Final Thoughts before the Race

Okay its T-6 days until the big race, so here are my final thoughts...  Do I feel ready for it?  Nope!   Will I ever feel ready for it?  Nope!   Am I scared to death?  Yup!    Am I excited to see what this challenge has in store for me?  Yup!

So my ultimate goal is to finish the race, preferably smiling :)   I’m still nervous about not making the course cut-off times.   As long as everything goes well, I should be okay. 

So the race is this Saturday.  We will go to the expo and drop of our run stuff on Friday.   On Saturday my Swim wave starts at 8:36am.   The swim course cut-off time is 9:57 AM.  The swim is in a river where we swim .6 miles upstream and then .6 miles downstream.   Assuming the current isn’t super strong and I can make it up stream I hope to finish the swim in about 50 minutes.    

Next comes the bike portion.  This will be a 56 mile bike ride starting in the town of Guerneville and finishing in Windsor.  I’m told to expect a bumpy ride with lots of rolling hills.  I’ve also been warned of chalk hill at mile 45 which is a 385 ft climb. The total elevation change for the bike course is approximately 1897 ft and the bike cut-off time is 3:00pm.  I’m assuming it will take me about 4hr to do the bike ride, thats equivalent to a 14mph pace.   (I did a 42 mile ride last weekend with similar terrain at a 14.5 mph pace).    

Then comes the dreaded run.  It includes several rolling hills that will prove challenging especially after 5+ hours of exercise.   I’m capable of running a half marathon in 2 hrs 20 mins.  However, I’m going to be realistic in knowing that I’m going to be running on fumes at that time, and hope to do the run in 3 hrs.  

So, the cut-off time for entire race is 5:06 pm. If I combine my expected course times, with the assumption of 20 minutes total of transition time, bathroom breaks and fuel stops, I expect to finish around 4:47pm.  That gives me about 20 minutes of padding to the official course cut off time. 

Everything is definitely do-able, I just have to be mentally ready for this challenge.   I have put in the hours of training and now I just have to get out there and do it :)

I’m looking forward to the weekend and the experience.  Hopefully in my next post I can say I have successfully completed a Half Iron Man.  Stay tuned!