I went to Panama City Beach and came back with a hickey!

Okay so the title of this post may be slightly misleading....it really should say Gulf Coast Race Report 2009. But I really did go to PCB and come back with a hickey so I guess it's not totally false! Here is the low-down of the race!

I felt good going into Gulf Coast. I knew that pending nothing horrible happening I would have a good race, and I would PR. This was my second time racing the half-Ironman distance. So far it's my favorite distance to race. Friday the swim wasn't as bad as everyone else seemed to think. Master's swimming all year has paid off and I felt good. I swam without a wetsuit because the water was really warm and I was pretty confident that it would be not be wetsuit legal.

So here is how my race went!

The Swim: This was the part of the race that had me the most excited. I had an AWFUL swim last year and was sure that this year I would be in the 36-37 minute range. Right away my goggles filled up with water. I tried to adjust them but it wasn't really working. Out of no where, my goggles came off and floated away into the ocean!! What the heck? I looked for them but they were obviously gone forever. Suck. Suck. Suck. At that exact moment I saw Tat and yelled for her. I don't know what I was going to say, but she was stopped and so was I, so it seemed resonable to call her name. She didn't hear me and swam off. I figured that I would swim with my eyes closed. Unfortunately my eyes were burning from the several brief
seconds when my goggles came off and my eyes were under water. I was totally unprepared for this and had no idea what to do. I swam with my eyes closed and got totally off course several times. I swam breast stroke and hardly got anywhere. So I decided to swim tarzan style! I made it out of the water with a nice hickey on my neck from my wetsuit, and eyes that were more red and puffy than Cheech and Chong! Despite my goggle malfunction I still swam faster than last year! My goal time was 37minutes, and I was 4 minutes and some change off that! Oh well! Next year!

The Bike: I had a game plan for the bike this year: HOLD BACK! Ride it at Ironman heartrate zone. Feel awesome the whole time. Do not push it. Repeat: DO NOT push it! I am SO happy that everything went according to plan! I was using a disc race wheel which was my only regret on the bike. It was windy and I felt uncomfortable, like I was being blown all over the place. There was no way to know that it was going to be that windy, because the Friday before the race it was not really windy at all. That is just a risk that you take when you use a disc! The bike course seemed a lot more deserted than it did last year. I remember huge packs of guys coming whizzing by me. This year I only got passed by about 5 or 6 guys. Only one chick passed me, Shelley Ruiz, and we played the ultimate game of cat and mouse passing each other almost 20 times! She is a bike coach with the Atlanta Tri Club (so am I) so that was fun! I was trying really hard to stick to my game plan and not push myself when she would pass me. I ended up with a 2:37 bike split, 21.4 avg mph, faster than last year!

The Run: Remember my awesome game plan of not pushing it on the bike? Well apparently I didn't push it enough because my legs felt really good when I got off. Too good because my first mile came in at a 7:20 something pace. Ouch. I tried hard to real myself in but it took another mile at a ridiculously fast pace before my body adjusted to what my mind was thinking. I slowed down. Then I slowed down some more. I honestly felt great until the most God-awful blisters I have ever had in my entire life started cropping up around mile 7-8. I am a total weirdo about not having my feet wet. I cannot stand it. So I wore a glove and filled it with ice instead of dumping water on my head. It worked really well. I peed in the port-o-potty in transition so that wasn't an issue. I guess that at some point you just start sweating a lot when it's hot as a motha! The best part about the run was that nothing really hurt that much. My hips felt great, my knees didn't hurt, no back issues, not one single cramp (although I thought I felt a calf cramp coming on). The only thing that was not good was my nutrition. My plan was to eat two gels on the run. Maybe three. I usually only take 2 gels for a 10-13 mile run with just water. Well this year there were no gels on the course, only Clif Bloks. Those things TEAR me up! I ate three and was like NO WAY! So I went without, I felt a little bonky around mile 10 so I stopped and had two orange slices and some flat cola. This was my first attempt at a long run with no gels and I didn't like it. Lesson learned: don't trust the pre-race booklet about nutrition. ALWAYS pack your own! My run time was 2:06:55 an 11-minute improvement over last year!

My overall finishing time was 5:33:24 which was much better (14 minutes!) than last years 5:47. I placed sixth in my age group and got an award! I was the 32nd overall female out of 296 finishers and I was the 209th overall finisher out of 999 finishers. I am happy with my results for the first time in a long time! It felt great to have a good race, podium, have the amazing support of my friends and family, and be able to race with such an awesome group of local tri geeks! I was off my goal time, but considering what I was dealing with, I was totally whole with my race and my results. I didn't let the swim mess me up, and I stuck to my race strategy. I learned a lot during this race and I am looking for another half distance race to do because this was so much fun!

Congrats to EVERYONE who showed up, completed, placed, and supported down in Florida. You guys are awesome and it was really appreciated. Pics are up on Facebook!