Pineman HIM

I did the Deer Creek Pineman, now the Toyota Challenge and it was an unusual day.

This is what I wrote to a friend of mine. Instead of me writing a whole new race report I'm going to be lazy and copy/paste from my sent yahoo sent folder.

This is what I wrote to someone else about the race:

It was partly cloudy, warm near 70 and very windy.

The swim was BRUTAL!!!
20mph wind whipped up about an 8 inch chop that was really difficult to
swim into. Every once in a while we would get a set of 5 or so waves that were about 1 foot. In order to swim into the waves I had to change my rhythm so I would be breathing on the top of the waves. I wound up taking longer strokes to get the timing right. Every once in a while I would get out of sync of the waves and have to get a breath and start over. I seriously considered quitting after 1 minute of swimming into the waves, not from panicing, just didn't want to deal with the rough water.

Once I got the rhythm down it was better. On the second lap the waves were steeper but I already knew how to get through them. Body surfing with the waves was fun and was much faster. HR for the swim was 158, that's the highest I've ever been for the swim portion of any race.

The bike was a killer too. 16 mph into the wind and 28 mph with it. Luckily I'm small and don't punch a big hole through the air. The course was so much better than last year, I liked it a lot, the wind made it very difficult. I paced it well with the first lap about 56 minute the second and third near 53.5 minutes. HR for the laps were 156,149,148.

The run didn't go so well, I have yet to put together a good HIM run. I don't really know why but my stomach was very upset on the run and made it difficult. Could be the drink I was using, could be the lake water I swallowed, could have been a little sick. My stomach still doesn't feel well and I'm thinking it was the drink on the bike. Oh well, I averaged 9:30's on the run so it wasn't a total disaster.

All in all I wish I would have skipped the race, it was a nice weekend away but it's been a long season for me and this was just a little too much at the end.