I am Ironman

I raced an Ironman today and completed the distance. Without any permanent damage I believe.

At 16:03 Im a pretty slow Ironman. Really I made a lot of newbie mistake.. damn I could have don e it much faster.

• First off I switched flavors on my sports drink. No big deal yo might think, but I think this new flavor upset my stomach and I didn't figure it out until halfway through the ride. This caused me to under eat making me slower.
• On the run I didn't clean my water bottle, so it had something else in it with my sports drink. I just dmped it out and figured there would be little residue.. stupid me I think this also bother my stomach
• Worst of all I overdrank. Too much water. I stopped at every bathroom on the bike course. By the time I got to the run I was rushing to the bathrooms because I couldn't hold it back. I drank my usual amount.. why was it too much? This killed my run. I tried just sipping and realy reducing what I drank.. no real help. The only thing that worked was that I finally stopped drinking altogether.

More on the Alcatraz swim

Here is a map of my swim from Alcatraz: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http:%2F%2Fbbs.keyhole.com%2Fubb%2Fdownload.php%3FNumber%3D1184825&t=k&om=1&ie=UTF8&z=14

I have to say the swim was a lot of fun. It's a real privilege to be able to do something like this. You jump off the boat in a rush, trying not to jump on top of someone and then try to get away from the boat as quickly as possible. It is a bit crowded and hectic at the start with people swimming over you. After a while you relax and it's just you and the currents and the cold water.

People swim at crazy angles, if you look at my gps track closely you can see that it wiggles a lot. I tried to keep the Sutro TV towers at 1 O'Clock or so as I neared shore. This worked OK, but often I would sigh take a few strokes and then look up to see the towers at 11 O'Clock. The waves and current tended to turn me around some. Sometimes another swimmer comes next to you and rather than swimming over them you have to speed up/slow down/change angles.

At Some point I realized I was moving to the right edge of the swim course so I started swimming directly toward the towers. This landed me in a perfect position on the beach.

The GPS did not get as many data points as it could have. It kept on flipping underneath me as I swam. I stopped a couple times to put it on my back but it eventually went back under me so what can you do?

I did this swim with a wetsuit. Next time I think I'll try without one.

My brother interviewed on NPR

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90889674

2 weeks till ironman

well I'm only 2 weeks away now. I haven't held together well... During training I injured my shoulder/neck, my low back, my toe, and now my latest dehabilition: bum knees.

Clearly the bum knees are related to my new bike.. At first I had a little bit of pain when riding, then I had a lot of pain and my ride distances started coming down. Right now it's a challenge to do an easy spin for an hour.

So even though I planned on doing Escape from Alcatraz this weekend I will only do the swim so that my knees have time to rest. I've been told by people in the know that I will still be able to do the IM, but I need to take things easy.

Oh well the swim for alcatraz should be fun.