1st Half Ironman - Part 2 - The Bike

1st Half Ironman - Part 2 - The Bike

I was in and out of transition 1 pretty quickly, 3ish minutes, which I was really pleased with (I saw a tip to put body glide on your legs before putting the wet suit on to help get it off quickly and oh boy did it work!).

Going onto the bike I knew I probably had to push harder that I should for a few different reasons:

1. On my last long run, a couple of weeks out from the event, I felt a tweak in my hip on about mile 3, but ran the 11.5 anyway. The next morning I couldn't put any weight on my left leg, and by put any weight on it I mean I couldn't put weight on it to go up and downstairs. Whilst it was feeling ok, I knew there was a risk that it could derail things later on.

2. It was a hilly course, I'm talking nearly 1100m of elevation over the 56 miles. The good news, I'm not bad at hills (going up them anyway) and I wanted to take advantage of that face.

So it starts out pretty well, I'm ahead on pace, trying to bank some time before the hills start and over taking some people, but then also being over taken by the guys at the front of the race who were on lap 2 and flying!

Here comes the hills… it's lap one so people are pretty bunched up and whilst I wouldn't say I went for it… I also wasn't taking it easy. I felt strong. A few people overtook me on the downhill section (I have never been the best at descending but I was making the time back up on the up hill).

There was only one problem, I was struggling to fuel and get the gels in going at the intensity I was going, whilst I had trained at getting food in I hadn't done it at race intensity which was a big mistake and definitely impacted the later part of the race. Despite this though I was through half way on track for sub 3 hours on the bike which was the top end of what I was hoping for. The second half was still ok, I felt like a slowed a bit and then my hip flexor started to tighten about half way through that lap as well… probably my biggest fear but it wasn't bad enough to worry about. The wind had picked up slightly so I didn't feel like I was getting the same downhill momentum I had been previously but that is what it is and everyone was dealing with it. The interesting thing Vs other bike events is that you can't (well shouldn't) draft. On lap 2 it felt a lot like more of a solo ride than anything else, which is where training along probably helped.

All in all I felt pretty strong and in terms of time this was probably the second happiest time out of the three of the day (swim being number one). I was worried about the fuelling for sure but I felt good and heading into T2 the day, so far, was a success… things were about to get a whole of a lot harder though…!!!