I can’t believe that I am actually getting to write this race report! This journey started about 17 months ago in April 2008 when a friend of mine set out a goal to run the Dallas Whiterock marathon in December 2008. I weighed about 230lbs then. Being a former Marine I had obviously been in shape before at 190lbs (very fit and trim). I was doing this for two reasons: to lose the spare tire and man boobs that had seemingly grown overnight and to accomplish a goal that is looks impossible. I had tried training for marathons before but always, always, fell off about 3-4 weeks into it. This time would be different as I would be counting on my friend Travis and he would be counting on me. After our first marathon we talked eachother into eventually doing an Ironman race. I did my first sprint in May of 2009 and was hooked! I then completed the HIM in Bufalo Springs. My only goal in this race was just to complete it without stopping on the run. I fininished the HIM in 6:42, with the following splits- Swim- 46:31 (2:25 per 100/m), T-1: 2:24, Bike- 3:19 (16.9mph): T-2- 3:41, and Run- 2:30 (5.25 mph). Yes I did complete my goal of no walking although at some points along the run I thought I could walk faster than I could run!

I knew I was still hooked on this sport, but I definitely needed to make some big changes in training if I wanted to complete an Ironman. I was putting in the mileage on the weekends and swimming lots of laps, but what I was missing was better quality training sessions during the week. Up to this point I was training about 8 hours a week consisting of 3 hours of anaerobic workouts (P90X) and 2 hours of cardio during the week and 3-4 hours on the weekend. This was all wrong! The HIM was at the beginning of June and the registration cut off for the Full Iron Distance race “REDMAN” in Oklahoma City was June 16th. So I had to make a decision fast!
I took everyone’s advice and did the following:
1. Cancelled my gym membership with Lifetime fitness.
2. Enrolled in a Master’s swim class.
3. Followed the 36 weeks to Iron training program on this site. (started at week 2 of competive season)
That first week o f training was torture (17 hours), but I made it through and continued the plan to IRON. I cancelled all other local tri and running races that I had planned for the summer, so that I could purely concentrate on this event! At the end of July I needed to take a reassessment of myself to see where I was at. Back to when I was originally training for my marathon I was down to weighing 210lbs in Nov. 2008. From Nov. till July I had lost 0 lbs! I couldn’t figure out what the heck was wrong with me. The Doctor said the usual- calories in/ calories out. I tried restricting my calories on my own, but the training started to suffer. So for my 35th birthday (Aug. 8th), I told my wife all I wanted was to go see a sports dietician here in Dallas. The lady I worked with, Eve Rodgers, is the official dietician for the MLS FC Dallas. She really took the time to help me figure out what I was doing wrong and what I needed to do right. She gave me a plan to follow that conformed with my family and my race schedule. I was placed on a calorie restriction from 8/3 to 9/1 of 2,400 calories daily (on double workout days), 2,000 on single workout days and rest day, and unlimited calories on the weekends (love that pizza, burgers, beer, and fries). Oddly enough I was eating more then I had ever been before. The main thing was cutting out the white rice, flour tortillas, and white spaghetti noodles.
The training went pretty good for the month of August. I ended my calorie restriction on 9/1 and starting feeling really healthy eating more of the enriched flours and starting my taper. Now I had another problem. The calorie restriction worked so well that I was on the verge of having to move from Clydesdale to an age grouper. I was now down to 201 and if I ran or did anything for a ½ hour or more I was down around 198. With the lighter workouts outs I put on another pound and was ready for the race!
2 weeks before the race I took my bike to the local bike shop for a tune-up. $400 later I walked out with a bike with new cables, tires, chains and all the necessary adjustments. I got grief from my wife because I only bought the bike for $500 (including shoes) from a friend of a fried who was moving out of state. The bike is a 58cm Motobecane road bike, but has some nice accessories like Ultegra gears all around, carbon forks, and carbon aero bars. The 58cm is probably a bit too big for me as I should be in a 54-56. My back pays the price on the long rides for this, but until I get a new bike I gotta deal with it.
My wife and 4 kids have gone to all my races and triathlons and this one would be no different. My wife even got all of us matching baseball jersey’s with a logo that says “Team Q”. The wetsuit I had been using was a full sleeve and I felt like I had heated up too much in the HIM. My wife was adamant that I would not be getting a new suit just yet. Being that my wife is a Amateur seamstress who makes and sales kids clothes on Ebay and Etsy, she cut the sleeves on my suit took it in and “walla”, I had a custom fitted sleeveless suit that fit my body perfectly from head to toe (needed to be taken in with the weight loss). A week before the race I got my tri suit (USMC) in the mail and we were all set.
