Spudman 2009 Race Report

Friday morning (after my dad picked up my kids) I rushed to the finish line of the marathon with my friend's kids to watch her and her husband come in. When I got there, they were already sitting there stretching. They did an awesome job, even in the heat!

That afternoon, Pete and I packed up and headed to Burley, Idaho. It's about 3 1/2 hours north of here. I was only expecting only 2 hours for some reason so we got there later than we had hoped. We needed to get there early because, in putting our names in the lottery, I accidentally signed us up as a relay team, and we needed to change that. Luckily we were able to get everything figured out, so both of us could race! It would have been sad if we had to do the relay, we were fighting over who would get to do the swim. :)

The course is right on a golf course, and they just have everyone park on the driving range where a lot of people end up staying all night. Some people set up tents or had camping trailers, but some people just made themselves beds on the ground or in their cars - that's what we did. We brought the memory foam padding off our bed, then folded all the back seats in the Jeep down to make nice little bed. Pete had to run to the store before bed, though, for mosquito repellant since it was too hot to leave the windows up, and being right on the river meant a lot of mosquitos. 

It was really cool to wake up and already be at the race! The only problem was that we still needed to drop our water bottles and bike stuff off at T1 which was down-stream about a mile. Well, we thought this would be no big deal, but it ended up taking us forever to get back because that's what everyone was doing. It would have been better to walk. We got back to the start, just before Pete's wave was about to start, and we still hadn't put our run gear in T2. I told him to go ahead, and that I would just put his stuff in transition for him, and he made it to the water right as the gun went off.

I headed over to T2 to set up our stuff, and it turned out that the spots weren't numbered or anything so I just had to pick somewhere and hope Pete would be able to find it. All the good spots were taken of course, so after a lot of deliberation, I put it in the closest/best place I thought he'd look. I tried to make it as visible as possible, but there wasn't much I could do.

My wave didn't start until, I think, 35 minutes after Pete's so I had plenty of time to get my wetsuit on, then get in the water and swim against the current to warm up. 

This is  a big river (at least according to my standards. We don't have rivers like this in Utah), and it doesn't look like it has much of a current, but as soon as you get in, you're moving. I was excited to see how fast I could do it! The only problem was that they didn't have any buoys so there wasn't anything to site off of, and there was also no way of knowing how far you've gone or where you were going to get out. I pretty much just watched the people in front of me.

When I got out of the water, I looked at my watch and it said 18 something! Wow, that's almost 15 minutes off my last olympic distance time in a lake! I decided to shoot for a total time of 2:45 since that would be 15 minutes off my total time at BAM.

I got on the bike, and really pushed it. I was shooting for an average time of 20 mph so I was watching my speed a lot. I had my heart-rate monitor on, but I just didn't worry about the fact that it was between 165 and 170 the whole time. I wasn't able to get going faster than 23mph, but I never went slower than 17 either. It's a really fast, flat course!

There was a big group of women that I passed pretty quick, but then they passed me right back up. This went on the whole time. I would pass them, then they would all show back up, but then they'd get in front of me and slow down. Some of them were very obviously drafting (which is not allowed) and that made me mad, and even more determined to get away from them. At one point, as I broke away from them again, I said, "Come on, this isn't the Tour de France!" Later, someone who passed me said, "1427, you're not allowed to draft!" I was happy someone voiced the same thoughts I was having.

I kept telling myself that I was hard core, I was an Ironman, I could beat these girls! It was hard work, and I'm actually glad they were there because I probably pushed myself more than normal because of them. They stayed pretty close to me the whole time, but I finished the bike before all but 2 or 3 of them.

Of course, all of them, and many more, passed me on the run. 

The run was nice and flat, but I was tired from pushing it so hard on the bike, and it was really hot by now. It was nice that a lot of people were out with their hoses the spray us, and I would dump the water from the aid stations on my head. I don't think I've ever done that before, but boy did it feel good! I was able to keep a nice steady 10-minute mile pace for the whole 10k, and I was happy with that, and happy my knee didn't hurt at all. I did feel really slow with so many people passing me, though.

Pete was there waiting for me when I crossed the finish line. I was so happy that I forgot to look at my watch for a minute, but when I looked it said 2:43!

It was a great race, and I went and jumped in the river while Pete waited in the long line for fruit. It felt so good! After we ate and stretched, Pete and I both jumped in and played around like a couple of kids. Having that river to jump in afterwards is one of my favorite things about this race. There are a lot of things I like, though.

Here are my times:

Total time 2:42:14

Behind leader 27:27

Swim 18:16

T1 time 3:50

Bike 1:13:19

T2 time 3:58

Run 01:02:49

I was 23 out of 77 in my age group, but only 12 people beat my time on the bike, and only 12 on the swim! Having 29 people beat me on the run split clearly indicates where I have some work to do.

Pete ended up looking around for his running stuff for about 10 minutes so we learned our lesson there, not that there was much we could do at the time. Here are his times:

Total time   2:55:48

Behind leader 54:13.700

Swim 18:50

T1 3:31

Bike 1:16:31

T2 (ouch) 12:24

Run 1:04:31

Pete says that when I get to where I can average 22 mph on the bike, he'll buy me a P2! :) I don't know if I'd dare ride such an expensive bike, though.