YO! I was a little nervous as I started my taper into IMW. The half-IMs I had done in july (muncie) and august (buckeye) didn't go real well and it had been nearly two years since my last go at the distance. But a few good workouts 2 weeks out from the race and a good sprint race the weekend before and I was back to feeling OK and ready to get it on.

The cagnina clan arrived in madison wednesday night after spending the day in chicago visiting friends and doing a little work. I've always thought of these races as kind of like a big reunion and this one was no different. We were sharing a suite with the sundy clan, my buddy juergens from cleveland was next door to us, and banger was in the same hotel. With mc hammers, indy, professor, arch, mojo and alley cat further representing the bowls, rapinz and timmy coming in from boulder, kho, denish and frank “stealth boy” pattison also representing cleveland, polakowski and spees from the dayton-area, fellow tri-techer degroot, fellow triple-threaters dj and lisa james (among others I haven't met), hfp dudes combs and schwartz and chicago boys like bill owens and jay cabou, there would be no lack of high-fives and thumbs-up out on the course. (if I've forgotten anyone here, my apologies)

The little workouts the days right before the race all went fine. I was a little nervous about the technical aspects of the course after driving it with juergens and indy, but what can you do other than be careful on race day. All in all, the lead-up to the race was fine, so lets get on to the meat and taters. Race morning and I got up at 3:45, earlier than I've ever been up before a race. I had my coke, coffee crunch (always will be kona crunch to me) pr bar, pancakes with cherry pie filling & whipped cream and gatorade breakfast and then rolled (literallly) down to the lobby to meet juergens and banger to ride over to the start. We walk outside and after 4 days of pretty nice weather outside of a little rain, and of course the flags are standing straight out. Extremely windy for this early in the morning, I thought man, this isn't a great start to the day. We drop off our special needs bags in front of the capitol building and make our to the transition area (which was the top-level of a parking garage) to do transition area-type tasks. I end up making my way down to the start of the swim with rapinz and lose him in the melee of people getting in the water and organizing themselves. I seed myself towards the middle of the line-up in about the first-and-a-half row and start treading water.

As always, the starts with a BOOM!! I felt as though I'd been swimming pretty well leading up to the race and was hoping to come in right around an hour, however, about 2 seconds after the start I knew I was up a few rows too far and was going to be in for a full contact swim for the next 15 minutes or so. My goggles got knocked askew with a few minutes and were leaking pretty bad, so I figured I would keep swimming up past the first turn a little bit, get out of the way and empty them out and get them sealed again. Well, that ended up being a very long 15 minutes, I would actually say the least enjoyable 15 minutes I've ever spent in water (including the time these toothless cannibals had me in a big pot and tried to boil me into soup). I tried stopping to fix my goggles several more times without much success. Wearing contacts, I ended up doing the whole swim with one shut, awkwardly straining to sight the whole time, so I knew I wouldn't swim fast. I finally got out of the water in 1:05, happy to be alive and back on land with my contacts still in.

A decent transition after running up a few levels on the parking ramp helix and I was pretty quickly spiraling back down the helix. I was nervous about pushing the bike too hard since I'd had some problems on the run at both muncie and buckeye, so I started out a little conservative. I was still passing people fairly regularly, but I was riding a little more controlled than in years past when I would take off out of T1 with reckless abandon (maybe I'm growing up, though I'm not sure getting wiser is beneficial to racing ironmans). The bike course was fairly rolling the whole way, similar to the type of terrain I train on to the east of columbus. The technical aspects ended up being pretty much a non-issue as it was as bad as it seemed during the drive. Only one section was real tricky and they had very well marked “slow” on the road and had lots of volunteers imploring everybody to slow down. The wind had died down a little bit too, but was still strong enough to be an annoyance at times. There weren't a lot of parts of the course where you could ride quickly for very long without a lot of effort, and the wind took some of those sections away from you, so you were truly working hard almost the whole ride to maintain a decent pace. The crowds were incredible, at least as cool as what has been reported. It was rare that you would go more than a few miles before you would come up on crowd of at least 20-30 people (including one maniacal coach bart, who was a sight for sore eyes at that point of the ride) on up to the 1,000 or more that were verona. The second lap actually seemed to go a little quicker (in reality it sure didn't) since you were starting to get a familiar with the course, but the 16-17 mile ride back into town seemed like an eternity. Sundy made the comment that he didn't see one person in the top hundred or so smiling on the way back in. I had pushed hard for the ride, but never went absolute all out, so I was definitely tired come back in, but not trashed. A quick spin up the helix again, which wasn't nearly as bad as I'd thought it would be, and I was once again transitioning.

This transition was a little slow since it included a doody stop (much nicer in a stink sauna than in some bushes a few minutes later). I finally made my way out of transition and felt very comfortable starting the run. I didn't feel like I was pushing real hard, but was passing a lot of people and ended up at 1:35 for the front half. I dug into my special needs bag at the turnaround and got out a bottle of red bull laced with a little hammer gel and chugged it down. I'd done the same thing coming out of T2 and it went fine, but this time around my stomach was starting to feel a little bad quickly after getting it down. I lasted through about mile 14 before I lost it and blew chunks all over. I mean I really emptied out my stomach and I couldn't help but notice that I was puking up vegetables from my dinner nearly 24 hours earlier. I remember thinking how bizarre this was that they hadn't digested. I actually felt better for a little while, but from there on I couldn't really keep anything down. I would try to take a little coke and water at each aid station, but as soon as it started to build up in my stomach, it would come back up. Probably the funniest part of the day is me bending over at the waist at about mile 20, puking away and indy strolling by commenting “nice one!!”. Of course, this was before he even knew it was me. After I got done, we laughed for a second and then moseyed along. After I made it out of the hilly section of the run, I was able to at least keep running, albeit slowly, but at lest moving consistently. I finally couldn't take it any longer and ran pretty much as hard as I could for the last 1 1/2 miles, passing wingnut in the process (I passed her earlier, but she re-passed me during a puke stop).

A long break in the medical tent with a few IVs and a massage and I was back with lisa, benny and the sundy's actually feeling pretty good. Splits on the day ended up being 1:05/:06/5:28/:07/3:33 or right around there. While I missed qualifying for kona by about 7 minutes, I was still happy with my race. All in all, the race was very cool. I still like the scenic beauty of lake placid better from a course point of view, but this whole package was pretty awesome. Next year I'll be doing some of the independent IMs, but I'm sure I'll be back to seek my revenge on IMW before too long.

<<Back to Race Reports Home