Redman is laid out as a fast rolling hill course on the bike and a flat course on the run. It’s fast as long as there is no Mid-west wind. Bike and gear check was on Friday night and after I got my packet I was a nervous wreck trying to figure out where everything needed to go, what bags to use, etc. I took a deep breath and figured it all out shortly after. I spent the next hour driving the course and going over the race in my head, figuring out how to get through it all, contingency plans etc. I gotta good night rest (slept like a baby) and woke at 4:45am to start getting ready for a 7:15 start. Ate a good power bar breakfast, Gatorade, and a bottle of Coke on the way to the race. The kids all slept in, so it was just the wife and I in the morning. I got marked, got my chip and was ready to go, listening to my I-Pod. My only goal was to finish above anything else, then no walking. Being the Marine that I am, I did have worst case/ best case time in my head as follows:
Swim- 1:20-1:40
Bike- 5:45- 6:30
Run: 4:45- 5:30
T’s- 5:00 each
Total time between 12-14 hours estimated.
About 30 minutes before the race the rain started coming down. Transition turned into a lake of 3-4 inches. The race director was even thinking of cancelling because of water issues on the bike course, or modifying the event to a swim, run, swim. “WHAT”! I trained so hard for this and for it to all go away just like that it couldn’t be! Fortunately, they only had to slightly modify the bike course, so that you had to dismount at about mile 6, walk your bike about 50 yards through a foot of water and then remount. We finally got started at 8am, although most of us were already shivering from the long delay spent standing in the corral using trash bags for warmth. The gun went off, I hit start on my Timex and I was off.
Swim
The swim consisted of 2 laps (no getting out and running to start the 2nd lap). I just kept focused breathing evenly, and thinking “slow is smooth, smooth is fast”. For some reason I just couldn’t get this one country song out of my head. Not sure of the title or who wrote it but the chorus goes “got my feet in the water, ass in the sand”. Then I hit the yellow buoy on the 1st lap and it read 33:00. “NO WAY” was all that I could think of. I just beat my HIM time by more than 13 minutes and wasn’t tired, exhausted or anything. I doubted myself so much that I though it could only be one of two things- the course was short, or this wasn’t a complete lap. I pushed forward continuing to climb and swim over people. When I finished the second lap I had about another 100 meters to go to get through the ramp. I kicked my legs hard to get then warmed up for what was going to be a beating of a day. I got through the second lap in 35:00, essentially an even split on both laps. I wasn’t exhausted, or even breathing hard. I got stripped and ran to my bike. When I got to my bike I saw that all of the Clydesdale bikes were in the rack still and one guy was currently changing (he beat me by 30 seconds out of the water). I slid into my shoes, through on the helmet and off I went. All week long I had been practicing my running mount, but I hesitated because of the wet conditions and thought twice about trying it now. I felt confident though and did what I trained to do. I Ran past the mount line, pushed the bike forward and jumped on. Perfect landing! Had a small hesitation getting the pedals locked in as everything was slippery. I couldn’t do a barefoot mount as the shoes I have are made for road and not tri so they have that ratchet tie down. Anyways, I hit the lap on my watch and was off and pedaling. I looked down and my watch read 1:47. Holy cow, less than 2 minutes out of transition and I now owned my division. About mile 5 the guy that originally beat my out of the water, caught me. I was tempted to push ahead to keep pace, but I was already averaging 21 mph and decided just to ride my race and as long as I keep him close I can make a move on the run.
Run
About mile 20 my left groin started tightening. I am used to this happening as it has been a frequent problem over the last 2 months, but it usually dies out about mile 40-50. I spotted the div. leader about a mile to the turn-a-round so he was about 6 minutes ahead of me. No problem, close enough. Perhaps I can pull a “Mecca” and catch him on the run. Back to the groin injury now. At around mile 60 I realized it wasn’t going away and then another problem. My right ankle was hurting. It felt and looked like my shoes was pointed more in and I could literally twist my foot back and forth. I think one of the bolts on my cleat came loose. I later found out that this was the case (ouch). Although the hills were short and not steep there were plenty of them. Every hill brought agonizing pain to my groin, so much that I had to stand up on the climbs to get through them. My leg finally went numb around mile 90, but the damage had been done and I was in that “dark place”. Just 22 miles to go and I didn’t know if I could make it. Then I had to pee! On the bike or off the bike that is the question! I know I posted a comment a few weeks ago that it was not worth it to pee on yourself to save a total of maybe 2 minutes. But I have had a change of philosophy. Look how long and hard you work to shave minutes off of your swim. You can blow all that hard work with one good potty break. So yes I did it and just washed myself off with water after. Think the person behind me figured it out after they passed me and I was squirting water all over my leg and shorts! Love iti! I concentrated on just getting to 100. I did it, then to 102 where the last aid station was. Now just 10 miles to go. The last 10 miles was a beating, but I did it and was glad to be off of the bike. My split at the half-way point was 19.5 mph. Pretty solid considering that my goal was to be between 18-20. The second half was of course a mess and ended up with a total bike time of 6:10 (18 mph).
