Greg and I have been traveling (read, driving a lot) for the Vineman 1/2 ironman (Sonoma County), plus visits with Lori in Oakland, and Mom 'n' Dad in their new digs in Pacific Grove. Excellent trip, but not quite enough time for all of the desired activities!

The Vineman 1/2 Ironman was a great example of how you never know what to expect...and of how much your mind affects your day! Given my current trials with psoriasis treatments, I went into this wondering how my body would respond to a race attempt. I've felt OK in training this week, but didn't know what kind of muscle weakness, dizziness, gastric issues, etc. might affect my experience. My training in general has been somewhat minimal and inconsistent.

Little did I know - until after the finish - that the main culprit would be technical issues!

The swim was uneventful, except for my sense that other quick swimmers had much newer and more buoyant wetsuits. Either that, or I'm just a little older and slower in the water - ? Entirely possible! Another factor is that with each passing year, I seem to need more warmup time in the water, but age-groupers often get 2 minutes or less to warm up. A proper swim warmup is least 10 minutes!

T1 brought my first minor catastrophe: I got as far as the top of the little hill out of transition when another competitor yelled, "You know you're missing a shoe, right?" Bless her for saving me the additional couple of minutes it would've taken to figure this out for myself. I ditched the bike in the bushes and ran against race traffic back to T1, where I eventually found my shoe on the ground. Given that I'd triple-checked that it was attached to my pedal before the start, I can only conclude that someone else in my wave knocked it loose in T1.

I did pretty well at putting aside the discouraging thought of losing 3 minutes so early in the race, and settled into a riding rhythm. (The thoughts go like this: "What the f**?" "Where the heck is that shoe?" "C'mon, c'mon, shoe...come to me - let's go." "K, got it - go!" ""Ow ow ow ow (running on rocks)" " How the hell did that come off my bike?" "Oh well, what the hell, can't figure it out now." "Crap, how can I break 5 hours now?") I pushed them all aside, just stuck them on the shelf, and WENT.

I felt pretty strong on the ride, and found myself passing the swimmers I couldn't catch in the water. I played tag with a couple of women in my age group for about an hour, and then finally dropped them. (I named one of these women "Calf Woman" - I was surprised I could overtake her! But then, even if my calves are like pencils, I do have a**-power.)

Suddenly, after about 1.5 hours, I started to feel like I was slowing down. I relaxed and focused, drank more water, tried standing and stretching my legs...but I noticed my speed dropping on the PowerTap readout. I gradually started to think that the meds had caught up to me, and I had irreversible power-fade. But then I was like, Hey, my power looks like same - what's happening? The last hour of the ride was like this - speed dropping and dropping - 22, 21, 20, 19, 18. What was going on? It became a trick of the mind, to keep working hard when I could see my efforts weren't paying off. I kept checking my wheels - did I have a flat? The problem is, you can't really see your back wheel. It looked OK enough not to stop. And then the people I'd passed started to pass me! What the h**? Damn, there was Calf Woman, and I couldn't catch back up to her. I weighed the cost of stopping - could be big. Unfortunately, I would only discover the real problem much later.

The other thing was that it was way colder than I'd expected. Lesson #201: Carry electrolytes separately with you, so you don't jam up your bloodstream with too much salt, should this occur! So I arrived in T2 with cold, sluggish muscles and a completely discouraged attitude. I was so bogged down I could hardly move my fingers to put on my double-layer socks (to avoid the major discomfort of running with the soles of my feet torn up with psoriasis). For me, T2 is the worst moment of a race anyway. I was like, "This race is over for me - I can't even move. There's no way I can run a 1/2 marathon now, let alone in sub-1:43." I was fully convinced that the drugs (Cymbalta) had kicked me, and that was it. I sat down on the grass and felt horrible, defeated. Should I even try to run? Am I gonna do this run or not?

(Time to get head out of ass. Just put your socks on, c'mon, 1, 2, 3, 4 (four socks), shoes on, belt on, grab the hat, start moving the feet. Crap, crap, crap - feel terrible. Drink a little water - you're over-salted. No decisions now - decide later. Just get out of T2.)

Somehow, my feet moved, even though they were completely numb from the ankles down. Then came the process of "just get to mile 1. OK, got there, keep moving the feet." I realized around mile 2 that said feet actually weren't even going terribly slowly - sub-8:00. I focused on re-watering myself to get the blood moving again, relaxing my shoulders, moving forward.

Then I saw Greg on his MTB. At that point, I didn't feel I had much reason left for myself to finish the race, as it no longer felt like a race to me, but I suddenly thought of Greg. He had driven us all the way from San Diego, and was up at 4:30 with me for this confounded event; and now he was spotting me on the run course, after a freezing 3 hours waiting for me to get to that point. So I got to mile 3 for Greg. And 4, and 5. Suddenly, I started to feel better. I noticed that my stomach was *not* grossly nauseated, as it usually was in a 1/2 IM run. No nausea, no cramps, no tightness - and I could breathe almost as well as on an open run! Alright, just do this thing as a training run, practice relaxing for once on a 1/2 IM run. Unfortunately, I had to walk through the aid stations in order to guzzle enough water to undo the salt damage I'd done earlier. Other than that, my pace wasn't too awful - around 7:45 average, closer to 7:00 on some of the downhills. (Uphill is another story.)

I ended up with a 1:46 on the run, which didn't seem right to me - I really felt like I'd gone unde 1:43. No doubt the first three miles and the walking brought it down.

After a 1/2 IM finish, it takes me a good half hour to start to think coherently again. I drank, ate, stretched, recovered, appreciated that I'd made it that far.

A little while later, we were loading the bike on the car - lo and behold, a FLAT REAR TIRE. Holy crap, no f**cking wonder! That's where all my power went! A slow leak on the bike is demonic - you can't see or feel it, but it will start to slow you down exponentially. Had I known, changing the tube might've been faster than just suffering. Back home, I analyzed the PowerTap data; given my average power, and ave. power and speed from the last race, I estimate about 9-10 lost minutes. ...Which means my official time of 2:48 might've been a respectable 2:38-9. There's no point in what-ifs, but it does restore some of my confidence in my body and my riding skills.

So the 5:14 I walked away with just goes to show that a) numbers don't lie, but also b) they don't tell you everything. Without mishaps and discouragement, 5:00 is a totally realistic goal for this course. Maybe next time I'll ride the sew-ups (more puncture-resistant wheels) on such rough road. (The gorgeous wine backcountry is FULL of gnarly road and potholes.) Now if I could only put down a decent run.