was going to hurt.

Total 4:29:32 26th out of 118 finished......138 started in my AG

A few things I observed while here at the World Championships 70.3.........

#1 Everyone here is fit and FAST, alot of amazing athletes...I thought at times I was not worthy.

#2 Most of the Pros are very nice, most of the AGers are not....the pros do this for a living, we do this for fun....be friendly or go find something that makes you happy.

#3 This is one race that the convienence of the Hilton was worth the price of the room....50 yards from the expo and 100 from transition.

#4 Ironman puts on a 1st class event...you are treated like a world class athlete.

#5 IM World Championships and a weak US dollar draws a HUGE international crowd....I would venture to say that 30-40% of the entries were foriegn.

Post race was about family time. First Julie, Tyler, and Gram hit the hot tub. That night we had a great supper at the Island Way Grill and then back to the hotel where Julie, Tyler, Gram, and Pop set up a card game in the lobby. Alan, Gloria(a family friend who has been a cheerleader at more than one our races) and I went back to our rooms and veged. As I sat there in bed I thought about the season and how nice it will be to take some time off.......just let my body heal up and eat some things I normally deprive myself of all year. It always sounds good but when it comes right down to it, I will get to thinking about next year, our schedule, the races and goals, the training, and what it is going to take to get faster.............................. I have a feeling it is going to be a very short off season. I can't wait.

Aloha!

The 3 Coconuts

Oh.....and about my goals for the race. I told the family that I wanted to go faster than I did in Augusta(4:39). This would be tough because of the faster than normal(5-6 min), down current swim at Augusta. If I had a phenom day on the bike I could possibly go under 4:30. If I could pull this off I would potentially be Top 50. Needless to say I had a good day.