Andy Potts, kicking it up in the run.
Great Britain's Julie Dibens' (she also trains in Boulder part of the year) overall time was 4:19:49. This was enough to be in front of the 2nd place lady by almost 3 minutes. Julie is also an XTERRA pro, she has won the last 3 XTERRA World Championships in Maui in a row!
She is planning on going to Kona for her first Ironman World Championship this October.
We had to get up before the crack of dawn. 3 a.m. to be precise, to be able to drive to the race site and prepare before the 6:30 am race start.
A beautiful sunrise over the Boulder Reservoir just starting!
I'm in the green shirt, getting my transition area set up before heading out to the swim.
I'm spraying on a wetsuit lubricant called Suit Juice, to help my wetsuit to slip on and off easily.
Before the swim start, 4 skydivers jumped out of a plane and parachuted with flags and streamers behind them while a man sang the national anthem.
With 1,750 racers, the beach of the Boulder Reservoir was full!
The swim was started in waves about 5 minutes apart. The pro men and women were in the first wave, 50+ year old ladies age group in the 2nd, womens' 45-49 age group in the 3rd, and then the 4th wave was for the mens' 50-55 age group and men and womens' 18-24 age group.
Our wave getting ready for the swim!
The water temperature was around 75 degrees F, which is still wetsuit-legal until 78 degrees F. I wore my wetsuit even though it's a little warm just because its faster with the buoyancy of the wetsuit. Almost all of the age groupers wore their wetsuits. The pros aren't allowed to wear wetsuits when the water is over 68 degrees F.
The swim went well for me, a lot of zig-zagging though, because I had to pass a lot of people in the 2 groups that started ahead of me.
The start of a 56 mile bike ride.
Just to give you an idea of how many people were in this race, here's one of the long lines of bikers!
Finished my 1st lap with 28 more miles to go.
Done with the bike ride! In shorter distance races such as Olympic distance triathlons which consist of only 25 miles of biking, I'm usually able to push hard on the bike and then hold on during the run. But in this race, it was more than twice the distance of the bike and run of an olympic distance race, so I held back a little on the bike. I just didn't know what to expect because I had never run 13.1 miles before. As it turned out, my pacing was perfect for me and I was able to do my run well.
Done with the bike ride! In shorter distance races such as Olympic distance triathlons which consist of only 25 miles of biking, I'm usually able to push hard on the bike and then hold on during the run. But in this race, it was more than twice the distance of the bike and run of an olympic distance race, so I held back a little on the bike. I just didn't know what to expect because I had never run 13.1 miles before. As it turned out, my pacing was perfect for me and I was able to do my run well.
T2, ditching the bike and helmet and putting on my running shoes.
At this point I was thinking "This isn't too bad, only 13 miles and 900 feet to go..."
My sister got a new race suit for me and we had Deaf Athlete embroidered on the back. Much better than crude permanent marker scribbling!
This is the end of my 1st lap of two 6 and over a half mile laps. The first 10 miles weren't too mentally challenging, until after 10 and a half miles, then I had to put some willpower into the last 2.5 miles! No wonder why they say that a full Ironman is something like 10 percent physical and 90 percent mental!
This is the end of my 1st lap of two 6 and over a half mile laps. The first 10 miles weren't too mentally challenging, until after 10 and a half miles, then I had to put some willpower into the last 2.5 miles! No wonder why they say that a full Ironman is something like 10 percent physical and 90 percent mental!
The clock is recording time since the first wave start, I started 18 minutes later. It felt so good to be done!
I'm sitting in the shade and happy to finish my first half ironman in 4:54:59, accomplishing my goal of under 5 hours. I'm not sure that I want to do a full ironman anytime soon!
My ice bath after a tough day of racing.
I placed 4th in my 18-24 age group of 31 men!
This was one of the hardest races that I have done so far other than the XTERRA World Championship just because of the length of the race. Thanks to my coaches, Amber Monforte and Conrad Stoltz, I was able to go into this race well prepared and I was able to enjoy it! I'm happy to have this experience under my belt and now I know what to expect when I go into more 70.3 racing next year.
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