Hello All! Thanks for taking the time to read this race report.

My friend Dave and I decided to sign up for IMWI on a whim last year (well more of a whim for me, he called me the day before sign up and asked if I'd wanted to). Prior to signing up, I'd done 2 or 3 tris during high school, but at 25 years of age, it'd been quite a while. I trained a lot and did 2 tris this summer, first the Rockman then the Pekin Dragon Tri. Some may remember my Rockman RR where I managed to pull of a 5:00:10 for my first real tri. This has been an amazing season for me, and an amazing discovery of a sport that seems to fit me better than I could have imagined and I thank everyone for all of the informative and interesting posts that have helped me to plan and avoid many of the pitfalls that I would have had to go through. But enough foreplay, on to the RR.

Left Chicago late thursday night and in Madison at about 2 am. Dave and I were enjoyed as a nice meal for the local hordes of mosquitos at the local KOA about 15 minutes south of Madison-proper while we set up camp in the dark. We stayed there both thursday and friday night before moving on up to the Hilton for saturday and sunday. Swam Thursday morning in a very windy lake Monona and felt great. Went through sign in then spent much of the rest of the day hanging out in a corner of the Monona Terrace Parking structure assembling out bikes and going over last minute maintenance. Nothing else really of note occured until race day, so I'll just skip the rest as this is beginning to read like the event schedule.

Woke up at 430 am on sunday to Iron Maiden - Ironman, seemed fitting. Had a couple bagels and some pomegranite juice then made my way down to the bike to put a new battery in the PowerTap that was serving duty as only a bike computer on the ridiculously ugly Zipp demo program tubular 606's I was riding, dropped off special needs bags and got in my wet suit. I managed to make my way out towards the front of the pack as the swim was what I expected to be my strongest leg from years of competitive swimming

SWIM

The first 400 M or so were chaos and I went out a bit too hard. It ended up being an alright decision as people didn't start passing me until around 450 M and rather than from all sides and all at once, they were just a steady stream. I realized that although I've been a strong swimmer with a long competitive history in pools, that I don't swim all that straight and my spotting isn't very good. I was consistently zig zagging from the main line of people out to about 5 yards away from them. I would occasionally find someone that I could follow for a bit, then I'd get too comfortable and stop spotting at all and 10 yards later, I'd be pointed the wrong direction. Other than my own shortcomings, the only other thing of note was that during a rare bout of straight swimming someone started grabbing my ankles and pulling me. Now I'm okay with the occasional brushing against my feet and even with someone dropping an elbow into my head as these things are inevitable with more than 2000 people starting at once, but I wasn't having this. My stroke when I swam in high school and college was breast stroke, powered mostly by my kick, so after the third or so time he grabbed my ankle, I gave one strong breast stroke kick and whatever I connected with caused the ankle grabbing to cease. All told, I left the water at 1:02:48. I was apparently over excited for the swim because my average HR for it was 172!

T1

All I can say is that everything I heard about IMWI's swim to bike is completely true! I ran out of the water to the wetsuit strippers then felt like I was sprinting up the helix, put on my helmet and sunglasses and ran out to my bike, carrying my shoes. A volunteer grabbed my bike while I put my shoes on and I got on my bike. Time: 5:44.

BIKE

Felt pretty good at the start, but one of those awful bumps in the first half mile managed to eject one of my bottles. I also quickly realized that my powertap was not picking up. I realized that the night before when I was lubing the chain with my bike on the rack and the bike managed to swing into one of the metal poles near it that I must have bumped the shark fin receiver. Over the first 2.5 miles I managed to little by little push it back towards the awesome tubular 606's that I was borrowing for the race and the pickup resumed.

I felt great through the trip out to verona and through the first loop and as a result was probably pushing a bit too hard. I averaged 21.4 mph over 1:55:30 through the first 41 miles, per the IMWI website. Right around verona is where the problems began. I've been training with enduralytes and sportlegs and at an aid station I managed to lose the baggie of these I had in the cut up water bottle in my downtube cage, then I entered the next aid station going too fast and couldn't manage to hold onto a water bottle or a gel and basically went 15 miles without hydration or nutrition, this left me dehydrated and hypoglycemic. I slowed down significantly for the next aid station and picked up two bottles of gatorade endurance, two gels, and two halves of bananas. I ate these all over the next three miles. It took me probably another ten miles to feel alright again. This is all evident in my second 41 miles taking 2:14:00 at a pace of 18.36 mph, There's also a nice big dip in the file from my powertap.

