NOLA 58.4

(though I didn't finish the race, I am going to still produce a race report. I am going to attempt to write it from the perspective of a race report as if I did finish. I will then come back in later blogs and fill in more about what happen).

I headed out of Atlanta Thursday night for Birmingham to stay with my parents before heading down to New Orleans. Friday morning, my mother and I began making the six hour journey through rural Mississippi down I-59. We stayed at a Bed and Breakfast on the northwest side of the French Quarter.

That evening I went to pick up Jess and attend a mandatory athletes meeting. This was the most absurd thing I have ever had to do in this sport. They would not let you pick up your race packet unless you attended one of these meetings. To make matters worse, they didn't discuss anything substantial. In fact, they gave out bad information such as saying NO garmins were allowed on the run. WTF? (reports later said he correct himself. Oops for the 300 athletes in one meeting). So packet pickup took nearly 2 hours and left me in a cranky mood. We I got back to the hotel I went for a small run to shake out the legs. That night we found an Italian restaurant where I had some fettuccine pesto with shrimp.

I managed to get a really good nights sleep and meandered around the B&B for a while. I went to pick up Tony 2Goggs and headed up to the lake for a brief workout. The lake was fine. Temperatures were good. The downside was there was NO visibility. I mean maybe 18 inches. I swam for about 15 minutes. I even jumped on a guys feet and still couldn't see them. No worries....just swim by feel. Later that afternoon, I returned to transition to drop off my bike. I must say that it was the largest transition I have ever seen. With nearly 3000 participants, transition seemed to span nearly a dozen parking lots. I am not exaggerating when I say that my rack was the furthest from the swim entrance and run exit. It felt like a quarter of a mile, lol.

I tried to stay off my feet that night but it really isn't possible in New Orleans. We walked down to a pizza joint and grabbed dinner before retiring to the room where I stayed up watching the Tar Heels play.

The alarm went off at 4:30 and I was out of bed without any problem. I was giddy as always as I bounced around the room. I ate a banana and an untoasted bagel, then drowned myself with an ensure. Yummy...breakfast of champions. Then it was time to head to transition.

I got to transition and settled pretty easily. I put my stuff down, said hello to Desiree and decided to get out of there. I never see the point of obsessing about things in transition. It only makes you more nervous. Since the swim was a point-to-point, they had shuttles heading down to the swim start. The problem was that you still had a long walk from the drop off to the start. Next time I will bring an extra pair of shoes.

I hopped in the water for a few minutes to warm up. The sun was barely up so the visibility was nil. I seriously couldn't see my hand under water. I made my way out of the water and to the corral. I was in the first wave group after the pros. We finally made it into the water and began positioning ourselves. I started left, closer to the buoy and in second position. I had a seem than I planned on exploding through to find the fast feet. The gun went off and so did we.

My first 2-300m were solid. We spread out easily. I swam over people when needed and had no problem. In fact, I would say my first 5-8 minutes were one of the best I ever had. I never looked up. I had people on both side of me and someone in front of me. I just swam with them. I continued to keep the head down and focused on the people around me so that I could draft. I wasn't sure how hard I was swimming at this point. I felt like I was being aggressive but I was also a bit winded and tired.

About the 15' mark I got dropped and strung out in no man's land. I popped out of the water looking for feet and made a move to my left as I spotted a couple of fish to swim with. The problem with the point to point swim is that you never really have a good idea where you are on the course. There was a 'half way' red buoy. I knew I had been in the water for a while and felt like that buoy had to be further than .6 miles. I peeked at my watch and it said 18:40. I was pissed. No way half this course took me that long. I tried to refocus on finding feet and for the most part I was successful. By the 30' mark, I was tired of being in the water. I thought for sure I was going to hit transition any minute but it still looked far off in the horizon.

I made the final turn toward the exit and came across a big group of rocks. About 100m later I stood up and started wading toward the exit. I glanced at my watch and it read 35:37. I was pretty deflated. I pushed out of the water toward the wetsuit strippers. The carpet was very thin and you felt every rock under you. I decided to forgo the strippers because I was worried about landing on some rocks. I made the long trek to my bike and hopped out of the wetsuit, grabbed what I needed and was out of transition. T1: 2:34

I started the bike pretty deflated from the pathetic swim. I thought to myself that I would push the final 15-20 miles of the bike and try to make up a few extra minutes and I would be right on target. The bike started with a short out and back through the crowd. I spent the time settling into the saddle and finding my watts. After we zipped through town, I took my 5 hr energy drink and I was ready to go.

One of the greatest aspects of this race was that it was completely closed to traffic. I have never seen so many cops. There were literally cops at EVERY road....including each neighborhood or church outlet. The race really shut down the city. I found my groove relatively easily. I was playing it smart. When I hit the bridges, I didn't grind. I dropped to small ring and spun up them. I was keeping my watts on the lighter side of my plan. I felt like I was racing it conservatively.

