Well this past weekend I completed my first half-iron distance race at the Runovia Full and Half-Iron Distance races at Lake Barkley, Kentucky. Man what a weekend! The trip up should have been the first sign that it was not going to be a smooth weekend.
FRIDAY: First off, the directions I got off of Google were completly wrong from the beginning and I got "turned around" twice. Finally arrived at the race site, picked up race packet, had meal provided and went to the meeting. Race director goes over the race course and quickly "apologizes" for the Run course, saying it was definitely going to be tough. Meanwhile, the T.V in the back of the room has the weather channel on and says there's been a "Tornado Outbreak" in the area all day-20+ tornados spotted, but weather supposed to clear out by early morning. After the meeting I get in the car to head to cabin for the night. Rain and hail start so bad I decide to stay at the lodge on the race site, finally getting to bed at midnight for a 1/2 HIM seven hours later. Alarm and wake-up call at 4:45 and realize after turning the weather on that 6-10 inches of rain has fallen and flooding has occurred everywhere. Oh, and it's still raining. Drive down to the Transition area and everybody is huddled up under the only roof down there. Race director calls the race on the account of safety and says they are going to run it tomorrow for those who want to stay. Otherwise, they will honor your entry fee into another race if we wanted. However, they couldn't guarantee that all of the race support would be out on the course the next day. Great, what an option. After all of this I decided that God was trying to tell me that I shouldn't be attemting this 1/2 especially since I hadn't really been on much more than an Olympic program. But, sometimes I'm stubborn like that. So I went back to the cabin for the day, stayed up late, and decided that I was not going to get up when the alarm clock goes off in the morning and just call it a season. But I woke up just before it went off and told myself, there's alot of people that aren't able to swim, bike, or run who would love to be in the situation to do something like this, so I got up and made my way to the race. And finally here's how it went:

SWIM: Made our way into the muddy water and we were off. Got into a good groove but at the turnaround started feeling "stuff" in the water. Looked up and because of the rains and storms there was debris everywhere. Swam the next 5 minutes navigating through this using a modified breaststroke. Came into T1 in just under 40 mins. actually 2nd out of the water.

BIKE: Went out and straight into a 1-mile climb. Bike course was pretty much all nice size rollers. Came to the turnaround within 2 miles of the leader and about a 2.5 mile lead on the next guy down. At about mile 45 started having a little pain in the low back/ kidneys so pulled up a little and was passed by #3. Back down into the aerobars until the last 2 miles back into the park and the toughest climb of the bike course. At one point I looked down and I'm in my easiest gear and I'm trying my hardest to keep my speed up over 3 MPH! I almost fell straight over at one point but managed to unclip and avoid the fall. Last mile was pretty much a blazing decent back to T2. Bike time right at 3:10.

RUN: Run starts with the same 1 mile climb the bike started with and boy was it tough. Started eating and drinking all I could. Run was a two-loop course throughout Lake Barkley Resort and had serious hills. About three miles in I realized that it was going to be a struggle to keep up my goal pace of sub-10min/miles. At the 10k mark I realized it was going to be a struggle to keep up 12 min/miles. My lower back and legs were sore and I was having to walk about every 5 mins just to climb some of the hills. However I had been passed by only 1 other person(my buddy) since beginning the run so I was clinging on to 4th overall. With 1.5 miles to go I realized I had someone coming up about 1/2 mile behind so I put my head down and cruised down the big hill into the finish with a long 1/2 marathon time of 2:32:51.

Final time was 6:36:47. I was pretty discouraged because I really felt I could go under 6 hours, but I couldn't exactly drive the course beforehand because of the weather, so I had no idea of what was in store. A friend of mine, who was a big marathoner before moving to triathlons, finished 2nd in the race and told me afterwards to not get down about the run time because this was the hardest 1/2 marathon course he's ever seen. That coming from someone whose done many marathons and 1/2 marathons in a span of 30 years made me feel a lot better. On my way home I was really feeling sorry for the small group of people that stayed for the full-iron race(they had almost 5 loops on that run course). The 1/2 winner came in somewhere around 5:50 so it was definitely a tough race. I realize that only half the people showed up Sunday to race, (about 30), but 4th place is 4th place. My goal was to finish and to see if I was going to like the pain and suffering enough to sign up for IMFL. I think I just might!! :D