The last 30 miles of the end of the loop and back to verona were uneventful until I pulled up to the top of the helix. There screaming at me was a large delegation of my friends and 10 members of my family. Wow that got me pumped to get through transition and onto the run!! I averaged 19.29 mph and it took me 1:33:18, netting an overall bike split of 5:42:47 at 19.74 mph. All things considered I was really quite happy with this.

T2

The welcoming committee at the end of the bike motivated me to get going and I ran quickly through transition, changing area, through the sunscreeners and onto the course. So fast so that my family hadn't made it over to the run start and missed me! They though't I'd take longer! I made it through T2 and into the run in 2:27.

RUN

This is what I'd been afraid of the entire ironman and throughout training. I'd never ran a marathon before. Actually, the longest run I'd ever done was 3 weeks before during a 20 mile training run. I'd never been much of a runner before the ironman, I mean, I ran cross country my last two years of high school, but the 5k is most certainly not my cup of tea. I did learn that apparently I have the long distance running genetics from my dad (He's a long time ultramarathoner). I had to break through about 2 walls on the run, but these seemed to coincide with either me seeing my family or running on state street. The first one I hit towards the end of the first lap, as I was about 1/2 mile from the capitol building. Right as I started to feel like death (which I'm convinced was mostly because I was caused at least partially by the realization that I still had over 14 miles to go and that is was going to be a repeat of what I'd already ran), I saw my dad and he ran nearly 1/2 mile along the sidewalk with me yelling - consider that wall broke! I spent the first half avoiding caffeine at the aid stations, but readily eating gels, water and gatorade. I had my first bout with GI issues at the beginning of the second lap where I had to visit a friendly blue box. Here I learned two things: 1: I was well hydrated (this was the third time I'd pissed, although the first two were done in ironman-affirming fashion on the bike...) 2: I had better not stop for much longer because I was not clear headed in the least. After my 90 second drop off, I continued on the course, next stop was the stadium, made it through that and out to the state street turn around. As I entered state street I was hitting another wall that was once again immediately trounced by the realization that the end was in sight. I also realized that my sub-11 hour goal was in sight. I brought up my pace from there through the lake turn around. I held what felt like a 7-low pace from there for another mile or two, then I felt like I was over running myself and slowed a bit. Maybe a few hundred yards after this I found myself going under the tunnel about 3 or 4 miles out from the finish. As I emerged, I saw three people in crazy orange hats that ended up being my roommates. They'd bought a cheap ghetto blaster and were playing Queen's "Under Pressure," (one of my favorite songs both to listen to and to sing in karaoke!) proceeding to run next to me as far as they could. There it was again, I turned it on, and 138 miles into my ironman, I managed to out run my roommates, 1/2 mile later there was my father again, and he ran on the sidewalk with me until the crowd got thick. As I came up to the special needs bags again, the woman asked my number, and for whatever reason I yelled back "No need, I'm done!" The crowd around me heard this and I ran the last couple of hundred yards to a roar, strided out through the finishing lane and through the tape. Run Times:
First Half: 1:50:16
Second Half: 1:57:37
Total: 3:47:51

Ironman Time: 10:41:35
Place: 141/2106
25-29 M AG: 21/156

I want to thank everyone who was there for me, served as my motivation, and overall supported me. My family was amazing to be there as were my roommates and friends. Dave, my clydesdale best friend who made his finishing goals is the one who, a year prior and out of the blue asked me if I wanted to do the ironman. I can't thank him enough for the suggestion, this has truly been one of the best challenges I've ever undertook. Thinkbox Athletics and Mission Bay Multisport kept me trained and with snazzy equipment. Everyone here, thanks for the constant stream of information and the knowledge that I was not alone in the insanity that is ironman training. See you all next year for IMCDA (hopefully) and IMFL.

-Aaron Black