I competed in the High Cliff half ironman about a month ago, but just haven’t had enough time to sit down and right up a decent report. This one will be short so I have time to right up something about Door County while it’s still fresh in my mind.
The swim was short and choppy. This was the roughest open water swim that I have done to date, but was still disapointed in how short the swim was. My Garmin recorded it as being around 1500m, so not even 1 mile. Naturally all of the swim times were fast because of this, with my time being 24:41, which is pretty close to what I did the week before at Capital View. I think I had to work harder, but at least I know I can handle something other then calm water.
The bike was fairly uneventful, and it to was also a bit short (but I’m not going to fault anyone for 55.5 miles instead of 56.0). I started out a bit hot, and my heart rate was elevated from the swim I think. I went back and forth with a couple of riders, but decided to take it easy between miles 10 and 25. Around mile 25 I had enough of the back and forth and just decided to pass a couple of riders for good and stuck with that pace for the rest of the ride. The hill you have to climb coming out of the park at the start is much harder on the run then the bike in my opinion. My legs started to feel tired around mile 48 when we turned into the wind one last time, but it’s not like I was completely spent, just that for the first time my legs actually felt like they had to work. This indicates to me that I did a pretty good job pacing.
The run started out with a stop at a port-o-potty because I had to pee. It was a pretty warm day so this was a decent sign that I took in enough fluids on the bike. I had some stomach issues, which turned out to be gas, which passed (or rather I passed it) around mile 3 on the run, which made things much more enjoyable. After running up the hill out of transition, we were directed onto a series of trails thru the park. Most of the run was on trails, and a good portion was in the shade which was nice. I took it easy the first time around, and then started to pick up the pace on the second time around, knowing I got to run down that big hill at the end. I pulled away from a guy in the wave that started after me around mile 9 I think, and thought it would be cool if I could make up how ever many minutes I was down to him. I almost pulled it off, but was short by maybe 20 seconds. I was also trying to finish in front of this girl with a bib number that indicated she started several waves after me. It was a good goal that I accomplished, and it turns out she was part of a relay team anyway.
Overall it was a fun race and I enjoyed myself. With the race being on Saturday, it gave me Sunday to rest and recover.
Swim: 24:41
T1: 2:03
Bike: 2:30:46
T2: 1:36
Run: 1:34:44
Total: 4:33:52
Men: 26 out of 335 (1 woman finished ahead of me, so 27 out of 336)
M30-34: 5 out of 43