On the way out, I felt like were were on a small false flat. It felt much like the Silver Comet Trail and I was anticipating coming back at a slightly faster pace. As we turned onto the Chef the winds began picking up from what seemed like every direction. The coolest part of the race was being able to see the pros. You rarely get to seem them on the bike. I saw nearly all the women pros since I was only about 10 minutes behind them. I made it out the 24 mile turnaround and I was dead on my watts. I peeked at speed and was riding what I was expected to ride.

I continued to slice through the wind on the return before hitting Hwy 11. This was one of the most brutal stretches of roads I have ever endured. The wind was whipping me around like I have never experienced. It was unrelenting for the 5 miles out and 5 miles back. I did my best to stay aero tight and hold my prescribed watts. The sun was starting to come out so I grabbed a water from the aid station and began cooling myself down.

When we turned back onto the Chef we were into a solid headwind. I knew I was still on par for a good ride but it was time to push a bit more and gain a few minutes. So I pushed and the wind pushed back. I tried to wait it out and it didn't seem to want to help. Even coming back on Haynes Blvd the wind was unrelenting. This is where I thought I would have a slight downhill. I kept my eyes ahead and I wasn't gaining on the athlete despite feeling like I was giving it more effort. I peeked behind me and saw that no one was gaining on my anytime soon. We were all in this together.

At this point I was still trying to fight off the negative demons in my head from the swim. I was pushing the bike but not making up ground. Essentially, I was drowning in negativity. The wind was really taking it out of me. Physically, I was tired but felt like I should be from pushing the bike. But I really felt like I was having to give it more effort than I should to hold my watts. I made the mistake of peeking at my watch to see what the race time was. It was becoming very apparent to me that I wasn't going to be sub-5. This didn't sit well with me. The demons were infiltrating my head at a rapid pace. I didn't feel like running 13.1 miles today.

I struggled the last few miles. I tried to surge to get to feeling better but I was pretty beat. I was hoping the crowd would energize me. It didn't. I came off my bike and I had NO desire to run today. None. The worst part was that I couldn't realize that I actually had a good ride. The results show that I was 53/352 at that point. That is top 15% in my age group. But my mind was focused elsewhere. I didn't care. I had no passion or desire in my body.

I entered transition and yelled to Jess to call Dan and see if he would rather me DNF than run 13.1 miles. To me, if I wasn't going to meet my goal, I am not sure it made sense to tax my body over a hot 13.1 miles just for a t-shirt and medal. I made the decision to not stop and continue out of transition to start the run. T2: 2:17

As I exited transition, I was getting passed left and right. I felt like my form was horrible and I was running the pace of molasses. I continued to push and didn't like the way my body felt. I knew that it would take a miracle run to pull of a sub-5 race. I hit the one mile mark at 8:47. I was completely defeated. If 8:47 felt like that then I wasn't sure I would even PR on this day. Running a 2 hr half mary sounded miserable. I wasn't even sure I could pull that off. Doing a 5:30 meant nothing to me. I was not happy at all with my mindset but after stewing like this for well over 2 hours I couldn't move past it.

I decided to stop. I knew I needed to regather myself. I began thinking through the mental aspect of quitting a race. Was I being a wuss and this is the pain that I expected to experience? It didn't feel like the pain I remember from other races. Is it worth slowly jogging 13.1 miles or should I save my body and prevent any potential injury? Why did I want to quit? What went wrong today? Did I push the bike to hard? Were my watts wrong? All of these thoughts race through my head not making the situation any better. I decided to continue moving forward by walking in an attempt to regain my composure.

I was 1.5 miles into the run course and I had already stopped and was walking. I was done. I had given up on the race. I just needed to convince myself of it. So I turned around. I took off my race belt and chip. I walked back to the aid station and asked them to radio in Athlete 152-DNF. Due to the layout of the course, I had to walk back against the flow of run traffic. I pulled down my visor and tried to hide behind my sunglasses. Wouldn't you know that I am the most easily identifiable person in the world. This was truly the walk of shame.

I made it back to transition and gathered my thoughts. I sat under a tree and watched the rest of the race carnage unfold. When my watch beeped 5 hours, I turned it off. When my ride arrived, I walked past the other athletes who were still coming off the bike. I got in the car and headed back to the hotel. I just wanted a long shower and some quiet space to think.

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In the end, I got mentally defeated. I let the demons get the best of me today. And I let them get the best of me for all the WRONG reasons. I will never fully understand what happened out there on Sunday. I will never understand how I was able to actually turn around and walk back to transition. 48 hours later I am still just as shocked as anyone else. The key for me is to begin understanding why it happened so that it doesn't happen ever again.