Although I still met my bike goal, I know I could have done so much better without the physical ailments. I know what caused the ankle pain (my shoe), but I don’t know what’s causing my groin pain. I’m thinking that the bike probably isn’t fitted right and the seat may be a tad too high, so any comments yall have will be great!
Run
Five minutes spent in T2 lubing myself up with Vaseline, putting on socks, shoes, Garmin watch, and gels and I was off. Yes I wore two watches on the run. The Timex to give me total time and to mark my miles and the garmin to help pace me and to watch the total run time. First mile was 8:25 (WOW, way to fast), then 9:00, and eventually 10-11’s. The run consisted of 4 (yes 4) loops. 3.25 miles out and back 4 times. After the 1st loop and a time of 1:04 (6.5 miles) I didn’t know if I was really going to be able to make it. My strategy was to walk the aid stations and about an additional minute after that. My mile splits were about 11 minutes, but if you subtract the 1:30 I was taking to walk, I was actually moving pretty fast (for me anyways). There goes the 2nd loop, started the 3rd loop by grabbing my special needs bag, changed the socks as dry socks feel so good, and off and running again. I felt like I was actually getting stronger with each mile that was passing. Then I hit the 4th loop and realized that I actually might finish this dam thing. I saw mile 20 and thought OMG here comes the wall! No wall ever came so I pushed on. At mile 22 I grabbed a gel, but my body did not want to take it in. It came up twice and I had to force it down. Oh no I thought, my body is starting to shut down. This by the way was the 27th gel of the day. If I have another sublime GU it will be too soon. Time to change flavors! At this point I told my self, “that’s it” no more stopping “HTFU and let’s get going Marine!”, “let’s finish this thing”. Mile 23, through some Gatorade in the direction of my mouth, got a cold sponge and kept on trucking, Mile 24- sponge only, Mile 25- sponge only. OMG only 1.2 miles to go, am I really gonna make it.
The last 1.2 miles was so surreal it was amazing. It seemed like every early morning, swim, bike, run and argument with the wife over spending money on these races and time, ran through my mind All the countless hours spent training, all coming out in one last mile of sweat of tears (yes tears). Then mile 26 (at 8:32 pace), only .2 to go, I finally go to make that left turn to the finish chute instead of straight to the turn around. I crossed the line at 12:20:42. My marathon time was 4:53:11!
Redman is a pretty great race. I can only compare this to the HIM in Buffalo Springs so it is one sided. The race numbers are small something like 250 for the Full, 300 for the HIM and 300 for the Full and Half Aqua bike, plus an Olympic and sprint the next day, so it is not overly crowded. The aid stations are well stocked and I was treated like you would expect an elite triathlete would be. There was a runner about 20 yds out from each aid station asking me what I needed. I would give him my order and when I got to the station I had my order in hand, whatever I wanted. Water, Coke flat, or carbonated, ice, no ice, sponge, gu, salt, pretzels, whatever. Crowd support is unbelievable, especially on the run as your friends and family get to see you 8 times!
Recovery
I thought that the worst was over, but the recovery seemed almost as bad. I spent the first 15 minutes sitting in a comfy chair snacking on soda, cinnamon rolls, and chips. Then I tried getting up and was stiff as a board. My ankle which was a non-factor on the run, came back with vengeance! My oldest daughter helped my to my gear, I changed to my dry clothes, went over and got a heck of a massage and my family helped me hobble over to the truck which took forever to get into. Quite a sight having my wife and daughter who are both 5’1” and weigh a combined 210 lbs trying to push a 202 lb (probably 194 then) Marine up into a 4x4 suburburban! Went straight to Sonic’s and got the largest Coke and two large fries. Fries seemed to be the only thing that was easy to eat (soft and smushy) and they were warm. Filled the Ice chest twice with ice and dumped it in the tub filled with cold water. Pain stakingly sat in there for 5 minutes and then proceeded with a 30 minute hot shower. Put the sweats on and hit the hay. You would think this would have been the best night sleep of my life, but it was so much the opposite. I was shivering like I was freezing and had all the blankets on me. I would fall asleep only to wake up in a cold sweat, then have to take off the covers to dry off and put them back on again. I did this over and over again.
However, when I woke up Sunday morning I felt very good. Slightly stiff in my back and thighs. Then I tried to stand-up and my ankle almost made me scream it hurt so bad. Other than the ankle my body is in relatively good shape. I think I strained a ligament, so we’ll see how it feels in a couple of days and see if I need to see a Doc.
Thanks to all of you tri-fuelers for all you help, stories, and advice. If any of you are doing the Toyota U.S. open Olympic in Dallas in October I’ll be there. Just look for me in my USMC suit!
Goals for the offseason-
1. Run a sub 1:40 half marathon in Nov.
2. Run a sub 3:40 marathon in Dec.
3. Get an in-door trainer
4. Get a bike that fits